Mobile Game of the Week, World Cup Edition: UpperCup Football and BraziBall (iOS/Android)
I love soccer and soccer videogames. I don’t love most mobile games.
These facts should be stated up front so that there’s no doubt about my biases in this review of two soccer themed mobile games, BraziBall and UpperCup Football, both coming in iOS and Android flavors. I was not precisely skeptical when I fired each up for the first time, but neither was I expecting to be blown away. The pervasive monetization of most mobile games generally overrides any enjoyment I tend to derive from them.
I’m happy to report that my fears of mediocre execution and crass requests for cash were unfounded. In the case of both games, execution was competent (and, in UpperCup Football’s case, very good), while appeals for more money were, in the full versions, at least, quite muted.
BraziBall is the lesser of the two games. This isn’t really the fault of the game’s execution so much as its lack of ambition. You’ve almost certainly played a game very much like it before if you’ve picked up Candy Crush or Bejeweled: match rows of colored objects, make them explode, and get your points.
Where BraziBall innovates is in its trappings as a “soccer” game. You must match a given number of a specific color to move a soccer ball (represented up top, along with players from both your team and the opposition) toward the net. You only have four chances to get the requisite number; if you fail, you’re on defense, playing the game the same way, only suddenly at risk of being scored on.
It’s a nice added layer of lateral thinking because the colored balls don’t automatically regenerate in the colors you need. You have to plan ahead and if, for example, you need five green balls followed by another eight green balls to move downfield, you can’t only click green balls without running short.
BraziBall is decent fun, but it’s fundamentally too well-worn a concept for me to latch onto, even if the tweaks make it a bit less quotidian. If you’re not tired of this style of game, I’d recommend it. At the least, it’s free and up front about what it is, so you can see for yourself without much investment.
UpperCup Football, on the other hand, feels fresh, exciting and addictive. I’ve never played anything quite like it before, though I admit that this may be due to my not at all exhaustive knowledge of Android games.
In UpperCup Football you play a soccer game with bright, cartoony players who are each essentially immobile turrets. The art style immediately grabs you with its throwback style. I admit that’s pretty much de rigeur for an awful lot of small studio and indie games these days, but the combination of soccer and art style put me in mind of the sadly forgotten Mega Man Soccer.
