Blast Soccer Review

What would make Super Crate Box-style arena games better? Soccer, perhaps? Well, good news: Blast Soccer is there to fulfill that strange wish. There’s still an arena, and enemies that spawn and try to ruin one’s day, because a man in a hat kicking soccer balls into goals? Why, that’s just wrong. Thankfully, the player gets limited amounts of bombs to clear things out. Also adding to the challenge is that there’s not just soccer balls to kick around, there’s also basketballs, bombs, and footballs. Footballs are not easy to kick. They just go all over the place. And sometimes all the balls are giant.

The vector art style of the game is fantastic: it’s something that the developer, Uncade, has done really well with, and made their style; it’s colorful yet still simplistic. And hey, this is the game where Kid Vector’s protagonist got his start. This is definitely a unique take on the arena game genre, and there’s something about kicking a football into a goal tos core points, that’s for sure.

However, there’s something that’s not as intuitive to Blast Soccer as other arena-type games like this. There’s a lot of chaos with the bouncing balls, a alot of unpredictability. The player also has very little that they can do to avoid incoming enemies, especially once their bombs have run out. There’s a lot of barriers to success in this game, and it makes it frustrating to play at times. The best games in this sub-genre make the player feel like they’re completely in control, and this one has too many moments of chaos to be truly satisfying to the player.

So, while I think the concept is not as perfectly-executed as I think it could be, Blast Soccer is definitely an interesting take on its sub-genre: and hey, a game that’s interesting but far from perfect is better than a game that’s mechanically sound but uninteresting.