There are sports … then there are arcade sports. Sports titles like NFL 2K2 or NBA Live emphasize a fun and exciting sports game based on as much realism as possible. Then along comes Midway … hitting the scene a few years back with NFL Blitz, which took football to a more hard hitting and faster paced “arcade style” sports game. Well, a popular new style was then created. After all, who wouldn’t enjoy hitting an opponent at mach 2 and knocking them 8 feet down the field? Well, along came NHL Hitz to expand the arcade sports stuff and implement hard hitting and high speed tactics into ice hockey, with popular results and a fun spin on the NHL league. Now, Red Card 2003 has hopped onto the PS2, which puts an arcade sports spin into soccer, but with a little bit of a different style than past releases which work out for the better.

The game is set up with a couple of different options up front to customize your experience. You can choose to participate in a friendly competition which pits you against one other team to help polish up your skills, or you can jump into the “World Conquest” mode, which is where the real fun and main course of the title is found. This mode has you pick a soccer team from any one of many countries, which contains a few actual players from each of the countries represented, and puts you into a traveling world competition to emerge as the winner. Beating the conquest mode will enable you to compete in a finals mode, and will unlock new fantasy teams to utilize like ninjas or even a SWAT team. Obviously the highest scoring team will determine the victor, but this isn’t your regular soccer game. In order to do this, you will need to hone your skills in slide tackling, tripping, blocking, and even a “heavy attack” which results in flipping or tackling the you know what out of an opponent while on the defensive. On offense, you have the standard ground and air pass buttons, a shoot button, and even the ability to use a full turbo meter to execute a super kick when trying to score which results in a slow motion and matrix style presentation of the player drilling the ball at the goal. While this style may sound similar to previous Midway sports titles, it actually is presented in a much more true to life fashion, and comes off as more of a “relaxed rules” setting rather than WWF meets whatever sport it is. There is also an option to make the ref more strict in calling penalties and actually be more like a realistic soccer game … but hey, where’s the fun in that?

Controls are very simple to execute, and everything revolves around a one button press. The controls will automatically flip around based on whether you are on offense or defense at the time, but can also tend to swap at the wrong moment from time to time. For example, there were times where I was on offense but the opposing team would manage to step in and boot the ball away. One of my other players would be right there where the ball wound up, so I would hit shoot to attempt a score but would wind up either in a defensive block move or sliding on the grass. Basically, don’t go for a pass or a scoring kick until your player has actually touched the ball. While this seems like it could be frustrating, it was a minor thing that really didn’t take away from the overall experience. In addition, having to hit a button to switch between an offensive or defensive control setup would probably be more confusing and tedious overall, so I’m glad that they decided to take the easy control route and sacrifice a potentially annoying moment for a fast paced and easy control scheme.

Graphically, this is a very solid and good looking PS2 title. The character’s faces, movements, and reactions to a goal scored or missed look very realistic for a Playstation 2 title, and the backgrounds are colorful and filled with lights, flags, and signs. When a goal is scored, you are rewarded by a replay of the scoring shot, and your character running down the field amidst confetti and fireworks going off to celebrate the success. The goalie who missed the kick will stomp around, kick dirt clods up, or collapse beating his fists on the ground in defeat. The only couple of issues I have with the graphics overall are with the spectators, which look kind of like a washed out watercolor painting.  Secondly, the fact that while the player’s faces are detailed and look nice, most of the team seems to be related somehow since a lot of them have the same face and haircut when the camera comes in close. Lastly, there is an option to make a day, dusk or night game … in addition to rain, snow, or clear weather, but it doesn’t make any effect overall on the field look. It also dosen’t make any difference on shadowing, since all players have 4 shadows (representing lighting in four corners of the arena) regardless. Not a huge deal, but you’ve got to get the bad with the good.  The overall sound to Red Card is very good and does a fine job representing the game. The kicks imitate the sounds of a ball smacking a shoe, the crowd will “Ooh” and “Ahh” during certain plays or steals, and they will even start chanting and singing during parts of the match. The British accented commentators, while sometimes repetitive, add a humorous element and play off each other well. For example, after I threw a particularly heavy hit and flipped an opponent, one announcer yelled “What is the ref doing? Everyone saw that penalty but him”. The other one stated back “Well, it was aggressive, but it looked clean to me”. Anyway, that’s the kind of back and forth commentary to expect. I only wish they would have been able to get the guy who screams “GOOOOOOAAAAAAL!!!” on T.V. Oh well, you can’t have it all.

Overall, this is definitely a fun and clean break from the normal sports title. Even if you aren’t a big fan of sports or soccer games, I would recommend kicking this one around. It’s a fast paced game with some fun extras to the normal sports title to make it a little more interesting. Add in some clean graphics, fun commentary, and some funny extras to unlock, and you’ve got a winner to the PS2 collection. In my opinion, Midway has definitely scored a  “GOOOOOOAAAAAAL!!!” with this one.

Gameplay: 8.5
A fun, easy to pick up and play soccer title with “relaxed rule” style and one button press controls. It allows for easy offense and defense switching since it does it for you, with only occasional problems where it changes at the wrong time and you miss that well placed kick. In addition, it has a large number of teams with varying abilities, unlockable fun teams, a practice mode, and a tournament mode.  

Graphics: 7.8
Clean and sharp textures with a slight but better than others blocky effect. The faces and expressions look nice, the field looks good, and the confetti and fireworks effects look great. Unfortunately there is no visual difference in varying weather effects to the field, the crowd looks like a blur of color, and many of the players look exactly the same.

Sound: 8.3
The sound of the ball, thuds of kicks hitting the ball (or other players), and the shouts of those who get injured by those kicks or heavy tackles sound great. The crowd chanting, singing, and cheering sound really good, and the commentary is humorous … but can get repetitive after a while since they only have a few different sayings.

Difficulty: Medium
This game comes with different difficulty settings ranging from a too easy easy mode to a close to impossible professional difficulty. I’m going with a medium rating on this since it starts off being a little too simple but can get too hard going up from one to the other. I was also impressed with the option to make the ref a little more aware of what’s going on to add some realism overall.

Concept: 8.9
Soccer has been done before, arcade sports have been done before, but this one … while adding a few elements which makes it similar to other past titles … is an entirely different setup and is a blast to play.

Multiplayer: 7.9
Two player head to head mode to have fun tripping, clipping and tackling your buddy in arcade style soccer.  

Overall: 8.8
A good, fun, solid sports title which even those who are non soccer fans like me can enjoy. With a variety of options, unlockable teams, and simple to pick up gameplay … this one definitely deserves a chance in your PS2 collection.