Foosball HD Review

I used to have a foosball table. And like most overly energetic kids would, I constantly broke the little men on the rods by turning them too violently trying to defeat my little brother. Luckily, I don’t have to worry about breaking anything in Foosball HD.

The controls aren’t intuitive enough to make me feel like I’m playing a real game of foosball, but it’s close. It took me a while to get used to swiping the opposite way I wanted the guys on the rods to spin, but I understand the reasoning. To make the players spin counter-clockwise (kicking the ball), the player swipes left across the rod. Since that’s the way players would be turning the rod on a real foosball table, it does make sense. But I occasionally found myself doing the opposite motion because part of me felt I should swipe towards the goal to hit the ball. I’m sure I’ll eventually get used to the control scheme, but it wouldn’t be hard for the developers to add an option to invert that specific part of it.

Other than the swiping, the controls made a ton of sense. For multiplayer, the best mode in the app, each player has an entire half of the screen. Generally, there’s no confusion because of this. But my fiancee did occasionally creep over to my side of the screen and mess plays up because the ball was on my side of the screen. I admit, it is easy to accidentally encroach on the other players side when the ball goes over there. But with a little self-control, this is a fun game to play via local multiplayer.

The music is actually pretty good for a sports game. It didn’t “get me in the zone” or anything. It wasn’t the kind of music I would listen to while working out; it was just an upbeat repeating riff that I found amusing.

Foosball HD is a simple but well-made game. It’s going to be one of those games I start up anytime I’m showing off my iPad to someone who’s never used one. It makes great use of the Retina display graphics and multi-touch.

An iPhone version is also available.

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