Gaelic Games Football
Format: Xbox | Released: 11/11/05 | Reviewed: 07/01/2006 | Words: RobotRocker
The long wait since you were a child is over. That GAA game that you always dreamed about and you thought would be the most awesome thing ever is here, thanks to the lovely people at Sony. And well, it’s no where near the game you dreamed about. The game lacks the passion and animated nature of the sport, totally reeking of cash-in . Its stiff, un-responsive and lacks any sort of cohesive gameplay. First thing you will notice, the animation is offensive. It looks like something you would see in a early playstation game, let alone a ps2 game at the peak of its lifespan. There is no detail at all in any of the players, Players jerk about and shoulder tackles seem to be more of an embrace than a charging slam, Umpires look like robots when waving a flag after a score and the crowd looks like it was cut and pasted in by Photoshop.
The sound doesn’t fare better either. A selection of totally out of place generic techno tunes adorn the menu screens, and the commentary, provided by RTE radio’s Mucieal O’ Muirteagh is hampered by lazy sound editing and constantly repeated lines that will have you reaching straight for the off button, the crowd noise is decent however, with authentic sounding chants and noise, but it doesn’t do much. The presentation is okayish, looking like an RTE broadcast, but it still cant generate any kind of atmosphere. The game does support EyeToy Cameo, putting your face in the game using Sony’s EyeToy Camera, but any end result still turns out ugly. The most mind bendingly stupid thing about the game however is there is no real player names at all and it just makes the game seem cheaper and even lazier.
However, the most important part, the gameplay, is an absolute offence. Button input is slow and takes an age to pass or shoot due to the convoluted animation slowing you to a crawl. Its impossible to stage any sort of attack due to the inaccurate passing and spotty shooting and defence is a nightmare due to the regular tackling being too weak as it takes about 4 second to prise the ball out of the attackers hands only for it to go straight to the opposing teams player who was right beside you. Using the “Aggression” modifier is too risky as most of the time, it means a foul which the ref gives out way too frequently. Hand passing is useless as it has no range and usually sails into the oppositions hands and the fact that you have to hit the X button to catch a ball and doesn’t even WORK half the time, means constant fumbles due to the unresponsive control. Its impossible to play with any sort of rhythm or strategy and quickly descends into a button mashing farce.
The fact that someone attempted to develop a game based on a sport with a limited global audience is amazing in the era of High Definition, Big Budgeted, Mega games. The fact that it’s a shodily made, waste of time only makes it more disappointing. GGF is quite possibly the worst PS2 game of 2005, lets just hope the inevitable 2006/7 at least be average.
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