Penalty World Challenge 2010

Full disclosure time: while I count myself as a fan of the beautiful game, I absolutely hate penalties.

You might say it comes with the territory for an English footy fan, but I’m not really one for petty grudges or allegiances. I just don’t like that a game of skill and industry can be decided on an almost entirely separate game of nerve and luck.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t make a good penalty game, though – as long as you inject enough skill into the process. Penalty World Challenge 2010 doesn’t quite manage that feat.

It certainly looks the part, with some remarkably solid and characterful 3D graphics. There are no real players representing their national teams, so Bravo has wisely adopted a slightly cartoony art style, giving everything a faintly exaggerated look.

Unfortunately the game beneath isn’t nearly as sophisticated. Taking penalties is a simple matter of touching the screen to stop a moving height gauge, then flicking the screen to determine direction.

It seems all but impossible to send your kick wide, while it’s all too possible to blast it over the bar by messing up the initial stage. Still, once you’ve established the boundaries, the only thing that will stop your kicks is the goalie.

Butter fingers

Taking control of the goalie himself is an even simpler question of touching the part of the goal that you intend to cover. This is entirely luck-based, with the odds stacked firmly against you.

What’s more, even if you guess the right way, the ball will often squirm under you or even through your arms. As such, scoring and saving goals becomes a question of consistency and luck.

Just like the real thing, you might think, but as I said in my intro - the real thing sucks. Even if you like penalties, you’re probably referring to the drama of the occasion rather than the actual process of taking them.

No game can hope to replicate that, because there’s nothing at stake other than a decent OpenFeint score.

Until a more skill-based alternative (such as PikPok’s Flick Kick Football) is found on Android, Penalty World Challenge 2010 is probably the best digital place-kicking solution. Like penalties themselves, though, that doesn’t mean you have to like it.