Football Party
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| Football Party

If the scaremongering windbags who complain about violence in video games begetting real violence turn out to be right, what does that mean for football fans who play Football Party? We'll probably end up as hooligans with an unquenchable desire for junk food and an obsession with destroying buildings by kicking footballs at them.

Your average 12-year-old lad, then.

Football Party is a compilation of mini-games in the vein of Crash Boom Bang and Ibiza Beach Party, both of which were inspired by the pioneering WarioWare on the Game Boy.

The premise is fairly simple – you work your way through a series of basic and brief games, and as you complete all the games in the stage you advance to new levels with different mini-games. The challenges vary wildly, from the absurd to the hilarious and occasionally mildly perverted, all with a Brazilian football theme running through them.

A typical mini-game might go like this: "Dodge!" blurts the on-screen message as our pitch-invading character, fuelled by 13 pints of Stella in the scorching Brazilian sun, makes a break for the turf. Leaping over advertising hoardings, our inebriated hero has to sprint towards the centre circle, avoiding the on-rushing security guards in their fetching bright orange bibs.

Succeed in avoiding the brutes and you stand triumphant, arm in arm with your team's star player being photographed by the press. Fail and security descend on you with flailing arms and legs, and you're given the hiding of a lifetime in front of thousands of screaming fans (clearly crowd control in South America differs slightly to that in the rest of the world).

All of this, of course, happens in a frantic moment. Games come hard and fast, and although sometimes confusing the pace of the action undoubtedly adds to your enjoyment.

In between games, you're greeted by a scantily clad female football fan who occasionally taunts you in an amusing form of broken English, which is both irritating and mildly arousing at the same time. A bit like Kate Thornton on The X Factor.

Most darkly hilarious of all the mini-games has to be Girl in Danger, in which you have to save a buxom young woman from a lingerie-thieving old man. You do this by hitting footballs through open windows whenever the lecherous pensioner shows his bus-pass wielding mug.

Should you accidentally hit the girl or smash an un-opened window, you fail. But time it right, clobber the old timer enough times, and the damsel in distress kindly gives you a wave, a smile, and a gawp at her wares. The footballing theme to the game really is at its most tenuous on this task but you can't help but admire the maker's imagination and laugh along.

Inevitably, some mini-games will become favourites and others will fall by the wayside. The beauty of the format is that you can return to the most enjoyable games whenever you wish, simply by selecting them from the opening menu.

That's not to say there isn't structure. Football Party's actual challenge is to become a professional footballer within the game's year, which you achieve by progressing through games in order, completing levels and moving on to the next.

Graphics for the game are basic but certainly suited to this type of game. Sound similarly does a decent job, with the odd piece of samba music chucked in to liven up proceedings and maintain the sometimes waning Brazilian theme.

All in all, the sheer number of games will keep you interested for some time, but it's unlikely that you'll be having any sleepless nights hell bent on completing the stages. Nevertheless, this is an enjoyable and welcome sporty variant to what is a rapidly growing genre of mobile game.

Football Party

The mini-game genre gets a much needed sporting twist, even if it can feel a bit forced
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