Eat the Whistle (Second Review)


Title           Eat the Whistle (Second Review)
Game Type	Sport
Publisher       Epic Marketing
Players         1 or 2
Compatibility   020+, GFX and Sound cards supported
HD Installable  Yes
Submission      msaupe@saale-net.de

Review
(based on the 2nd update; available on Aminet):
This game was released autumn 1998 on CD and is a football game in the
tradition of classics like SWOS. The game can be played from CD or from HD.

The first positive thing is that it runs on all modern Amigas in
multitasking and (Woho!) supports GFX and AHI compatible sound-cards.
With AGA I recommend to play in 320x256 (especially with slower
processors), but with 040 and fast GFX board (BVision) it's nice to play
in 640x480. You can even play in a WB window. As the programmers chose
to combine SWOS-like players (but with more details) with a horizontal
scrolling field, playing in such high resolution also gives an excellent
view over the action; you can see about 50% of the field. But it's also
worth playing in lower resolutions, especially because then you can
properly see the detailed player animations (more than 1000 frames).

The programmers chose a control method which is different to other games
and although it's not perfect I like it. With a short press on the fire
button you make a short pass in the choosen direction and the program will
aim at the nearest of your players in that direction. A long press will
result in a long pass or in a goal shot if you are close to the opponents
goal. Here's one little flaw, because when you make a goal shot and you
are not yet close enough a pass will be the result. Note: this is for
joystick control. With joypad and keyboard control you have different
buttons/keys for each action. But as I don't have a joypad and because I
do have a buggy Infinitive keyboard adaptor I can't test this. But what's
for sure is that you can make beautiful moves on the field with this
control method. Crosses and fast counters are no problem, and if you press
the button at the right moment you can see nice dive headers or overhead
kicks. During the match you can hear either the crowd noise or a spoken
commentary.

There are many menu options like different field types, referees, golden
goal (yes/no) and much more. You can play between 2 and 45 minutes per
half-time. You can also select training (practise some special shots),
friendly, league, cup and World Championship modes as well as an Speedball
like arcade mode, but this one isn't so good. The game only comes with the
32 1998 World Championship teams (and wrong names because of legal
issues), but an editor is included and you can download a SWOS team
converter and team files from Aminet.

At the time of writing this a PPC upgrade is in beta stage. In 320x256
it's reported to achieve more than 100 fps. In summary I can say that I
think that ETW is the currently the best action football game on the Amiga
(although I admit that I never played Kick Off 2).  The gameplay is not as
fast as SWOS, but the control method offers more realistic action. As it's
also rather cheap, I can recommend it to all football fans.





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