Namco's first-person football

Namco's approaching Xbox 360 title Love Football from a fresh perspWOAH there. Jesus [close one! - Ed]. So yeah, Namco says that Love Football will be played from the first-person perspective. How queer! It's out in spring 2006.

The idea, according to producer Nobuhisa Mikoda, is to use a first-person view to try and convey the feeling of pressure - and the different experiences of being marked, having to defend properly by getting into goalside positions, and so on. Whether it'll work or not is another issue, but it's certainly a grand idea.

Which, coincidentally, is a word that popped into our head beforehand - there may have been others, but our main memory of Namco's footballing exploits is PlayStation One title Libero Grande, which was a third-person over-the-shoulder affair that gave you control of just one player for the whole game.

This seems to take a similar approach - apparently it'll consist of more than 60 teams from around the world, and in the story mode you'll be able to pick your favourite Japanese national team player and be him for a bit. Presumably that'll change for the rest of the world. Either that or we'll never see the game.

Whatever - we'll be interested to see how it works out.