World Tour Soccer

World Tour Soccer has its shortcomings, but in the long run it ends up trumping its big PS2 brother. Maybe it��s the competition��there��s no Winning Eleven for the PSP, and FIFA is strong but not epic��but for a kick around, you could do a lot worse.

The game moves very quickly, but it��s way too easy to back defenders into their own goal if you play on the easier difficulty levels��they won��t even try to tackle you. Pump it up to the Master Class level (the most difficult of the four settings), though, and you can forget about easily batting the ball around, as the defense will blanket you like Greece did to its competition in the Euro 2004 tournament. Strangely, though, regardless of your difficulty level, the AI will pass up excellent one-on-goalie opportunities to kick the ball back to a trailing, covered teammate. There��s just not a lot of AI urgency to go for the goal, regardless if the team is up 3 to nothing or down by a single score.

While the challenge mode is rewarding��you��ll earn points for successful passes, goals, clean sheets, etc., plus you��ll unlock loads of footy goodness��it��s also quite short. And there are still far too few game modes��the international cups are here, but there are no leagues to speak of. Plus, the game makes the age-old mistake of putting the shoot and slide-tackle commands on the same button��meaning you��ll try to kick the ball on net and end up slide-tackling a tackler from behind for a yellow card. So frustrating.

Pros Fun and fast, nice replays, tons of teams

Cons Long load times, you have to go to ad hoc mode for wireless play, stupid Dive button

Pub. Sony

CEA Dev. Sony Studio Liverpool

ESRB E

MSRP $39.99

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine.