I like football (soccer), it doesn’t matter is it arcade or simulation, football is a life! Pixel Cup Soccer 17 an arcade retro style soccer game that reminds me so much on one old NES game.
Developer: Batovi Games Studio
Publisher: Batovi Games Studio
Genre: Arcade soccer
Release date: 4 Aug, 2016 (Early Access) Full Release – TBA
Type: Single-player, Local Multi-player
Pixel Cup Soccer 17 is similar to the Kunio Kun no Nekketsu Soccer League or Goal 3. It’s one of my favourite games on NES and when I saw Pixel Cup Soccer, I said that I need to have this game. This game looks retro, it has retro graphics, retro sound, music, but still it lacks some stuff, but since this game is in Early Access, it’s totally understandable. Don’t expect anything big from this game, because this game is developed to bring fun to you. You can play it alone or local multiplayer. I am little disappointed that there isn’t online mutliplayer, but maybe that will add it in the future.
Pixel Cup Soccer 17 have a good amount of competitions. You can also play friendly matches, do some challenges, penalty kicks or just practice and train your skills. Not every country is included in this game, but most of important football countries are here. Game doesn’t own any license (I think), so you will not see the real names of the players, there is only one league with clubs and they are fake, but maybe in the future we will see some “real” leagues or at least some competition with real clubs, that will probably not have the license.
The game clearly doesn’t lack the content, but the content itself lacks the depth. For example, every competition has the real life format, but the pixel league has only 8 clubs and you play 7 rounds only, so no home/away system, also you can’t buy/sell players, change the tactics or even a formation. Well you can change the formation, but only before you choose with which team you will play the competition, but when you enter the competition you can’t change it anymore. There is no statistic in the game, no statistic in the match.
As I said before, this is a pure arcade style football. If you have played the Goal 3 game on NES, then you should know what to expect from this game. There are only few differences between the games. Pixel Cup Soccer 17 can get boring, especially if you don’t have friends to play with and the reason for that is because when you are playing alone it gets boring. It’s always the same gameplay. The highest skilled players in the team can do some skill shots, but there are only few of them. It’s not like in Goal 3 where each player had his own skill shot, you can change the weather before the kick-off, but they don’t affect the gameplay. There aren’t even fouls in Pixel Cup Soccer, therefore, there aren’t free kicks and the only time when you can shoot from the penalty spot is when match ends in a draw after 90 minutes. Each team in the game has the rating for: Attack, Midfield, Defense and Goalkeeper. I think that ratings in this game is the only simulation part of the game, because you can clearly see how it’s harder to score with weaker teams and they look like they are slower, but thing I can tell you for sure, is that it’s very hard to score, no matter are you playing with the weakest or even the best team in the world. Maybe I didn’t discover the right pattern or way to score, but after 3 hours of playing, I still score goals rarely.
After playing this game, you can clearly see that its a right thing to put this game in Early Access, because it isn’t ready for the full release. The game has the content to offer: friendly matches, competitions (world cup, euro cup, olympics, copa america and more), practice mode, penalty kicks. What this game lacks is the depth. It’s an arcade and fun game, but if you want more people to buy your game, then you should add some real life, simulation things as statistic, make the league competition like real life. Also I would like to see weather having an effect on the gameplay, add the special skill shots for each team or for at least two players in each team. From what I’ve seen, a lot of people bought and tried this game. There are three pages in suggestion thread and I hope that developer will listen to the community and add at least half of them, because we need to have this arcade, fun football games.
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