REAL soccer (REAL)

I recently got a great tip about a soccer game for the iPhone that is only $.99 cents and actually plays like a soccer game. See I'm always skeptic about iPhone games because a) I dont want to play games on my phone and 2) most games absolutely sucks. But surprise surprise this game is actually pretty good.

Real Soccer 2009, which normally goes for $9.99 on the app store, features over 100 teams (both national and club) as well as real players (for most teams). The "cover" features Arsenal pretty boy Cesc Fabregas. The gameplay is surprisingly fluid, though I'm not surprised nor upset that the characters are a bit blocky they I am surprised at how agile the fuckers are. Teams and players are substantially different from one another: if you pick Kazakhstan and play against Brazil you will get your ass kicked, in effect this is not merely having a bunch of different teams with palette swaps, the little guy labeled as Kaka is Kaka and hes in your iPhone.

Its easy enough, when you dont have a license, to use the flag of, say, Serbia to represent the Serbian national team and RS09 does so as expected. But how do you get around not being able to use club team crests? well you refer to teams by their city (say Roma) and if that becomes confusing you start using colors (Manchester Red). Now that you've solved that problem what do you do about the crests? well you simply use random little flags to represent particular teams. These fake little icons have a certain charm to them too. Oddly enough the game does have a licensing agreement with La Liga La Liga BBVA so all of its teams crests are the real thing (just in case you really wanted to play as Osasuna).

The game also contains a bunch of playable leagues and cups (again, its an iPhone app) including facsimiles of Champions League, Euro, Copa America and so on. There is no American club competition but there are teams from Argentina, Brazil and the U.S (sadly not Mexico) who all participate in the faux CL. Its genius. The many cups arent easy to get (even on easy) thus the game is pretty challenging.

Lastly the controls, I had no iea how I was going to work around the fact that the phone has no physical buttons but that was fixed with the inclusion of a D-Pad and A-B buttons on the screen. This is done on many games for the phone but I had yet to encounter it. Sure its kind of annoying to have your fingers on the playing screen but the thing is responsive enough that one is able to easily play.

And its only 99 cents.