Virtua Striker 3 ver. 2002 Screenshots The Final Say! Gameplay 6.5 Graphics 8.3 Sound 7.5 Value 6.5 Virtua Striker 3 ver. 2002  - reviewed by Tory Favro Review Date: 02 November 2002 Review Score: 6.5/10  Distributor: Infogrames

One of the best loved soccer arcade games makes it's way to the GameCube, revamped, shinier and calling your name louder than ever. Virtua Striker 3 is here to bring the arcade experience to the home console gamer. Does it succeed? Not exactly.   Virtua Striker 3 ver. 2002 Features 2 Players Simultaneous Memory Card (Uses 2+ Blocks) Skill Level - Beginner to Advanced Game Type: Sport   Let's get one thing out of the way however, this is a very good looking game. Graphics are excellent and animations do the title justice. It does not appear that any frames of animation are missing from player characters or even general crowd animations for that matter. The title didn't suffer frame problems regardless of on screen activity and was jam packed with little details that clearly show a lot of thought went into the making of the game.   Audio: Considering the abilities of the GameCube to produce awesome sound through Prologic II and just general bit encoding, VS3 is a pretty  ordinary audio affair. Surround has been used, but not in a manner that titillates the gamer. That's not to say the sounds are bad, they are just not up to the standard of a title such as FIFA or even Sega Soccer Slam. It actually sounds a little bit as though it was recorded in mono at times rather than vibrant stereo.   For those of you who enjoyed the arcade version of this title you will be pleased to note that there is a lot jam packed into the game that was not in the coin op version. The Road to International game option is very indepth and gives a lot more depth and playability to the game overall. There are 64 countries that you can choose to play as with a roster of over 1400 players.   The controls on the game take getting used to as it was evident to me that the title does not fully support analogue input from the sticks and rather follows the 8 directions that are achievable from the D Pad. This does cause some problems with general steering of players and accuracy issues.   Another problem I had was that VS3 actually dumbs down on the controls and player selection is done by the game which frustrated me no end as I would rather select who is pursuing the ball than have the game do it for me. It was a simple matter of the game choosing the nearest player to the ball and me having to deal with it. Which didn't really allow for short stab passes or any other manoeuvre for that matter.

The mapping of commands to the controller was comfortable and pretty easy to pick and get used to. I found most of my problems stemmed from believing that I had more options available to me than I really did and frantically pressing buttons to achieve FIFA like moves.

VS3 does have a multiplayer mode that only supports 2 players. I found this weird as the arcade supported more than that from memory and considering it was being ported over for a machine that supports 4 players straight out the box was a bit lame. You are not able to work together as a team either which I always enjoy, it's always on opposing sides.

Training mode for VS3 is cool and I did find myself eventually spending the most time in that area as it seemed to be the strongest in both gameplay and general control. Training did help prepare me for the other game modes but didn't assist in heightening the play itself, just preparing me for the shortcomings of the title.

In conclusion: Fans of this series rejoice, this one's for you. It's been updated and looks and plays better than ever. Fans of soccer games such as FIFA however... it's a good game but you will expect a lot, lot more than it can ever give. I would strongly suggest renting the game once or even twice before making your purchase.

- Tory Favro