SocceR10 Review

The FIFA World Cup is incredibly close now. Excitement is at a near fever pitch level for fans - and England fans, like myself, are ready to be disappointed once more. So SocceR10 is certainly a timely release. A twist on the usual base building freemium format that's often used in games, SocceR10 is all about creating the best team out there through a mixture of grinding and playing avidly. It's a little simplistic for long term satisfaction, but it'll pass the time.

Starting out with a fairly basic and low-quality team, players must play a series of matches against other real players in order to level up and raise the statistical quality of existing teammates. While the tutorial suggests that SocceR10 is a fairly involved process, in reality success comes down to who has the highest skill level. Each move within a match involves choosing from two skills before seeing who has the highest resulting score. For instance, one player might have a 5 in tackling but the other player might have a 7 or 8 in dodging said tackle.

Such points can be raised artificially through using bonus cards and these special moves of sorts often change how a game plays out. Outside of a match, it's possible to increase such skills by regularly training in one of the many camps that can be placed as one plays for longer. These take time to complete, invoking the timer bars beloved of the genre. There's an energy bar restricting how many matches one can play at any time but it's fairly relaxed, allowing for plenty of progress to make during one session.

Problems arise with what SocceR10 lacks. For instance, it's not possible to converse with other players, meaning things feel quite distant and antisocial, almost as if one is competing with AI rather than real players. Money is quite quickly accrued through completing matches but it can only be used to upgrade training grounds at certain times, lacking a strong sense of progression.

The groundwork is here for SocceR10 to be quite interesting, certainly over the World Cup season, but it lacks the kind of panache that would give it real staying power. For a brief distraction, it does the job but don't expect to be gripped for any length of time.