Soccer Superstars (iPhone App Review)

Retrovertigo

June 4, 2010

The iPhone is arguably the most accessible mobile device in America, and according to Steve Jobs, there are more than 185,000 apps in the iTunes app store. When most apps seem to max out at $2, and a majority of them are free, is a $5 game like Soccer Superstars good enough to stand out amongst the other 184,999 choices?

soccersuperstars (37K) The short answer to that is, "yes."

Soccer Superstars packs in a lot for it's $5 value. There are numerous modes to choose from like Exhibition, My League and Season Modes. These modes require a bit more strategic planning when building and training your team and allows you to play through a full schedule of matches. On the flip side, you can also just play straight-up quick matches.

The mode that I thought was most interesting was the Dramatic Mode! Oooh! Essentially, this is like the scenario mode in Sim City, where you're thrown into a situation where the odds are stacked up against you. You have to score a goal in a limited time frame to win. In one option you have one minute to break a tie and score the game-winning goal. In another, you must play through an entire match and beat the opposing team by at least 3 goals. Of all of the modes, I found Dramatic Mode to be the most interesting (and it had a pretty awesome name, too!).

At its core, Soccer Superstars is a fast-paced arcade game with an accessible, pick-up-and-play sense of style to it. Most matches take less than 10 minutes to finish, with each half of the game lasting no more than 5 minutes. You can leave the game at any time and come back and resume play.

The game is controlled with a virtual "d-pad" at the bottom left portion of the screen and the ball is passed and shot with the respective virtual A and B buttons. There were times where I found my player unresponsive because I moved my thumb too far from the d-pad, or I missed a pass or kick because of a misplaced thumb press, but overall I'd chalk my issues to me getting used to gaming on a tactile-less glass screen.

I'm not much of an iPhone/iPod Touch gamer, so more experienced iPhone gamers may pick up on the controls right away. Most importantly, the virtual controls overlay didn't impede with my view of the soccer field, even on the iPhone/iPod Touch's smaller screen.

Soccer Superstars seems to walk a fine line between taking itself seriously and being completely over-the-top. For example, the teams you can choose from are actual countries from around the world, with normal human players. But at the start of each match, the player gets to choose a super player for their team, each with a unique special move. For example, there's a robot, a legendary female warrior who was captured after avenging her family (and forced to play soccer??), a soccer fan/maid who became a soccer star, and a ninja who hides his assassin roots in order to become a soccer star. Um... yeah.

The ridiculousness of the super players sort of took me out of the experience, as if they were a tacked-on, last-minute addition to an otherwise legitimate arcade-style soccer game. I imagined the meeting in a board room between developers and executives, where an executive decides that while a traditional, arcadey soccer game is fun and all, what the game really needs is an injection of maximum energy, straight from the flowing sugar streams from atop Mt. Dew in order to "TAKE IT TO THE XTREEEEEEME"! The super players sort of made sense in that Mario-Soccer arcade kind of way, but they were so uniquely contrasting to the rest of the game's more realistic feel that it clashed with my sensibilities in what I want in an arcade game. It sorta felt like playing a FIFA game where you could have RoboCop jump in from time to time to kick an unblockable goal in a totall "WTF?!" kind of moment. I thought the arcade stuff was a bit too arcadey, if that makes any sense.

Despite my opinions on the super characters, I can see the biggest problem people may have with Soccer Superstars is the font size. Text in the game is EXTREMELY small. People who have vision problems may have issues reading the small print. The small print also means that selecting a player from the team roster, which consists of a list of very thin buttons with the players' names, is going to cause problems with people who have fat, sausage fingers. Watching somebody attempt to highlight the correct selection, and then confirm that selection gracefully, might be as hilarious as watching the Michelin Man try to dial the correct number on the dial pad of a phone.

While $2 seems to be the sweet spot for many iPhone games and apps, $5 for a game like Soccer Superstars, at the first glance, seems to be a bit overpriced. However, I feel that Publisher GAMEVIL really offered a lot for that value, and in my opinion, it's totally worth the money.

The fonts might be small, the super players might be a bit too extreme for my tastes--even for an arcade sports game--but the graphics are good, the music is catchy, and the gameplay is fun and fast-paced!