We are having a blast playing the new versions of FIFA and PES. However, the following games aren’t that much of a laugh to play and can be considered as the worst the genre has to offer. And not only because the majority of the games calls the beautiful game ‘soccer’ instead of ‘football’ in their title. Here is the top 5 worst football video games.
5. Codemasters’ Club Football
The football genre in the mid-2000’s seemed a duopoly with EA’s FIFA and Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer being the two main competitors. Codemasters thought of changing this up a bit by introducing Club Football. The British developer pulled a clever marketing trick by publishing more than twenty versions of the game with each version focusing on one of Europe’s biggest football clubs. It wasn’t a good football game after all and the gamers noticed , because the series disappeared after the release of only two editions. Too bad!
4. Mega Man Soccer
What does Mega Man have to do with football?! Well, nothing except this shitty excuse of a game called Mega Man Soccer. In this game a team of Mega Man clones battle it out against different Robot Masters, who also have a team full of clones at their control. The game has a slow pace and is of very mediocre quality, but above all doesn’t make any sense. Why someone thought it was a good idea to give Mega Man its own soccer game is beyond us.
3. LEGO Soccer Mania
LEGO video games nowadays are pretty popular and accessible but this wasn’t always the case. But LEGO Soccer Mania was one of these earlier games were the quality was lacking. The developers clearly took an arcade approach to the sport, ignoring most of the rules and not playing with full teams. The weak character design and bad animations make this a game that’s better left forgotten.
2. Freestyle Street Soccer
Freestyle Street Soccer is a game that features a lot of ‘cool’ stereotypical characters in an urban hip hop environment. The so called “gangs” fight their turf wars with a game of street football. This game was ultimately the nail in the coffin for developer Silicon Dreams, which also made a bunch of other bad football games including LEGO Soccer Mania we mentioned earlier. It’s probably a good thing they closed their doors.
1. Chris Kamara Street Soccer
Chris Kamara was an average English football player who became a broadcaster after his football career ended. Although he is a joy to watch as a football commentator, the video game bearing his name isn’t that much fun to play. Kamara provided the motion capture and commentary for the game, but despite this the game was still rubbish. At least Chris Kamara Street Soccer doesn’t take itself too seriously judging by the over the top shots you can fire at the goal. We had to wait until the release of FIFA Street before street football finally had a good name again.
This is an expanded version of a Zoomin Games video I wrote the script for.