Super Soccer Blast Review
Fast Facts
Super Soccer Blast
Developer: Unfinished Pixel
Publisher: Unfinished Pixel
Website: http://supersoccerblast.com
Genre: Sports, Football
Platform: Switch
Age Rating: PEGI 3
Release Date: 29/06/2020
Price: £7.49
A code was provided for review purposes.
League 2 Introduction
Welcome to my review of Super Soccer Blast on the Nintendo Switch from Unfinished Pixel, This game has been released on all major consoles and steam.
My journey of football games may be slightly different to most, but I started way back with Super Soccer on the SNES and Sensible Soccer on the Amiga 500. I progressed past maybe every football game ever made including ISS64, World-wide Soccer, Super Striker, Fifa and Pro Evolution Soccer.
In 2002 I entered the world of professional gaming. I played Pro Evolution Soccer in both league and tournament form-finding some success in taking a place at the national finals in the BT Tower and finishing in the quarter-finals of the first-ever North vs South tournament held in Birmingham. I was fortunate to attend press events for PES5 and PES6 before moving away from the scene and eventually from the game as I adopted FIFA from FIFA16.
I now play FIFA20 religiously on my PS4 making Gold 2 most weeks in the Weekend League, and I have clocked in around 2500 games over the last 9 months, but one thing has always been missing for me. A genuinely portable football game that I can play on the move, and with Unfinished Pixels history of good sports games, my hopes were high for this effort with Super Soccer Blast.
League 1 Promise
I will start by saying I was disappointed overall, I will go into detail in the review but playing this game made me want a Sensible World of Soccer 96/97 remaster for the Switch with updated graphics and pulled into the 2020/21 season. My major problem was the mechanics; the dribbling, the passing and the shooting just never clicked for me, Was it button delay? Was it dodgy pass prediction? Was it shooting that made no sense? I can’t put my finger on it.
Super Soccer Blast has promise; it starts you off with two modes of Play; Quick Play and World Tour mode. Quick Play lets you pick one of the pre-made teams or one you have made yourself. The game includes copies of PSG, Inter, Man City and a few more along with some national teams. You can make a whole team and edit everything from the logo to individual players (you can even add dad bods to all your team!)
Championship Just A Touch Too High
World Tour is a big league which sees you play games against other nations or domestic teams in a league or knockout format. The league is a long game with around 8 teams, it will take you a while to complete with games being 10 minutes long on default, but you have the option of extend or shorten this duration.
Super Soccer Blast comes with varying difficulty levels as you would expect from a football game, but strangely no assist options for passing, shooting or switching players. It supports local multiplayer for up to four players, and You have two control methods; evolution and standard.
The gameplay is very much based on the old ’80s, and 90’s style of no real stickiness to the dribbling and passing is a power bar with direction which also applies to crosses. The tackles are a very exaggerated slide or a foot in to get the ball. You don’t have any luxury moves like 2 player press or skill although tapping the sprint does make your player jump.
Premiership Disappointment
Goalkeepers need some serious work with the animations and saving ability, going from superhuman to letting goals in from the halfway line. I had times when a keeper would save four one on ones right next to him and not pick the ball up, leaving the attacker to have another go. I also scored from just in my half when I shot instead of tackled, and the keeper watched it roll past him.
The shooting is wild, and the passing seems to be hit and miss, during the writing of this review, a patch was released but other than deleting my save progress on a world tour I didn’t notice any significant game changes.
Maybe I was expecting something more from Super Soccer Blast, perhaps my expectations for a football game are far higher than the masses, maybe I’m over critical playing Fifa and PES the last 20 years, or maybe I’m right.
Champions League No Hope for Super Soccer Blast
I can’t recommend Super Soccer Blast to anyone, I was so disappointed, and I know that this game has got some positive feedback overall but for me its not the football game we are looking for or need on the Nintendo system or any system.
In an age when remasters and remakes are flush, finding a football game that had incredible success and critical acclaim and making that your own is something I can’t see why publishers don’t do. Take the gameplay of PES5 for example, jazz it up with some options or simplify it into the same format as here and you potentially have a hit.
Go another way and look at what SWOS did well and take that into 2020, I could forgive the gameplay of this game if it had more of a management feel to it and I think there is a huge gap in the market for that.
Rapid Reviews Rating
You can purchase Super Soccer Blast on the eShop using the link below:
eShop.
