Previews

Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe

The brutal sport of the future has stretched, warmed up and is taking to the pitch

Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe

Judging by some of the dirty tackles you see in the Premier league and on rugby pitches all over the country, you might assume that most sport was already pretty tough. But apparently things are set to get worse, if this glimpse into the future is anything to go by. Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe, released this month by Glu Mobile, is a decidedly nasty little game played by two teams of seven players each, on a metal pitch, with a metal ball. Oh, and lets not forget that full-contact tackles are legal. So it won’t come as a surprise that Speedball 2’s players come encased in metal armour. The aim of the game is simple – score points by flinging the ball through the opponent’s goal – but achieving it is problematic due to the pinball-table style objects littering the pitch and the downright viciousness of the opposing team.

With a league and multiplayer Bluetooth modes on offer, it looks set to be an entertaining game. It’s not as hard to pick up or get into as a football title, for instance, with the arcade-style action coming fast and furious. There are no penalties to worry about, for example, and games last little longer than 5 or 10 minutes.

There is a more managerial side to the game, though – the inevitable injuries mean you to need to put your players through their paces at the gym to boost their abilities. You can also trade and draft new players with better skills, if you can afford them, to further improve your team’s chances of moving up the league and winning the cup.

The game is viewed from a top-down perspective which enables the action to be fast and frenetic without becoming messy and over-complicated and is, you’d have to admit, more functional that beautiful. But if anyone here remembers the original Speedball 2 from the glory days of the Amiga or Sega MegaDrive (ask your older brother or cousin) it’ll be all very familiar.

Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe 2 is out now – look for a review on Pocket Gamer soon!