World Tour Soccer may look good for a handheld game, but it isn’t one of the “crown jewels” of the PSP launch lineup. World Tour Soccer is definitely the best looking handheld soccer game out there; it sports colorful 3D players in impressive looking stadiums. The animations are fluid, but at the same time, a little too quick to give that real-life impression. So are the textures for that matter; things look a bit too bright and flat at times to convey that real-life look. Overall, however, you shouldn’t be too disappointed with World Tour Soccer’s looks, even though things get mighty grainy from a distance.

World Tour Soccer’s sound is not lacking in quality, but it does leave something to be desired with the content. The announcer is clear, the licensed music gives the game a nice background noise on the menu screens, and the stadium noise is loud enough to make you think you’re actually there. The integrity of these categories is threatened by the limited amount of material it contains. The announcer recounts the action of the game solely by using different inflections when saying the players’ names. The soundtrack is limited to a whopping two tracks, and there are no game-time sound effects besides the stadium cheers and the referee’s whistle.

For a handheld sports game, World Tour Soccer packs a fair amount of content on one disc. Most of this content includes every international team, every European club team, and almost every FIFA player out there. All of these teams and players come together to compete in different Cup tournaments and a Challenge mode where you challenge teams on a list of increasing toughness. The Challenge mode here is done far better than that on the PS2. As you play each team, you get points for playing well, and points taken away for playing poorly. There is a minimum amount of points you need to get in order to move on to the next team, and earning lots of points unlocks various goodies like new stadiums and teams.

The Cup mode is a bit different than in other games in that not all of the teams in the tournament can be played with right off the bat. By completing various tournaments you get tokens, and with these tokens you can purchase the other teams to unlock them. The weird thing, though, is that all of the best teams are already unlocked. Unless you’re a big fan of Latvia or Kazakhstan, there won’t be much point in spending tokens on the lesser teams.

There is also a Quick Match and Exhibition mode, but no League or Practice mode to speak of. I can see how a working League, with player trades and seasons, may have been a bit much, but had the entire European club lineup been taken out, there may have been some room for it. This game is, after all, entitled World Tour Soccer and not European Club Soccer. The lack of a Practice mode is simply unacceptable. The ability to just go out and kick a ball around is invaluable in games like this, even if you only have a few players on the field.

The strategies you will not be able to practice outside of any game mode include changing the lineup, altering formations and individual position tactics, and switching around the overall team mentality on the fly. Against the A.I., these abilities don’t stack up to all that much. The A.I. in World Tour Soccer has some of the dirtiest tendencies I have ever seen. The amount of slide tackling they do is reminiscent of Scottish football games, and they can and will draw more red cards than any human player.

Though there isn’t all that much strategy involved in winning a game of World Tour Soccer, the game is fairly balanced in the middle difficulty settings. Games are usually decided by only a few goals, so you won’t be ramming the ball in the back of the net all that much, though aiming is relatively easy. World Tour Soccer plays more like an arcade game in that it’s fast, easy, and ever so slightly fun.

Some of the good things from the PS2 version have made the cut to handheld glory. Those lovely arrows on the side of the screen that tell you where your teammates are have found their way onto the PSP. As mentioned earlier, the Challenge mode is in and is pulled off far better than the console version. That’s where our happy tale ends though, as many of the bad things that plagued World Tour Soccer on the PlayStation 2 rear their ugly heads here as well.

World Tour Soccer has many of the same problems as its PS2 counterpart. There’s the fake dive issue, where you can essentially cheat to gain an advantage. The goalies are little more than dumb walls with legs. The A.I. executes far too many slide tackles. When calling your teammates to cover a man, they run directly at them, never trying to cut off the angle. However, despite these flaws, the game delivers better soccer than the PS2 version. World Tour Soccer plays very fast on the PSP. Maybe because of this, more passing and set plays have to be executed in order to work the ball down the field. It’s very difficult to single-handedly take a player from one end of the pitch to another.

The overall feel of the game is that of speed and action. There is a distinct low gravity feeling to the game, and the speed at which things move makes it seem more like you’re playing indoor soccer rather than on a field that’s supposed to be more than 100 meters long. Despite the speed, controlling the players is relatively simple with the analog stick, but almost impossible with the D-pad.

World Tour Soccer isn’t destined to be the best soccer game for the PSP, and when FIFA comes out it will undoubtedly be the lesser of the two. However, it’s better than the PS2 version, and if there are any World Tour Soccer fans left out there, they might be able to play their game of choice with others via the wireless capabilities of the PSP. Just don’t expect any sort of huge impact from this game.