Resco has recently
INTRODUCTION
introduced the world of foosball, also known as
table soccer, to the Pocket PC. Their new game,
Table Soccer, aims to fill the void left in many a
fan’s heart with a portable and tiny version of the
game, since you can’t rightly carry a foosball table
around with you. Will this game satisfy fans’ hunger
or will it leave them wanting more? Read on to find
out.
VGA support is not only there, but
WHAT’S HOT
required. The game just looks sharp.
After taking a moment to install you can
PROGRAM FEATURES
run it right from your Pocket PC. The entire game is
played in a horizontal frame so you’ll need to
rotate the unit around on the side. You can change
the orientation of the screen to choose which way
you rotate depending on where you like the buttons.
The default is to rotate it to the left but I found
it more useable from a gaming standpoint to rotate
it to the right so the direction pad is on your
left, but it’s up to you. You also have the option
to just use the stylus for controlling the game
which allows for a much more fluid
control but at the cost of having your hand across
the screen and the potential for screen scratchs.
The
intro/load screen. The program does take a few
seconds to load but nothing excessive.
Once
the load screen is done you’ll be allowed access to
the menus. Nothing that doesn’t make sense here, so
far so good.
The
stats menu just displays a list of your complete
games and how you’ve done in each. Not much to say
on it but unfortunately the text doesn’t show up
well on screen caps, it looks like an alien
language.
An
options menu is always a good place to start for a
game. From here you can change the settings of the
game to suit your likings and update the game
through the online feature.
The
account menu is what you’ll see when setting up the
game. You can ignore this if you have no intention
of using the online features.
At
the online menu you can update the game with new
goodies and update your online score. At the time of
this review there were only new teams available,
plenty of them though.
Music and sound menu. The music and sound levels can
be set ranging from 1-4 and max and mute. The music
is minimal, just drum beats and electric guitars,
and only exists within the menu system. As far as
sound effects go you get menu select, whistle blow,
ball tap, the cheer of the crowd and nothing else.
In the middle of the game all you’ll hear is the
clack of the ball with an occasional cheer. In game
music or more sound effects are needed.
Any decent game
allows you to have some control over the controls.
From the controls menu you can define the buttons,
set the player rotation, control the orientation,
and set the sensitivity levels. You will have to
alter the sensitivity levels, on my Axim X50v 10 is
too slow and 15 is too fast so I found 12 or
13 to be a good level. If you bother to set them
lower you can simulate massive system lag. I did
notice if I set the X sensitivity too low that I
couldn’t even move in that direction.
The
gameplay menu is simple and to the point. Difficulty
can be set to easy, medium, or hard and match time
to 5, 10, or 20 minutes.
With
seven pages of in program help you should have most
things covered, should being the operative word.
There are a few things missing here and there but
it’s good for the most part. You’ll notice the word "Arcade" and
yet there is no Arcade option anywhere in the game,
it’s replaced with the name "Friendly" for some
reason.
On to the actual
game itself. You can choose to go with the friendly
match or a tournament. If you go for the friendly
option you’ll pick teams and the table type. When
you select your team it really makes no difference,
it’s just the colors they wear. The defaults are
also always Argentina and Austria so it gets
annoying trying to select your favorite colors,
eventually you’ll give up and go with these two.
Nothing against Argentina or Austria mind you.
With
three tables to choose from you have some options.
Basic, Hex, and Advanced are your choices,
unfortunately there is no description of what the
difference in the tables are and I honestly couldn’t
tell much of a difference between them.
Tournament mode will let you first select the
tournament you’re competing in. There are offline
and online ones for your choice.
You’ll select your team next, again it’s just really
the colors here.
Last, but not least you can select the group you
play on. I wasn’t sure what all the columns meant
and there isn’t any real way to find out. I can make
a few assumptions though so I guess that’s good
enough.
Down
to the actual gameplay. This is what you’ll see most
of the time. In the real foosball you have 4
independently controlled rows, in this game you have
3 rows that all move together. We’re starting to
fall short on that goal of portable table soccer it
seems.
If
you hit the pause button you can exit the game or
continue the game. You also get a shoot button which
will do a strong kick but only in the direction of
the opponent’s goal.
The
more you play the more you realize just how "un-fun"
this game becomes. To be fair I asked a number of
people to try this game, ranging from other Pocket
PC lovers to foosball fans and no one cared to play
more than one game, if they even bothered to finished the one
they started. Responses ranged from "That just wasn’t
any fun" to "Why did they make that?" The problem
boils down to one simple thing, the controls. They
just don’t translate well to the game, they lack the
fluidity and range of real foosball.
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This program features a 7 I no longer wonder why I’ve never seen a
HELP SUPPORT
page in program help. It does an alright job at explaining everything, but
manages to omit a few things here and there. Resco
is also kind enough to provide people with a
forum for the game.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
To run the
game you need a Pocket PC running on 2002 or 2003. At this time it is
also manditory that you have a VGA screen, they’re working on a non-VGA
screen version. The program will take up about 6,800K with each
downloadable team being around 100K extra.
BUGS AND WISHES
From what I could find there are a few bugs here and
there. The help section needs to be fixed since
there is no Arcade mode but a Friendly mode instead.
There is also the bug where if your X sensitivity is
set too low you can no longer move in that
direction. I didn’t notice any other bugs
while playing the game. Wishes are something I have
a plenty for this game, or rather a few very strong
wishes. Fix the controls. They just don’t work comfortably.
If they can’t be made better then just stop working
on the game. Add more, and better, music and allow
for it to be used in game. My final wish is that the
options be explained better, I’m still not sure of the
differences in the tables.
PURCHASING
Resco’s Table Soccer can be purchased from the
Resco store for $19.95. Currently (as of 27 October) it’s on sale
for $15.96 and there is a demo version to try it
before you buy it.
PROS
expansion
CONS
controls
section is missing a few things
Value
Ease
of Use
Features
Overall
OVERALL IMPRESSION
foosball video game. It just wouldn’t work well and
it doesn’t in this case. The game looks great but
i’s merits stop there. The controls are cumbersome, the
audio is poor, and the help leaves something to be
desired. I’m not going to say don’t buy it, but I will
say that I never would, not even for a couple of
bucks. In short it’s a game that just doesn’t
translate well to the digital format. I applaud Resco’s
attempts to bring foosball to the Pocket PC but
ultimately it just doesn’t work.
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