Guts ‘n Goals [Xbox]
Developed by CodeManu and published by PM Studios, Guts ‘n Goals is different from your typical football/soccer based game, in that things are a little bit more… aggressive. You’ve got a baseball bat (or one of a huge range of other weapons) to hit the ball - and your opponents - with, and you’ll need to fight to win in these surprisingly difficult matches.
Working your way through the main game mode, Grand Prix, can be pretty damn challenging, especially as Soccer Matches only require two goals to win - so it can make a match end fairly quickly. You’ve got the standard Soccer Matches, as well as Minigames (including games such as King of the Hill, or a Splatoon styled paint the arena minigame) and Bonus Stages, such as getting the ball from one side of the room to the other within a set amount of time; and you’ll need to successfully get through a sequence of these in order to win. Thankfully, if you lose any particular round, it allows you to retry instead of ending the run there - as this would have made it even more of a task to get through!
The controls feel great, and whilst it does take a bit of getting used to - particularly as you’ll have a cooldown timer after using special abilities, and getting knocked down leaves you out cold for a count of three, there’s a lot of fun in successfully scoring a goal - especially after using a charged attack - and smacking down your opponents. Matches have mutators that kick in during the final minute (if you haven’t reached the two-goal limit by that time), and these can really change things up, with a Spike Ball that will KO you if you bump into it, as well as mutators that cause all opponents to turn invisible - which can make for a truly challenging time - and this is just to name a couple
The visuals are cute and bright, with pixel art style in the levels, and clean, vibrant artwork in the menus and splash screens. Characters are well designed, and you’ve got a bunch of gorgeously designed arenas to play in. With a decent variety of characters to choose from, each with their own individual Skill, and customisable skins and weapons available. Once new skins and weapons have been unlocked, they get added to the roster for you to choose between, though Skins are particular to certain Heroes, whereas the Weapons can be chosen by anyone. The soundtrack is really upbeat and works well with the frenetic energy of each match, with its Arcadey tunes and chaos on the pitch.
There’s tonnes of cute little characters in the audience - and I’m totally not biased here, since I’m one of them! You can see me in the screenshot above, on the left hand side with the red hat, ginger hair and yellow top, standing next to the lil’ axolotl dude. (Psst, it’s also ended up as an inadvertent little reference to Aggro Crab, as the hat and jumper I’m wearing in the photo they used for reference is some of their merch!).
There’s a Roguelike mode known as MVP Hunter that can be unlocked, allowing you to choose your path, and unlock ‘cards’ with new skills and additional stat boosts or teammates as you progress. You’ll come across ‘Random Events’ which will act similarly to old text-based adventure games, where you will be given a choice to make that will impact you in some way; such as choosing to open or ignore a suitcase, that potentially could gain you (or your enemies) a teammate, but will make no difference if left. Having these choices adds a little risk-reward to the gameplay, and keeps things interesting. Death is final in MVP Hunter, no retries like with the Grand Prix - so you need to be mega careful, especially if you make it to the boss!
You can view all of the characters you’ve unlocked via the Collection screen, with a total of 409 items unlockable across Characters, Skins, Weapons, Stadiums, Gamemodes, Mutators, and Secrets. There’s unlockable sections that will appear upon getting beyond a certain point, with Challenges giving you a bunch of different tasks to try your hand at; a currently still locked-for-us mode (that we believe will be unlocked after completing all MVP Hunter contracts, but damn that is hard) and Minigames, where you can play the eight Minigames outwith the Grand Prix mode (once you’ve unlocked them all). There’s also a Shop where you can purchase new Heroes, Skins and Weapons with your hard earned coins, and this refreshes over time to add new stock, or you can pay 50 coins to refresh it early.
Overall, Guts ‘n Goals is a fantastic game, and one that gives you tonnes of reasons to play. An online mode is coming soon, which we really can’t wait for, as it will add even more replayability to the game - and the manic, fast-paced matches are perfectly suited to online play. The local co-op is a lot of fun, but you’re limited to who you can play with, so opening it up to online will give you the chance to play against others at any time. Priced at £12.49 on the Xbox Store, it’s a great price for a game filled with so much content, and we’re excited to see what the future holds for it.
In the end, we decided to give Guts ‘n’ Goals the Collecting Asylum rating of 8.5/10.
Are you interested in Guts ‘n’ Goals? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to PM Studios for the Guts ‘n’ Goals Xbox review code!
