From: marc@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Marc Goldman)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video
Subject: [Genesis] Super High Impact Football - review
Date: 6 Oct 92 17:42:53 GMT
Organization: Department of Computing at Lancaster University, UK.

And now the bad.......

Super High Impact Football - Sega Genesis

One or Two players, head to head play or 2 against the computer.
3 difficulty levels

Another football game hits the tough Genesis market which boasts
possibly the best football game of all time John Madden 92. And
invariably all new pretenders to the thrown be they arcade or
simulation games are going to be compare to it.

How does this compare? I'm sorry to say it doesn't even come close.

So what do you get for your $50????

Well to be fair the game does seem to be a pretty good conversion of the
slightly suspect coin op of the same name. Albeit with smaller graphics.

The game lets you play one off matchups between two teams of your
choice, including some rather odd teams from Europa and Africa! The
choice of team only seems to effect the colour of the strip worn and
doesnt change your tactics, similarly playing surfaces make little
difference.

The game is played on the horizontal view point similar to Joe Montana 2

Plays are selected from an easily operated menu, but most dont come
close to resembling real plays. One defensive play has six of your
players running backwards and forwards for no apparent reason!!

Once you hit the field you find running with any player except the qb is
nearly impossible, especially through the middle as you get hit very
quickly. And in the case of running through the line you cant change
direction quickly enough, you'll be running the qb backwards one second
then as you hand off the running back who is running in the opposite
direction loses all his momentum and stops because it's phisically
impossible to change direction on the joypad quickly enough. Now if only
the running back continued in his motion until you directed him
otherwise.

Passing is far easier, but there isnt that much skill involved, you
either get the pass off in the drection of the receiver or get sacked.
Selecting the reciever is done by pushing up or down on the joypad, to
direct the pass. How you pass to a guy running a route down the middle i
dont know. It all seems like luck, you either get 30 yards or lose 10 on
the sack. But with this sytem a 4th and 30 is always a possibility!

Defence on the other hand is real hard work inteceptions are lucky, at
one point i had 2 intercepions followed by two fumbles in 4 drives and
then for the rest of the game i couldnt get a thing. Linemen cannot be
controlled and although the computer can sack you easily (23 times in
one 20 minute game) you're lucky if you get him.

Couple that with the fact that you can have real hurry up offences where
you can use less than five seconds calling, setting up for and running a
play means this game leads to big scores, the fewest mistakes wins.

The computer plays a mean game because defence is so hard, but it isnt
too hard to keep up with him. Difficulty settings didnt seem to make
much difference.

The game is fast, i'll certianly give it that, perhaps too fast as most
plays are over before they begin. And it's very noisey too, plenty of
the samples from the arcade machine are there but they seem to be used a
little too often.

The graphics are small and not amazingly well animated but they at
least look like football players, although the overall effect of sound,
graphics and presentation is very slick it has a not quite finnished look.

But it's not all the above that really puts me off the game (as i
really am prepared to give all football games a chance) although they
go along way to doing so it's the little things that really do it for
me.

Things like you can't direct your kickoffs, field goals are dependant on
how fast you press the buttons, fighting is pointless (at least it can
be switched off), onsidekicks when you really need the ball back arent
possible, the clock keeps running at times it shouldnt, you can force
your opponent (if the computer) to use the hurry up offence just by
calling your play quickly (okay so this helps you but its wrong!) the
list just goes on.... 

The two player option could be the real saving grace for this game, but
as yet i havent tried it because no one was round last night!, As sports
games are often greatly improved with human competition.

To me the game just seemed to be too hit or miss, there was no real
skill involved just a lot of luck and strategy never comes into it, it's
basically lets heave it down field on every play, so no doubt Raiders
fans will enjoy it if nothing else!

My advice is to either wait for the forthcoming Madden 93 or get a used
copy of Madden 92 (which should be pretty available on the net soon) but
save your money by avoiding Super High Impact unless you were an addict
of the arcade version.

Cheers
Marc

Okay tomorrow i'll post a review of Speedball 2, not a brand new game,
but one which deserves more attention than it got.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      **     **      *  ****** ***    *   |             On the net,
     ** *    **     *** **     ** *   *   |     no-one can hear you scream!
    **   *   **     *** ****   **  *  *   |-------------------------------------
   **     *  **     *** **     **   * *   |  email   marc@comp.lancs.ac.uk
  **       * ******  *  ****** **    **   |      marc@computing.lancaster.ac.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.games.video