When Electronic Arts had not yet dominated everything with the FIFA series, two British football games originally competed for the fans’ favor on the Amiga: Kick Off by Dino Dini and Sensible Soccer by Sensible Software were fast-paced pixel games from a bird’s eye view and were fun rather than simulation-oriented, but were then largely forgotten. In 2016, Dini’s comeback attempt, Kick Off Revival (21% in M! 08/16), was a complete failure. Ex-Sensible man Jon Hare, on the other hand, took a long time to return and, after a few years of testing his mettle on Apple Arcade, ventured onto consoles – starting with the Switch version; further ports have not yet been announced.
Sociable Soccer 24 is committed to the idea of offering uncomplicated football fun. The controls are accordingly kept simple with passes, shots and lobs (the latter of which is only of limited use), and you can also sprint and slide tackle. On the pitch, it’s quite pleasant to play, provided you put up with the jerky graphics and accept that fouls are almost always punished with cards and that goalkeepers are all too happy to let more than just medium-range shots slip through. In addition to dozens of cup competitions, there’s a career in which you work your way up the leagues and improve your squad, but this is quite a long-winded process. There are supposedly online matches, but we couldn’t find them in our test version. In addition, the settings are spartan.
