Bonecruncher Soccer

It’s all very well being an all-rounder in football, but I’ve never seen a successful team comprised of 11 players with moderate pace, reasonable technique and average stature.

Football is a game of specialists, with set roles for tricky, lithe speed merchants and lumbering hulks alike.

It's something Bonecruncher Soccer would do well to consider as it tries to cover all bases in an attempt to become something of a casual sports supergame.

For the most part, Bonecruncher Soccer takes the formula laid out in Backbreaker Football and applies it to association football.

Rather than running the gridiron gauntlet, jinking past armoured defenders and heading for the end zone, you’re dribbling the ball past increasing numbers of defenders (and, eventually, through cones).

You steer your runner by tilting your handset, with skills assigned to the touchscreen.

Rather than virtual buttons as in Backbreaker, developer Distinctive has opted for swipe controls. A sideways swipe executes a basic jink, while an upwards motion sets off a 360 degree spin.

Sadly, swiping just doesn’t prove reliable or instinctive enough for such an immediate, arcadey experience though. The 360 degree turn is plain bizarre, too, taking an absolute age to execute. It looks like John Terry attempting Zidane.

Equally, the animation, while decent, doesn’t quite match Backbreaker’s fluid transitions. The ball sticks to the player’s foot like it’s tied on with a piece of elastic - something especially glaring in the slow-motion replays.

Get to the opposition box and the game slows down, allowing you take a shot on goal. At this point, the game switches its source of inspiration from Backbreaker to Flick Kick Football (which is also out on Android now, incidentally).

Again, it’s not quite up to the level of the source material, as you swipe your finger to shoot at goal. There are optional targets to shoot for, and it’s moderately fun, but the system doesn’t quite feel as satisfying or flexible as PikPok’s game.

I also encountered a more general technical issue, with the sound cutting out completely on my Galaxy S. Hopefully this will be addressed in an update.

So while Bonecruncher Soccer manages a certain measure of competence in replicating two successful formulas and welding them together, it feels diluted as a result.

It’s a decent effort, but ultimately I’d rather have the two specialist games than this one all-rounder.