To my shock and dismay it turns out that Kratos is a rubbish striker. Not good enough even for my second lineup. Now he languishes at the back of the team with increasingly useless stats due to lack of training. Someday I might change his name to Spongebob in an attempt to spare him the shame.
I’m a simple person. Tell me I can edit everything and everyone and set up my own tournaments in a retro inspired 2D football game and I’m there.
After playing the tutorial game and the penalty shootout game, which reminds me that no matter what football game it is or how much I practice I can’t for the life of me control the keeper and resign myself to the fact that I will lose pretty much any game that goes to penalties. I then naturally decide to do an epic career.
To cut a boring story short this is not a super serious simulator. Career mode is about climbing the four or so seasons with mixed in tournaments and friendly games. And there are events. You can encounter a witch. Your pitch can get covered in spikey bushes. Fans can throw fireworks on the pitch that blow up and knock out the keeper just before the other team takes a shot on goal and it’s wide open and the 93rd minute! As silly as this sounds it’s kinda more appealing than a normal football game.
Don’t worry. You can turn it all off. There are a tonne of settings to change the difficulty, match length, gameplay speed, and more. Tournaments don’t have events at all.
As far as actually playing it goes, it’s good, not perfect, but fun. In career mode all your player stats and skills are at the bottom and they feel slow, heavy and stupid. Get some XP and that changes. Except the stupid bit. From playing some tournaments, like the 1930 Global Cup that is presented with desaturated graphics that appear almost black and white, I found the AI can be really dumb at times even with the best teams. If you don’t take it too seriously it’s not much of a problem as these games are fast and can get messy when lots of players crowd into the box. Some skills give players a nitro boost or super hard shots that can knock people out. Matches tend towards lots of goals. Regardless of potential improvements I’ve been putting in more hours than I should admit and enjoying it plenty.
EDIT: Having said that, there has just been an update to address AI problems, difficulty levels, and some other things. I’ve not tried it out yet but it’s good to see the dev is responsive.
Where Pixel Cup Soccer would probably shine best is local multiplayer. It’s got that feel of fun casual competition where a lot can happen. When playing alone I found it surprisingly addicting. I get really into the many team formations and rotating career players to avoid them getting tired. Out of career mode there’s less to worry about and it’s pretty chill, in an intense fist clenching way. Even when the other team is having a piss take performance boost to mess with me.
If you’re unsure try the demo. And take a look at the vid below. I was only going to show one game but ended up winning the tournament so uploaded it all.
Available from Steam.
mishmash 