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Football News: Ranking Football Games

Ranking Football Games
Image from: freelargeimages.com

Football Games

 

Someone requested this a long time ago now, though I forget who, sorry. I am only choosing from the games I have played over the years and not going to pick individual versions, just the series as a whole. Otherwise there would be hundreds to rank!

 


19 Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager

I know I had this game, but, for the life of me, I cannot remember a single thing about it. That is why it has to come bottom of the pile.

 


18 FA Premier League Football Manager

This is slightly ahead purely by virtue of me having a very vague recollection of it!

 


17 Italia 90

This game I do remember and it was terrible. The gameplay was clunky and slo. The game itself gave very little pleasure and it was one of those games that was played and then quickly discarded.

 


16 Virtua Striker

It was a truly awful arcade game that I played once on a day I had skipped school to go to the arcades. Complete waste of money and I never played it again.

 


15 This Is Football

Sadly this game was nothing like football. It just did not work as a game and was no fun to play at all. Another game that was played once and then never again.

 


14 Adidas Power Soccer

I only remember this game because of taking my cousins to the Virgin Megastore in Liverpool City Centre to play it on its release. They had some bloke playing all-comers on it. He beat both my cousins, then got a cob on because I took the lead against him and kept accusing me of having played it before. It was just that the game was exactly the same as all the other football games other than having power moves. Which were rubbish.

 


13 Libero Grande

A strange game based around playing one player throughout a career in football. It did have a cult following, but it never quite worked for me. It was a nice idea and attempt to do something different. Also foreshadowed FIFA's career mode. But it just did not offer that much fun.

 


12 FA Manager

One of many weak attempts to make a football management sim, but it seemed all the money had been spent on getting the FA endorsement.

 


11 FIFA Manager

While the live action game has become a juggernaut, FIFA manager was always fighting a losing battle against the Championship Manager/Football Manager behemoth. Not the worst game in the worl but it failed to offer anything new to allow it to stand out from the crowd.

 


10 Kick Off

Decent enough game for a bit of a laugh with mates, but nothing special.

 


9 Total Club Manager

Like Kick Off it is a decent enough game to pass time with. The only reason it is above Kick Off is that I happen to prefer management games.

 


8 FIFA

A massive juggernaut of a game which has brought huge numbers of fans into the real version of the game, particularly in the USA. Unfortunately the game is by EA Sports and has become purely about creaming as much money as possible for as little effort on their part as they can get away with via the Ultimate Tournament mode. No longer a fun game, instead it is just a money grab.

 


7 Pro Evo

Formerly International Superstar Soccer, it is now widely known as Pro Evo. It is the only real competitor to FIFA in the live action video game arena, but has always been hampered by its lack of licensing. Nobody wants to play as Merseyside Reds with names of players slightly altered as well, people want to play with the real players and not spend long hours changing all the names to the real ones. For years it was actually the better game, though FIFA has pulled ahead in recent years. I have put it ahead of FIFA because it was a better game for most of the time and because it was less of a money grab.

 


6 Sensible Soccer

The first really good football game had terrible graphics but was brilliant fun. Gameplay over graphics is something most game makers have long since forgotten.

 


5 LMA Manager

It was a decent enough game, good enough to keep me entertained for hours at a time. It was just not as good as the ones I have chosen above it. There were some interesting features but the overall gameplay just did not compare.

 


4 Premier Manager

It was very much of its time. Clean and simple and a bit too easy, but it kept my interest for many, many hours back on the Amiga. The early Champ Man games felt very much like an updated version of this game. The difference was you had to start off at the bottom and work your way up and never really got the chance to manage the team you wanted.

 


3 Player Manager

It started off as a silly idea of just having yourself as one of the players as well as managing the team. That stayed in there throughout the series, though had little to no effect on how the game was played. Early versions grew into an extremely tactical game that only now the latest Football Manager is surpassing in complexity. It is just a shame they never ported it over to the PC and continued to develop it, as it might have been the game to give the early Champ Man series genuine competition.

 


2 Football Manager

They have spent far too much time on trying to make it look better at the expense of gameplay. Still a brilliant game and getting better, but a lot of the new versions were not worthy of being released as full games and should have been DLC updates to previous versions. Some annoyances, such as press conferences, that are still pointless and in desperate need of work to make them less repetitive.

 


1 Championship Manager

Reached a peak back in its 03/04 iteration, which is legendary. For a while it was the most cited cause of divorce in the UK as a whole generation became addicted. A truly deserving winner and one of the best games ever created, though it has fallen a long way since its glory years of 03/04.

Written by Tris Burke November 09 2019 10:32:45

 

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