I guess most young boys who spent most of their childhood practicing amateur football dreamed of becoming a star in this discipline. I also have injured my fingers several times trying to be like my favorite goalkeeper. Not always, however, we have so much enthusiasm, talent, or even possibilities ...
We can partly make our childhood dreams come true, thanks to the game called Football Superstars, in which our aim is to become a cover star of football. Let's see whether our path towards becoming the world's top-scorer will be all roses.
A star as all the others
Our first step, as it happens in real life, is to be borne. So create your future superstar. We don’t have too many possibilities when it comes to changing our appearance. The choice we have is: sex, seven tones of skin, five heads, a few eye colors, three locations of the eyes, three different width of the nose, three types of lips and ten hair styles, which can be dyed on one out of ten colors. All the newborn are also dressed in identical suits, so it’ll be hard for our future star to shine among hundreds of very similar stars… It’s a shame, because it could be done a lot about this issue.
Our football adventure starts from a workout on the field filled, apart form other players in black tracksuits, with a number of people performing different functions. They’ll show us the basic rules of playing football. Unfortunately it is not as simple as we may remember from the childhood. Our character is a piece of wood, and the amount of things to remember at once is a bit overwhelming. What’s even worse, it happens that we kick the ball out right into the stands, even from a few meters, when we’re standing face to face with the empty goal. It can be discouraging at the very beginning, but we’re tough and we won’t give up so easily in the quest to become a true superstar.
In the flashlights
Immediately after the first training we run out on the pitch in a very strange for football combination. On the pitch we have two players who are fighting for every goal. Our task is facilitated by the fact that our computer player is level 50 and his job is to grab the ball from our opponents and pass it to us. Each of the representatives of the AI is nutty as a fruitcake. It’s enough however for the warm up – let’s feel like a star. For this match we get experience in the form of fame points and advance to the second level is the fame. So we can leave the academy and set our first steps towards the true glory.
After each victory in a match we get minutes, which can be used to give an interview. For interviews we earn fame points and start to sparkle in the world of football stars. The game world consists of two major twin cities - Alexander Bay and Clarkswater. They’re separated from each other by a bridge, in which center a stadium is located. We’ll visit a lot of pubs and bars, cafes, shops and other places of interest. All these places were created in order to kill time and meet other players, because it's on the pitch where we make an opinion and by shooting as many goals we become famous and develop our skills. Sometimes it happens that we don’t have anyone to drink a virtual glass of whiskey with, as there isn’t so many players wanting to waste time sitting on their asses – they prefer to play football!
The scenery is quite pleasing to the eye, but the graphics itself could be better. Undoubtedly, the luminaire is far behind that one used in later productions.
And the referee gives the signal…
In Football Superstars we’ll be able to play in three game modes - each of which can be played with varying numbers of players in the team. From 2vs2 to the traditional 11vs11. Goalkeepers are controlled by the computer. The most popular mode is "kickabout" which does not reward us with FSD (the currency used in the game), but we can play with anyone. Other modes require us to play against rival clubs. Because of the not so large community we usually see matches of 4-5 people in each team, which is not actually that bad. Each player sis a live opponent and thinks in a different way. Due to the fact that the bases of kicking the ball in Football Superstars are not so easy to learn and that it is definitely not a game for casual players, first matches can be a bit irritating. The difference between the skills of a noob and a common player is huge. But we want to become a football star, right? We have to work really hard to succeed our aim.
Football Superstars is undoubtedly an opportunity to make, at least in the virtual world, your childhood dreams come true. There we have a vast world in which every avid player should not get bored. Poor control, which is difficult to learn and not very beautiful artwork makes the game not for everyone. However, if you're a football fan and want to strive to become a real star – than have a try. Otherwise, it’s better to choose a more casual product.
