My team. My boys. The team that, if soccer teams represented musical genres, would be mother
fucking Punk Rock. I took Italy to the finals, defeating the Scottish, humiliating the Japanese (own goal, motherfuckers) and committing hate crimes against the English, leading up to an actually pretty intense match against Argentina.
1-0. Italy.
FUCK YEAH! Let me say that again,
FUCK YEAH!All the years of hard work and training (literally; I've been playing this game for years and never actually beat it) finally paid off. Mastering all the trick shots (heading a goal never gets old), learning how to perform the overhead self-pass, which is the most stylish move you can do and finding out that I can knock fools over with a shoulder block (provided that a referee isn't nearby) turned my team of Jobbers With Potential into the best the world has the offer. Learning all the subtle nuances of field, how to use rules to your advantage and realize that getting a foul isn't the worst thing in the world, so long as you don't get carded, because that's bad.
In a time where everyone thinks that emotion in a video game is stripping down their shitty Gradius clones and putting in random geometric shapes and going WHOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA GAMES AS ART GAMES AS ART, or worse, Super Columbine Massacre RPG, it's refreshing to see a game like this (and I'm sure the Winning Eleven series is just as exhilarating as this one) show these misguided kids How It's Done. And in a sports game no less, the genre most closely associated with bland, unartistic shlock from THE EVIL AMERICAN DICTATOR OH SHIT BETTER SEND IN THE BADASS JAPANESE NINJA SHING SHING SHING SHING SHING. Every goal is worth celebrating. Every great defensive maneuver calls for a gasp and a sigh of relief. Every scoring opportunity is worth building the adrenaline over. Every tie-breaking penalty kick that you win is worth the bragging rights.
Today, as a little change of pace, I decided to pick Croatia (although not much of a difference, as Croatians speak Italian too, or at least the ones that I know). Defeating Japan in a tie-breaker and following up with a 2-0 win over the Czech Republic is where my progress is currently standing. I hope to do the same thing I did with the Italians: fucking kick Argentina's fucking ass again.
DISCUSS.