Soccer Story [Xbox]
Developed by Panic Barn, Soccer Story is a game about the beautiful game. You’ll take on the role of one of two twins, Kai or Leo, whose father hasn’t been seen since a mysterious event one year ago that led to the ban of Soccer. Nobody - aside from the government approved Soccer Inc. - has been allowed to so much as play or talk about soccer, in the year since calamity struck. Now, a magical ball has sought you out and you must organise a team to bring soccer back to the world - and fend off the evil Soccer Inc and their nefarious plans.
In order to save soccer you’ll need to seek out suitable players, both for your own team and others, by completing tasks and challenges such as finding hidden goals, rescuing title deeds for a bunch of shopkeepers, or tracking down a pair of shin guards that are locked up in a graveyard. With each new zone you unlock, you’ll need to help band together an opposing team and then take them on - and win that zone’s cup. Once you’ve won each of the four main cups: Soccertown, Crab Beach, Athletic Zone and Zen Zone, you’ll be able to head off to the floating city to compete in the Apple Cup!
Some of the objectives are harder than others, with a few of the timed ones feeling really quite challenging. Sometimes you’ll need to hit a bunch of targets dangling from drones in a specific time-frame - this is usually fairly simple, even for the later ones where you require your stats to have been upgraded (which I’ll elaborate on in a moment) - but for a couple of them (and a later challenge at the dojo) the timing is so tight that it easily takes a few tries to even get close to nabbing the second last target in the time, never mind the last one!
You’ve got stats in four different areas: Speed, Shooting, Energy and Strength - all of which can be upgraded via upgrade medals that you’ll be rewarded with for helping people or by purchasing at each area’s HQ. You can upgrade these for all of your players, but going for your main character first is key. Gaining access to each area is locked behind getting access to a new pair of boots (Sand Boots for the beach, for instance) or keys to unlock barriers and gates. If you make an effort to completing the puzzles and tasks in each area, you’ll find that your team ends up very highly-skilled for the soccer matches themselves, making them an absolute doddle.
Despite being a game about soccer, you don’t actually do a helluva lot of it. You’ll compete in a couple of matches in each area, at 4 minutes long each time - or 3 minutes if doing a 1v1 match - so the amount of time spent doing absolutely anything other than soccer, far outweighs the soccer itself, which I didn’t mind in all honesty, as the soccer isn’t all that exciting really.
Soccer Story is gorgeous, with bright, voxel designs and distinctive differences across each of the areas in the world, right down to the designs of the little mini-goals you’ll find and the inhabitants of each area - with Crab Beach having plenty of beach goers as well as Sharks; to Zen Zone’s ninjas. There are different cups for you to take part in, with one in each Zone. As well as these, you’ve got various challenges to complete, individual to each zone, from target practice for you to refine your aim, dribbling to get the ball from one cone to another and knocking down security cameras or coconuts.
It can feel a tad grindy at times as you loop round the same area for the fifth time in a row, trying to locate the last target that seems to keep eluding you - but there’s also something oddly relaxing about it. Music-wise, there’s only really one single track that loops continuously, but thankfully it’s a simple, peaceful track - so doesn’t end up driving you mad. Taking part in timed challenges will cause a slightly more energetic, stressful track to play - but this seems to be the only time it deviates.
Overall, Soccer Story is a fun game with a relaxed vibe, and much more focus on the exploration and puzzle elements than on the soccer itself - but that’s okay with me. I did run into the odd bug or two, such as getting stuck in the water when I swam too close to a fishing spot, or dribbling my ball too close to trees and poles - and these would vary between requiring a full restart or just randomly mashing buttons in the hopes that something would set me free. Thankfully, the game-breaking bugs that seemed to plague it closer to release haven’t affected me, so these may have been patched out since. There’s also the ability to play single matches outwith the main story - which can be done with friends, giving you another option to play - though with the story and puzzles being the main thing here, this didn’t seem to grab us too much. If you like the sound of Soccer Story, you can pick it up for £16.74 on Xbox, though it’s also available via Game Pass.
In the end, we decided to give Soccer Story the Collecting Asylum rating of 7.5/10.
Are you interested in Soccer Story? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to EvolvePR for the Soccer Story Xbox review code!
