Active Soccer Reviews

[TheFoxSoft]

IndieGames.com

Football (okay, soccer to some) is above all a game of pace. An elegant and at times brutal game of pace and it seems to me that, Sensible Soccer and its '90s sequels aside, no video game has really managed to capture said pace. Interestingly Active Soccer comes really close. Really, really close. It is thus easily the best sports related game I have played on my iPad and, I believe, the football game I've enjoyed the most this past decade; and all that despite having to use a perfectly designed albeit virtual d-pad. Can't really imagine how well the thing plays on that iCade. Or how cool a PC port would be...

Obviously not everything is perfect with Active Soccer; the menus could be better, the graphics could be more polished and the players could sport their real names. Then again, this is not FIFA. This a game that is actually good and should only focus on further evolving and refining its core mechanics. Everything else is window-dressing.

http://indiegames.com/2013/02/ios_game_ ... qus_thread

[TheFoxSoft]

TapMag

For a brief but glorious period during the early nineties, football games stopped trying to look like Match of the Day highlights and instead aimed to make you feel like you were continuously immersed in the best cup final ever. Any semblance of realism (or, more accurately, TV realism) was lobbed out of the window, replaced by top-down viewpoints, fast-paced matches, and frequently manic, pinball-style action. Just four words — Sensible World of Soccer — are enough to make gamers of a certain age misty-eyed and immediately start grumbling that no one’s ported the Amiga classic to iOS, on the basis that it was fantastic then, and still holds up today.

Active Soccer isn’t in the same league, but it has potential. It’s the unpolished and slightly rough-edged apprentice to SWOS’s masterly FIFA World Player of the Year. The basics, at least, are intact. The underlying engine, although imperfect, is fast, focused and mostly feels great. There’s a handy training mode (just your team versus a ’keeper), online play, a fairly odd international tournament where every match has home and away legs and, mercifully, three different control options. One resolutely glues the ball to a player’s foot as he runs; the second apes SWOS-style dribbling and direct passing upon stabbing the B button; the third (the dubiously named ‘classic’) is an exercise in frustration, with no passing assistance.

There are problems: the menu-based interface is, charitably speaking, largely awful; the instructions are somewhat opaque; and the twitchy A button for shooting means there’s often only the tiniest difference between a pathetic tap on goal and smacking the ball into the stands. But none of this really matters, because for all of its faults, Active Soccer makes videogame footie fun again.

http://www.tapmag.co.uk/review/581463177/active-soccer

[Freshmaker]

Sooooo looking forward to tomorrow
Great friggin press there Foxy!!!

[TheFoxSoft]

Very accurate review here:
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPad/Act ... sp?c=50871

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In the world of iOS and Android football games, FIFA 13 is like today's English Premier League - an expensive assembly of glitzy components that impress and dazzle, but which some find to be unpalatably shallow.

If that's the case, then Active Soccer is like the old English First Division of the 1970s - a potent mixture of honest scrapping and instinctive skill, with the faint whiff of amateurism holding it all together.

Old-fashioned winger

While the likes of FIFA and Real Football are approximations of the modern console footy experience, the maker of Active Soccer strives to emulate the football sims of the Amiga era.

Yes, we're talking about Sensible Soccer and Kick Off here. The result is a fast-paced top-down game that requires genuine skill and patience to master.

In Normal and Hard modes, control of the football is precarious to say the least. The ball doesn't stick to your players' feet as it does in modern footy games. And if you want to dribble the ball, you'll need to assume control of a technically accomplished player and possess a delicate touch with a virtual joystick.

Naturally, that in itself poses a bit of a problem, for even the best virtual controls are a poor facsimile of physical ones. But the on-screen joystick here is pleasantly responsive and reasonably reliable. There's iCade support, too, but that won't be utilised by the vast majority of gamers.

Kick and hope

Otherwise, you have two buttons with which to play. 'B' is for passing, while the 'A' button results in a hefty thwack of the ball (whether that's out of defence for your striker to chase or towards the top corner of the goal).

Shooting is a real art here. Unlike in FIFA, there's no AI assistance in Active Soccer, so you'll have to be facing in the general direction of the goal and have full mastery of the virtual joystick in order to apply the appropriate amount of curve.

Defending is also handled by the aforementioned two buttons. The seemingly (and annoyingly) random nature of the yellow and red card system should preclude too many desperate lunges, though.

In terms of the game's structure and presentation, Active Soccer's creator has, unsurprisingly, turned to the old skool again - albeit with slightly less success than it found with the nostalgic gameplay.

The ugly side of the game

The graphics are 3D, but an incredibly basic, blocky brand of 3D. This is particularly exposed when the view is zoomed in on the goal replays. The animation, too, is extremely clunky, with players often levitating back to the centre circle for kick-off.

As you might expect from such a small-scale game, official licences are conspicuous by their absence. All of the major international teams are represented by subtly altered players, so there's the imperious Spanish midfielder Xavu, or the England forward Wayni Roaney.

Championship mode is a generic World Cup-like competition with the usual mix of table and knockout formats.

There's also an online multiplayer mode, though gaining access to it is convoluted, and there were no games being played at the time of writing.

Arguably, though, none of these shortcomings matter. If you're fed up of the heavily automated, somewhat soulless nature of EA's slick iOS and Android FIFA games, Active Soccer is the kind of back-to-basics kickaround that could well re-ignite your love of The Beautiful Game on the platform.

A scrappy football game that harks back to the days of Sensible Soccer, Active Soccer takes real dedication to master and offers a welcome alternative to FIFA's casual, ultra-professional approach

7/10

[TheFoxSoft]

Great review from www.soccergaming.com

http://www.soccergaming.com/features/24 ... os-review/