The worst game ever made: Animal Soccer World for the PS2

4:27 AM on 01.04.2008   |   Justin Villasenor

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[Editor's note: TheGoldenDonut is known for his amazing tip finding skills. In fact, he's so good at it, some of us wonder if he even has a real life. There are times when we won't touch a tip with a ten foot pool. Luckily for us, Donut subjected himself to the horrors of this disgusting game. It's even worse than Spanish For Everyone! -- CTZ] 

2K Boston’s BioShock has received an untold amount of praise since its release in August of last year. Not only did it secure high spots on almost all major sites’ “Best of” lists (including Destructoid’s), it has also enjoyed large amounts of positive buzz from the gamers themselves. One moment within the game that is often brought up and spoken of with great fondness is the confrontation with Andrew Ryan about ¾’s of the way through. While I won’t spoil what transpired, many people found it to be an incredibly emotional high point within the game. Reverend Anthony even went so far as to call it “the single greatest noninteractive cut scene in gaming history.”

No offense to the good Rev or the masses of Rapture fans out there but as NeoGafer FortNinety recently pointed out in comparison to Animal Soccer World, a game released all the way back in 2005 on the PS2, it’s about as bland and poorly realized as any one of Uwe Boll’s film projects. After watching Animal Soccer World’s cut scenes myself, it struck me as incredibly strange that such a brilliant work of cinematography could have been ignored by the gaming public for so long. Through a bit of research, I quickly discovered the cause was because developer Phoenix Games (makers of other critically acclaimed titles such as Carwash Tycoon, Habitrail Hamster Ball and Roller Coaster Funfare) only releases their games in Europe. It’s truly a shame that such AAA titles would be denied to those of us living in America and I’m sure that every single one of us would gladly have Super Paper Mario take an extra six months to arrive here so long as we could easily experience such personifications of gaming Nirvana … Bwahaha! Okay, sorry, I just can’t write  anymore of this with a straight face.

Hit the jump to read more about this horrible game as well as checking out three more vomit inducing "gameplay" footage.

These cut scenes are bad. Really bad. Really really really bad. In fact I cannot type ‘bad’ in a larger enough font to express just how god-awful terrible it really is. Sure this results in some funny moments but most of the time you’ll be too busy slamming your head against a wall to notice when they come up. Every element is so frighteningly poor that, once put together, creates an abysmally long experience that actually started to make my brain feel numb the longer I watched. The repetitive music, unfluid animation, lame sound effects, terrible writing, the sad attempt at lip-synching, the horrendous voice acting and the fact that there is ONLY ONE voice actor all adds up to create an experience I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.

The story in short is that after a dispute over a ball a bunch of talking animals decide to have themselves a soccer game. Forming into two teams, The Wild Dogs and The Jungle Kings, they begin to practice, have the game and end up tying 1-1 in a very unsatisfying conclusion. One fact that I couldn’t help but overlook was that Phoenix Games seems to have pilfered several Disney movies for their characters: Simba and his parents, Bambi, Thumper and Pongo were all readily recognizable. Heck, the lion even refers to himself as “The Lion King” at one point. And to confuse me further it seems that Animal Soccer World doesn’t even have any soccer gameplay in it, just puzzles and a coloring book. Judging by the cut scenes, I don’t hold much hope in the gameplay as being much of a redeeming feature. I truly feel sorry for any children whose parents bought this game for them. Worst gift ever would be a huge understatement.

Part 2: Teams organize and practice. 

Part 3: The “big” game. 

Part 4: Games ends in a 1-1 tie. There will be a rematch in six weeks. CAN'T WAIT.