Product Reviews

Walk into any computer shop and try this statement: 'Mac games are as good as anything on the PC or the games consoles.' Once the laughter and jeering has died down take out a copy of Actua Soccer from Gremlin and load it onto any Power Mac. The resulting thud will be the sound of every jaw in the place hitting the floor.

This game has it all - beautifully rendered 3D graphics, CD-quality surround sound, addictive game play, thumping music and even Barry Davis.

Actua Soccer is, in essence, a port of the massively popular football game from the Sega platform. But the Mac version has the added advantage of faster game play and networkability. And by the latter we are not talking two or four players but up to 20 at once, with each person controlling one of the players from each team (more of that later).

There are 45 international teams to pick from with eight skill levels or skill factors per team. As you would expect, the team formation can be defined as you want (5-3-2 or 4-3-3 and so on) for either an English long ball game or a more crowded midfield one touch feel. Once you've set up the teams, match selection is either as a friendly, league or cup game between either yourself and the computer, a second player or a networked team.

The playing environment can be customised with options to select the quality of the graphics, sound, pitch, video wall and stadium and the like. Even with everything set to 'high' game play was very responsive with no appreciable jerkiness in screen redraw or player control.

There are several camera positions from which you can view the game ranging from a bird's eye view to the first person perspective of the player on the pitch. The pitch level views are confusing and most of the action passes you by (sort of like being Tony Adams but without having to crash your car into a wall) so it is far easier to use the overhead views, which will be familiar to anyone who has ever played this type of game.

A glimpse around the stadium by switching between the different cameras shows the quality of the graphics and 3D engine used in the game. Not only do the crowd and field panoramas give a reasonable representation of the real thing, Gremlin has also gone to the trouble of giving the players a realistic look and feel. You wouldn't be far wrong if you thought

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you were looking at the actions of either Chris Woods or Andy Sinton, two of England's ex-international squad. This is because Gremlin used the latest motion capture technology to mimic the actions of real players in the movement of the figure's torso, arms and legs. The result is players that can slide tackle, head and bicycle kick in a realistic way.

Controlling the player is not as difficult as you would expect. As you (the player) are running up and down the field, a coloured triangle appears partly to show which player you are and partly to show which way you're running. If you run down the wing with the ball, the triangle changes to a square which means that if you pass the ball it will be crossed into the box rather than fly miles wide towards the corner flag. If you time this just right, the result should be a headed goal from one of your forwards. Likewise, if you're attacking down the middle, the triangle changes to a star and any shot will be automatically directed towards the goal rather than the sidelines. This approach means that you don't have to spend hours learning a bewildering set of key controls - in fact setting up pass, shoot, up, down, left and right is about all you need to play a game.

Gremlin managed to achieve a game of this quality on the Mac because it used Apple's new sprocket API technology. The InputSprockets allow the game to communicate with the drivers so Gremlin can set up keyboards and joysticks (when the joystick drivers arrive that is) without having to spend ages time-coding everything for the Mac. It used the DrawSprockets to remove the need for Actua to be aware of the type of monitor and to enhance the buffering to give the game a smooth feeling. Lastly, and most importantly, Gremlin has adopted the NetSprocket, which allows the game to be hosted across the network transparently without the company having to write any of the code to achieve this.

For the player, the ability to run the game across a network makes it an all-round experience. You can play up to 20 people in one game and, with a bit of pre-match team tactics, stop the inevitable rush of players running for the ball all at the same time. Of course, any office manager will have to give up thoughts of productivity or even any work getting done at all if you manage to sneak this game onto the network. The big plus point is that you only require a single CD to be in the host machine to run an entire network game and this must count as superb value for money. Gremlin must also be congratulated for not including that truly awful Football's Coming Home song which would have ruined a perfect game.

If you like football, watched Euro 96, or just want to find out what a computer game should be like, then this is the one for you. It is the first soccer game for the Mac and, without a doubt, will be more popular than Doom, Marathon or any other game you care to name.