Little known soccer game from Ascaron
Ascaron is mainly known for its economical and trading simulators, amongst which the Patrician series is the most notable, along with Port Royale, but, the publishers did put out a few other titles, in quite a diversity of genres. The Anstoß 2 is the second soccer sim in their portfolio, and it is a rather aged game, featuring gameplay mechanics that were well known and used at the time. What it did a bit more original than most other games was to tilt the perspective even more, so as to lower the camera towards the playing field even more, a decision that works both for and against the title. It works for it, because it offers a more direct visual connection between you, the player and the game, but it kind of backfires because there is little less space to hid the graphical inconsistencies and some other rather graphical issues, such as jaggedness, bland and repetitive animations and poor implementation of physics. While Anstoß 3 will solve some of these issues, not even the third title managed a convincing simulation, and so the series simmered down into obscurity, as it kind of was in its cards. But the series is still worth a go, just to compare and contrast the game design options that soccer games were trying back in the day.
