Magnetic Sports Soccer

The Android platform lacks any serious representation with respect to sports games. No decent football, hockey, or soccer and only one real choice when it comes to baseball is nothing to laugh about. I love sports games and drool at the iPhone's sports lineup. While Magnetic Sports Soccer isn't going to fill the gap for soccer fans it may, at least, be a tie over while the wait continues.

This game is based on those old sports games with a bunch of magnetic players and a metal marble. Remember those? Neither do I... never heard of them, in fact, until seeing these 'emulators' appear. In a nutshell you've got a bunch of players attached by a spring to a board and you pull them back and release them to shoot or pass the ball. How far you pull back controls the power and accuracy of your shot. The ball then either ends up in the goal or rolls around until it gets captured by the magnetic pull of a playing piece and comes to rest at which time the process repeats itself until goals are scored and the game ends. The only wrench in this formula is tilt... as you play you accumulate tilt and at any time when your tilt bar is full you can press the tilt button (or shake your phone) and havoc breaks loose... the ball is freed and where it goes nobody knows, but if you didn't have the ball to start with then that's better than nothing. Oh, one other note... the tilt bar is more of a tilt pie graph and it took me a while to figure that out. The icon itself gradually goes from translucent to opaque and that's when you can give tilt a go.

Now, I had some problems with this game crashing on me to the point that it almost lost a star from my review (hear the devs shout "oh no!"). But, as always, I tried Advanced Task Killer and killed everything off just to see and sure enough that resolved my issue. Apparently far too much Android software doesn't cooperate. I don't know the technical details, but I do know that if you ever experience crashes from games then you should try it to see if it cures your problem... maybe some other application didn't clean up after itself?

Magnetic Sports Soccer is a cute game more akin to pool than soccer. A precise finger will go miles in the game. It has a nice tutorial, nice graphics, appropriate sounds, and a control system that works well. There's also quite a satisfying feeling to scoring a goal after passing the ball all the way down the field. The game itself offers 4 skill levels, options to choose between a timed game or playing to a preset number of goals, and a few different 'stadiums'. The game even includes the ability to compete for the prestiguous Magnetic World Cup. Unfortunately the iPhone version apparently supports networked play and that didn't make the leap, but maybe someday.

In summary, Magnetic Sports Soccer is an enjoyable game that fits the mobile platform well with full games that last just a few minutes. I don't see this as a game with exceptional longevity, but it's also just a few dollars... much cheaper and more fun than a movie. 4/5 stars.