Reviews

1990 Alternative Software (UK)
by David Bland

This game is about soccer training. You basically select one of 4 disciplines, which include dribbling, tackling, passing and penalty scoring and negotiate each and one the best you can. The game is a bit pointless, because the object of every game is to reach the end of a level and move to the next one, hence having an option for choosing what level and when to play it makes it pointless. The assault course, which you can select in the opening menu, and which includes all of the 4 stages, could have been the structure of the game, which each of the 4 stages a level themselves. Graphically it's competent with a few humour along the dribbling course, but the writing is a bit sloppy, for instance you don't need to move the ball around the cones to progress, you just need to pass the ball over the arrows and continue. A mediocre game.

It's an interesting concept to say the least but it's just poorly executed. As The Dean states there are four disciplines to train in. There's Dribbing which has you dribble the ball around the cones, or as The Dean states just past the arrow, which defeats the purpose of dribbing the ball. There's tackling, except you can't actually tackle, you just have to go near the player and you'll either take the ball off him or fall on your bum. It all seems luck based to me. There's passing which has you pass the ball to a flashing teammate who are alligned in a circle, and is the only one of the four that makes any sense. And then we have penalties which is self explanatory, run towards the ball and shoot it past the goale, except you run towards the ball from roughly 30-35 yards out, who even starts their run-up that far out anyway? Plus, you button bash to run. And then scoring a goal is luck based anyway, plus you're more likely to run past the ball without even hitting it. And then once you have all the disciplines completed there's the assault course to try out which has you doing everything all over again, like you can be bothered anyway. Again, nice idea, it's just too bad it doesn't work very well.