Super Soccer Blast Review

Super Soccer Blast is a top down football (soccer) game developed and published by Unfinished Pixels.  As we all know, FIFA and PES lead the field in football games, so can this title deliver?

It’s a game that is not meant to be taken seriously. You are able to pick from 5 different tournaments called the “World Tour”, each with either international or league teams and played in a league or cup format. If that doesn’t take your fancy you can go ahead and create your own tournament or jump straight into a quick play match. You can pick from 4 levels of difficultly, ranging from very easy to hard, and specify the time you want to play for, from 5 minute matches to full 90 minutes epics.

The gameplay is simplistic. Passing seems to be hit and miss, with the balls getting intercepted by the other team way too easily. I understand this is meant to have an arcade feel, but it’s just inconsistent and can get frustrating. It’s the same with the tackling. You can get fouled for hardly anything or but then take the keeper out and score without any issues. I found myself doing it every time to see if I could get lucky! Speaking of tackling, there are no bookings, so no players get sent off and there are no substitutions either (music to my ears – Ed.).

Goalkeepers are appalling at saving shots. The amount of times I have scored from the halfway line is ridiculous. Even from kick off I’ve managed to shoot full power towards the goal and score. Once, the keeper saved a shot but then stepped back over the goal line and it awarded me the goal! At times I found the keeper would run towards the ball when inside the box and take me out, letting the ball run loose and allowing the AI to score an easy tap in.

I guess they wanted to make it simple and just a quick pick up and play. But sometimes having the players getting sent off is part of the fun part when you want to mess about. Also, knowing I can never go a player down meant I found myself always playing very aggressively. Another shame is that there are no instant replays when you score a great goal but luckily you can capture them with the consoles built in DVR.

It’s a shame, as being a fan of football you want some realism to the game. You would hope for more teams to be included, but you can only pick from 9 club teams from different leagues, some with the real name others not (e.g. Manchester City is called Sport City) which is really limiting. There’s the same issue with countries, with only 16 to pick from. To me, 32 clubs and 32 countries would be the right number if you wanted to make a smaller game, so that you can make a decent sized tournament.

It’s not all bad though. The presentation is well put together with really good animation. The cartoon fans and stadium are decent and kinda cute. Before you start the match you have a cartoon player walking towards the screen and sometimes you can pick out the resemblance to who they’re intended to be.

A cool feature they have added is the editor, where you can create yourself and drop yourself into a team of your choice. You could even edit a full squad if you wanted to add all the real players. If you are feeling even more creative you can make a whole new team to add into tournaments. It will auto generate players for you but you are free to edit the squad once you have created them.

The opportunity is there for some couch co op as well if you and a buddy want to get together. There’s no online play, but I can understand how difficult that can be to put together for a title of this size. The have done well with the audio for the background music and fans cheering, but it’s nothing special. As you can understand it being a smaller game there is not commentary but it can be forgiven for the size and style the game is trying to present.

The achievement side it is very simple and not much effort will need to be put in to score 1000G. There are a few strange ones, like scoring an overhead kick that will unlock when the AI does it, and scoring 100 goals, that will unlock even if every goal is an own goal.

Conclusion

Super Soccer Blast is more of a bore than a blast. The first game is enjoyable, but then you notice the flaws very quickly. However, I do take pleasure in shooting from 50 yards out and scoring with ease. The create your own team and player is a nice addition, but it’s a shame there isn’t more content and teams to pick from from the off.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.