Kick Off 2

Kick Off 2 is virtually the perfect realisation of the Kick Off system. While not recommended for people who found the original too hard, for those looking for a challenge, jam-packed with variety then this is it. The best just got better.

An incredible array of options, accessed by user-friendly menus. Good manual. Slightly improved graphics over Kick Off with different pitch types and 'designer' strips! Sound is limited to whistle and crowd FX. As instantly playable and addictive as the original. Extra fun with three or four players. The many options create extra variety - and no two matches are ever the same.

Spot effects, such as the ball thuds and the crowd cheers, are excellent. The graphics are great too. The action is all viewed from above, which works very well for a game of this nature. The sprites are well defined and wonderfully animated and the pitch graphics are highly detailed including observations such as muddy areas in the goalmouth on soggy pitches and a squeaky-clean surface on plastic pitches. The graphics and sound mix together extremely well and compliment play brilliantly. If you do not own Kick Off, go for this instead. If you do already own it or own Player Manager it is still well worth considering. This is the best footy game to have appeared on any machine and the beauty of the game is the fact that it just plays so damn well. Novices will enjoy it right from the start and it is surprising just how skilful a player can become after just a few short weeks.

As in the original, dribbling's hard to master but playability is ridiculously high. If you haven't got its predecessor and Extra Time, it's an essential purchase and if you have it's still worth thinking about. Probably the best sports game ever.

When it comes to the crunch with a game like this it's the playability which decides whether it's a real classic or just another addition to the software mountain. Kick Off 2 scores highly on this front. The controls are, if anything, more responsive than they've ever been. More skilful play is certainly possible with the new additions. Kick Off 2 keeps true, for the most part, to the spirit of its predecessor. It may not be perfect, but no other footie game can touch it.

Now this goes against the grain of what the original program was all about. The fact that the player cannot dribble properly, made the speed of play and scoring of goals the greatest attribute of Kick Off. The speed of Kick Off 2 is less, no longer blindingly fast, merely quick, and goals are hard to come by. Sure, it is far more of a challenge and there is great variety, but I feel something has been lost. So there you are, there is a lot packed into Kick Off 2, and with the prospect of up to 25 expansion disks from Anco, you could be playing it for years. However, scoring is hard, far too hard for any but experts, and there are still some aspects of the gameplay that I would like to see changed. Kick Off 3 remains a possibility.

Nach einer Nachtröpfel-Zusatzdiskette ("Extra Time") und einem spielerisch eng verwandtem Programm ("Player Manager") ist der offizielle Nachfolger zu "Kick Off" endlich da. Die Fortsetzung "Kick Off 2" läßt sich grob als "Kick Off mit ein paar netten neuen Features" bezeichnen.

Nach der hemmungslos mißlungenen "Kick Off 1"-Version für den C 64 ist die Umsetzung von "Kick Off 2" ein Riesenfortschritt. Steuerung, Spielablauf und fast alle Optionen des 16-Bit-Vorbilds wurden berücksichtigt. Die Grafik ist nicht gerade schön, aber zweckmäßig.

This leaves this gem-in-theory as sort of a curiosity. If you remember Kick Off 2 from "back then" think twice before downloading, this might ruin some good memories. It simply is not the same, but reveals a basic problem in the late 80s going on to 1990: The Amiga used to be the superior gaming platform. When the PC started to catch up it just wasn't enough to copy games over, the PC was - and is - a different system. The slight differences made more than just this one game unplayable. Take this one for your private museum, but don't be disappointed if you expect to relive the old days.