Game Reviews

Retro Soccer - A swipey tappy football game that plays with a smile

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|
iOS
| Retro Soccer
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Retro Soccer - A swipey tappy football game that plays with a smile
|
iOS
| Retro Soccer

There's something about the nonsense names in non-official football games that really gets my juices flowing. Take Retro Soccer, for example. There's a Swedish player called Thor. And the English keeper is called Safehands.

This fills me with joy. The sort of joy I usually reserve for a really big sandwich. And the game underneath all of the silly names is actually pretty slick as well.

There's a frantic speed to the game that means you're going to be smashing in goals and desperate slide tackles with aplomb. And it doesn't look too shabby either.

Kick kick kick

You control your team with taps and swipes. Poke an empty space on the pitch and you'll run there. Tap on a player and you'll select them.

When you've got the ball you can tap on a team mate to pass to them. Long press in a space and you'll perform a through ball. Swiping lets you shoot.

If you're defending you can tap an opposing player to try and tackle them. Or, more likely, swipe to perform a pitch-gouging sliding tackle.

The edges of the screen start to glow yellow as you slide tackle though, and if you pull one off when they're too thickly coloured you'll get a yellow card. There are offsides too, but they rarely happen.

You've got a whole bunch of game modes to work through. There's a sort of career that's made up of a bunch of games and challenges, and more traditional cups and leagues to try and win.

And the whole thing swirls past in a haze of leg-breaking tackles and epic penalty-box scuffles. Cards give you new players and let you upgrade the ones you've got.

Not quite the beautiful game

There's no simulation here, just fast-paced arcade kickabouts. And yes, it's a little rough around the edges, and sometimes it doesn't make all that much sense.

But on the flip side of that it is an awful lot of fun. It's scrappy, and while it's not a title contender, it's the sort of game you're going to have a right good giggle playing.

Retro Soccer - A swipey tappy football game that plays with a smile

A silly kick about with a lot going for it. It's fun, it's fast, and it fits nicely into mobile sized gaming sessions
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.