We’re pretty big fans of the Stick Sports library of games. We’ve so far seen Stick Cricket and Stick Tennis, and now the London/Sydney based development house has released Stick Soccer into Google Play for you to enjoy during the World Cup.
Surprisingly, Stick Sports chose to release Stick Soccer to Android before launching on iOS, which is a welcome change in the grand scheme of things. Stick Soccer is a freemium based titles, with the Play Store entry advertising ‘Offers in-app purchases’ on the entry, but don’t let that stop you from checking the game out.
From the moment you load the game, social interaction is fairly key. The game offers you a choice of an anonymous login, which just lets you play. Or, if you want to interact with friends you can choose to connect your Facebook account or login with a Stick Sports account which works across all the Stick Sports properties. Logging into an account will allow you to track your scores and shout out your latest achievements as you progress through the game, as well as interact with your friends.
Stick Sports is looking to introduce a Google login, which will include Google Play Games integration, but was looking to get the game out in time for the World Cup. A future update to the game will include Google Play Games integration to share all those interactions with your friends, so look out for that in the future.
The game has three options at the main menu, the two main ones – World Domination and Time Attack – see you facing off with a goalie and a couple of defenders to try and kick the ball into the goal. A third option – Fan Challenge – sees all the goals you score add to a cumulative total, to win the Fan Challenge for your country.
When playing, your shot is affected by how much power you can put on the ball, and how much you can ‘Bend it like Bekham’ ;). You can of course upgrade these skills, by purchasing new boots from the Boot Room, leading us to the Freemium part. There’s nothing terribly disturbing here, given you can choose to simply plug away at the game, fulfilling various goals to earn upgrades to the different boots for sale in the Boot Room. Each higher level of boot you purchase or earn upgrades the power or ability to curve the ball when you kick. There’s only one level of boot which isn’t made available but you should be fairly well adept at the game by the time you need them.
Stick Soccer also contains a few ads within the menus, but the ads are purely (well, all that I saw) for Stick Sports titles.
At the end of the games for World Domination and Time Attack, you are given the option to tweet, or Facebook your achievement, if that’s your type of things. Notably, again, no Google+ option, but that will be coming soon hopefully when Google Play Games integration is added.
The only major issue with the game I found however was the Android ‘Back’ button doesn’t work. To return to the previous menu you simply select the in-game ‘back’ button on the screen. Stick Sports has advised that they intend to fix this little quirk in a later version, so we’ll be keen for that update as well.
Don’t let the trivial issue like the back button hold you back though. Stick Soccer joins Stick Cricket and Stick Tennis as a really, really fun game which includes great graphics, addictive gameplay and enough social interaction that entices you to beat your friends again and again. I loved Stick Cricket and you really should try out.
