➤ Kicks in the shins 🎮

In a world where football games have become more and more realistic, varied and complex to control, the return to simpler, arcade games can only be greeted with joy, especially by those who grew up with those games. Goodbye dribbling, counter-dribbling, control without the ball, four different types of crosses, changing schemes on the fly, artificial intelligences that adapt to your style of play, complex online tournaments that do nothing but ask for money. One button, maximum two, top view, retrogaming style graphics and off you go! On the other hand, Kick Off and Sensible Soccer on their simplicity and immediacy have built us an undying fame, associated with a particularly difficult control system which, however, in the hands of particularly good players, could give life to frenetic and spectacular exchanges. If you want it is possible to play it on some emulator, but why not propose a revised and corrected version of the great classics? This must have been thought by Dino Dini before developing Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival, a great idea, too bad the result is a game that manages to do incredibly worse than its ancestor. As if grandma's parmigiana put in the freezer for the best times turns out to be a colony of mutant molds ready to eat your face when thawed.

We tried Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival and would have preferred to play the original

Randomness in power

The gameplay of Kick Off has always been based on a very simple concept: the ball is not attached to the player, who must learn to control it first in order to direct it where he wants. A single button performs both the passing and the shooting functions. These premises are respected by his successor, with the addition of a sort of side ball controls that can be activated by holding down the shot button while moving both in attack and defense. In theory, this novelty allows you to control the ball with a certain precision in the tight and avoid dribbles, but if that doesn't seem like a good idea to you, you've got it.

There are more times in which it happens to throw or tackle by mistake than those in which it actually proves useful, perhaps it would have been to use a second key and risk the accusation of heresy by the most orthodox fans. As for the control, it undoubtedly resembles that of the original game, but the impression it gave us is that it is even more casual and confusing. Making two passes in a row is really very complicated, the teammates support the maneuver very badly and being able to reverse the direction of travel while holding the ball in hand is a feat, especially in defense. Obviously we have taken into account the fact that we are no longer the players of the past and that our reflexes can be a little rusty, but basing a game maneuver that is not totally random in Kick Off Revival seemed more difficult to eliminate the Dark Soul boss after drinking ten shots of vodka. As for the game options, some have mistaken the concept of "simplicity" with that of "desolation". We will only be able to play friendlies alone or against a friend, train in an empty field, play on the net or participate in the European championship, that's all. No world cup, no personalized cup, not even the oratory tournament.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival contains a list of trophies that, theoretically, should be fairly straightforward to obtain. To unlock them we will have to score goals in certain situations, for example from a corner or from the center of the field, both in practice mode and in matches against the PC or online. The only real obstacle to completing this feat is the control system and the quality of the game, which obviously could compromise your willingness to continue.

Regretting the gaillo card

Ok, let's pretend for a moment that our negative feelings with the game are exclusively related to lack of competence in the controls. There is, it would not be the fault of the game right? Of course not, too bad that the problems of Kick Off Revival don't stop at an imprecise and random control system, but sink to the very basis of this bad nostalgia operation. To begin with it is impossible to command the goalkeeper and decide whether to take a long or short throw. In addition, goal lines or out of bounds make sense only for ten out of eleven players, if in fact the goalkeeper takes the ball out during a save we will see him easily make a return and the same goes for when the ball is brought into the goal.

So much so that in certain moments we will see him return from inside the net, directly on the post, with the ball bouncing back into the goal resulting in an own goal. Simply comical. As if that were not enough, there is no offside, the computer makes glides with millimeter precision, but if it lands, do not expect penalties because Kick Off Revival is set in a dystopian past where red and yellow cards were never invented. And to say that even his predecessor had them. Possible that a game from 89 had them and one from 2016, right? Unacceptable. We conclude this tunnel of horrors with a final gem: we will not even be able to decide which player to use, the computer will change automatically, but only when he remembers it, so much so that we will often witness helplessly the artificial intelligence of the game approaching our door while we try to return an attacker to the defense.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Digital Delivery PlayStation Store Price 9,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

3.0

Readers (9)

3.6

Your vote

There is only one way to define Kick Off Revival: embarrassing. Indeed, perhaps we would even dare to say offensive. The original game was a cornerstone of soccer games and, despite its imperfections, a faithful friend of many budding players. This squalid nostalgia operation can't even get close to the original game, but it offends its memory by trying only to exploit its name to propose a disgrace that is not worth the 9 euros it costs.