One man's trash is another man's treasure.
They often say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. In the case of Olympic Soccer for the Playstation, the most people consider this trash, but it’s mine and the “Games are art” gamers’ treasure. This game could be the masterpiece “art gamers” have been looking for. Forget Braid and Limbo. This game is a perfect example of unorthodox design, through a totally surprising and unlikely genre I might add, and presented to an unsuspecting video game consumer.
Olympic Soccer was published by Eidos Interactive and was developed by U.S. Gold Ltd. It takes place in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics. In this game, the player plays as a soccer team trying to score goals and win soccer matches. If you win a match, you get a gold medal and make your country proud. The game's mechanics make it extremely easy to do so, mostly through glitches. Most times you aim for the goal, the ball will make it. You can even kick the ball directly out of bounds and still receive points for it. These are truly the marks of a terrible game, right? Wrong! and here's why.
U.S. Gold Ltd. was trying to get some artistic points across about two very important topics: Nationalism, and the cynical viewpoint of how cheating and glitching will get you ahead.
As is stated earlier in this review, the gamer plays as a country's soccer team in a quest for gold medals. U.S. Gold clearly believes that we should stand up for our own country. Even the company's name expresses this belief. If we all work together, we may be able to get gold medals. In a way, it also expresses teamwork. Nationalism and Olympics need teamwork to thrive. They realize that we all need to work together as a team, each of the individual players, and conquer elsewhere. This is perhaps also their viewpoint on worldly affairs. If the whole world comes together as a team and tries to conquer space, we can get there. Combine technologies, combine spaceships, and obtain the gold medals that are other civilizations.
U.S. Gold also wants to make a statement on the corruption in our society. Cheating often gets people ahead. There is the phrase “Cheat cheat, never beat.” Unfortunately, this is not true. Anybody can clearly exploit glitches in this game to get goals much like anybody can exploit loopholes in the world today. Lawyers, for example, can win cases using strictly loopholes. In the game, a player can run out of bounds and score a goal. You can come at the goal at a 45 degree angle. You can shoot the ball in the opposite direction and score a goal. The point here is strong, and it really makes one stop and think about the world today.
On the surface this game seems like a piece of crap; a broken game that has no real point. However, if one was to pick it up again and give it another look, they would find underlying metaphors and beautifully pointed arguments, maybe even some that I have passed over. In any case, this is a must have for any game lover with a sense of artistic value, and I suggest you pick it up either used in a store, a flea market, or an online retailer.