PS1 Double Header: Actua Soccer and Caesar's Palace II

Game: Actua Soccer
Console: Sony Playstation
Developer: Gremlin Interactive
Release Date: 1995

I thought I'd seen the last of football games but it seems that I missed one in my football roundup post.  So this is a follow-up, in which I'll probably be referencing the previous review a little. Actua Soccer features 44 international sides which can compete in leagues, cups and friendly matches in both arcade and simulation modes with a variety of camera angles provided and commentary by Barry Davies. It claims to feature 22 players, each with 8 different skill levels, which is a little confusing when you consider that 44 sides should have at least 704 players including substitutes. I assume the developers meant that there were 22 player models on which members of each team could be based.

With the limited options you're almost forced to dive right into a game of football. The first thing that I noticed upon playing was the massive lack of control you feel when playing. Player's movements are directed via the d-pad which makes it difficult to run in specific directions, and even when they went where I wanted them to, I felt like they were constantly in danger of having the ball tackled from them. Added to this, despite the several camera angles offered, none of them allow you to see what's ahead of you all of the time. It's difficult to break for a counter attack if the camera is still focused on your goal .

Players shots will fire off in any direction as you're expected to manually aim for the goal whilst running toward it and the AI is a strange mix of incompetent and hugely skilled, depending on what you don't want them to be at the time. Graphically the game looks pretty poor despite the fact that the player models are made from polygons rather than 2D sprites. The crowd and advertising have visible pixellation and it's fairly unimpressive on the whole. The commentry is fairly poor also and adds little to the experience, being muffled under crowd noise most of the time.

Although most football games of the time were fairly lacking, I'd say that Actua Soccer seems to perform even worse than the average football title in 1995. There's a lot of flaws and moments which make you question whether the game was even playtested, little action to enjoy and a constant sense that you're not actually controlling the players on your team. All in all I'd strongly recommend avoiding this game at all costs.

Rating: 27/100
Grade: F

Game: Caesar's Palace II
Console: Sony Playstation
Developer: Interplay
Release Date: October 1998

Caesar's Palace II is a gambling game featuring 8 different types of casino minigames, most of which have different modes or types of gameplay within them. Obviously it's a niche game and if you're not a fan of casino games or gambling then you're not likely to enjoy this game, but for those that are there's a fair variety of things to do and games that aren't on other gambling simulators. You start with $2,000 in the bank and get to choose which game you'd like to gamble on first. I'll go through the games in the order they appear on the menu;

Blackjack is a fairly standard game on these sort of casino simulators and I'd be surprised not to see it on the roster of games. On the whole it works pretty well and there's room for up to 4 players to play at once. Craps is a nice inclusion to the collection as it isn't often featured on this type of game. With all of the real game's features included, it makes for an enjoyable minigame once you understand the rules. Roulette and Video Poker are two more games that are both fairly self explanatory and commonly featured in casino collections.

With a selection of slot machines including both gimmick based and more conventional models, there's a variety of slot based gameplay if that's your thing. I found some machines to be more fun than others but there's a good selection of fairly interesting ones. Mini Bacarrat makes for another uncommon game featured on this collection, which can be fun to play once the rules are understood, and the same can be said for Keno which is a little like wagering on Bingo. The final game featured is Poker Challenge, which asks players to pick their hole cards for Texas Hold 'Em and then deals the community cards, to see whether the player's final hand beats the other two options in the end. There are other variants of this game also but I found this to be the most fun.

Stylistically Caesar's Palace II is presented neatly and consistently with table games featuring nice visual effects. Graphically it does fairly well especially with the slot machines, but there could be more detail overall. The soundtrack to the game is jazz based and fits well with the casino theme, and even adds to it in my opinion. Controlwise, the game is fairly straightforward and it doesn't take long to get used to what each button does. Overall there's great variety within the games featured, and fans of casino games may well enjoy both the presentation and gameplay.

Rating: 65/100
Grade: C