CR7 Football 2012
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| CR7 Football 2012

Football games are tricky. The art of making a single gamer feel like he's in control of 11 individual players working together to create a single, glorious moment of perfectly co-ordinated sporting bliss is one of the greatest challenges presented by the medium.

Over time, the unstoppable march of technology has transformed the simplistic, stick-driven games of old into complex sims with one-touch ball control and frighteningly realistic physics.

However, it should come as no surprise that the Java-based CR7 Football 2012 has more in common with the likes of Kick Off and Sensible Soccer than FIFA 13.

Cup half full

Before you take to the pitch, you choose your team from a line-up of 16 international countries, all of which are graded according to shot accuracy, speed, and defensive prowess.

If you decide to play through a championship, you progress through randomly populated groups to get your (virtual) hands on the (virtual) trophy.

Once your team exits the tunnel, CR7 Football 2012 doesn't do a bad job of portraying the ebb and flow of a real match.

Though the AI isn't going to trouble any Grand Masters with its strategic cunning, the midfielders are fairly aggressive, forcing you to pass often if you want to keep possession.

Cup half empty

Unfortunately, some questionable design choices make marshalling your squad more frustrating than engaging. For example, when the opposition has possession, your players automatically chase the ball down.

While you can prompt players to tackle - the success of which is arbitrarily decided by unseen numbers - you have no other control over their actions.

This creates a sense of disconnection as you're obliged to watch your team autopilot its way through 50 per cent of the on-screen action.

Once you have the ball, your players can only turn sequentially through the points of the compass. 180-degree spins are completely out of the question, resulting in footballers that feel more like taxiing aircraft than agile athletes.

To make matters worse, the engine has a nasty habit of stuttering whenever you take a shot on goal. This renders any attempt at a well-judged aftertouch futile, and makes a successful goal feel like a fluke, thereby sucking most of the joy out of any victory.

CR7 Football 2012

Passable visuals do little to compensate for the clunky, disengaging controls, relegating this faltering footy title to the lower division
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James Gilmour
James Gilmour
James pivoted to video so hard that he permanently damaged his spine, which now doubles as a Cronenbergian mic stand. If the pictures are moving, he's the one to blame.