Welcome to our review of Soccer Slammers, the newest game from Atooi, out now on Nintendo Switch.
Atooi is mostly known for such indie classics as Mutant Mudds and Chicken Wiggle, they now release their latest game Soccer Slammers on Nintendo Switch just in time for the world cup in Russia.
As the title suggests, this is a soccer game, but not in the regular sense of the game, but in a 2 on 2 sense. It is a pixel-style game and it does sport some very basic graphics. You pick your team and you start off.
On the pitch, you have 3 options, pass the ball, shoot the ball or tackle your opponent. All sounding very logical, but it is badly executed. My very first play, within 3 seconds, I was tackled, scored against and I felt like I had not even moved my player in the slightest.
So I was thinking, what is up with that? But sadly, it kept repeating itself. I lost harshly with a 12-1 score, having been scored against 5 times in the same way, barely able to move or even react. That cannot be the intention right?
But in my second game, things got even worse. I was playing as Belgium against Tunisia, I managed to elude the opening tackle and got even close to the Tunisian goal, I failed to score, Tunisia did score though. They took over the ball, scored straight from across the pitch, my goalie did not even pretend to bother saving the shot. What is up with that?
Needless to say, I kept losing the games one after the other until at one point, I just called it quits. This game is not fun and does not even pretend to have anything to do with soccer at all. I dislike games that are needlessly harsh, but damn, this is worse. It just felt like a quick cash grab for a game, cash in on the world cup by association.
I know this may be an unusually short review, but I just can’t hide my disappointment, Atooi usually delivers great games but this… no, just barely 20% for effort.
