For those of you who are in need of a quick soccer fix, World Tour Soccer 2003 may be just what you're looking for. While I haven't been the biggest 989 Sports fan in a while, I actually appreciated this soccer sim. The graphic models, while nothing to catch your drool over, are lifelike and realistic. The animations for every move seem to capture the genuine maneuvers. Not to be overlooked, but the stadiums fill the void as well.

On the audio side, I wasn't as impressed. There are seven different languages to choose from when listening to the commentary of your match: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese. The only problem is when you pick these languages, you also need to know how to read them for the game menus. Meantime, the sound effects are so-so. The crowd chants are there, but I felt more could have been done. Whenever I watch a soccer match, I constantly hear the crowd chanting, blowing horns and whatever else they use to make noise. That just wasn't there at all times in World Tour.

I don't know if it's just me, or if it's because I'm an American, but I don't get all the different leagues and tournaments that are out there for world soccer players. I'm just so accustomed to each sport having basically one league: football has the NFL, baseball has the MLB, professional bowling has the PBA, and so on. What I guess I'm saying is, if you understand all of the different leagues and tournaments associated with soccer, you won't be disappointed with World Tour Soccer 2003. Besides the generic Exhibition match, you can take part in 15 different National Seasons, which include Regular League and Club Tournaments.

Another intriguing mode is the Career mode, where you develop a young school-team until they are ready to compete with the best of the best. Or you can play through the Challenge mode, where you play a match and receive a score based on your performance, which could lead you to winning prizes from 989 Sports.

The gameplay of World Tour is fine, although nothing really blows you away. You can perform all the realistic movements that go into an actual soccer match. The control I had when passing was one thing I really liked. I've played some soccer games in the past where it seemed my passes were going all over the place, but in World Tour, I felt like I had control over my team throughout the match, from start to finish.

Sure, there are several levels of difficulty for World Tour Soccer 2003 (Amateur, Pro, World Class, and Master), but different gameplay options can also have an effect on the outcome. You can decide the type of referee you want calling your match: Fair, Strict or Lenient. There are also several different options you can use to change the way a tied match is decided.

I had very little trouble with the controller configuration, the analog sticks and loading time, which was quick and painless, in World Tour Soccer 2003. A slight chunk of your memory card will be used up after saving, but at least the menus allow access to automatically saving user profiles following a game. Like I mentioned earlier, the biggest beef I had with the game menus is the fact that you need to be able to read other languages when changing the audio dialect.

I played FIFA 2003 earlier this year and, besides a few graphical details, I saw little difference between it and World Tour Soccer 2003. In essence, I found World Tour to be equivalent to its EA counterpart, although that may be just because I'm not a big soccer fan. Go USA... whenever the next World Cup is.