What combines the “English” of pool, and the competitive edge of air hockey, with a little soccer (English football) thrown in? Nope not bowling. Hehe, I know, bowling doesn’t have any soccer in it at all. Try again. Umm ran out of guesses? Actually I have, okay, it’s foosball! Yay! Who doesn’t like foosball? Well actually I haven’t played it in years, so I don’t remember if I like it or not. This, little fact, should hopefully have no bearing on this review.
The name: Foosball Maniac; The developer: Cybertron BT; The challenge: Can you make a playable computer foosball simulation. Well I’ve tried this, the bad news is, I can’t really recommend it because it’s a pain to control the rods and paddles. I think you could try the demo and see if you could get a handle on it, someone other than me might be able to. I played it for a while, messing around with the various options, but to no avail. More often than not I’d end up shooting the ball backward into my goal.
The interface is fairly complex. You have different rod control methods. Manual uses 1, 2, 3, and 4 number keys to switch rods, where you use the mouse to rotate the rods to flip the paddles. Problem here is that you’re doing two different things at once, often during split second decisions. You have an all mode, where it does all of them. Problem with this is that you end up flipping the ball toward your goal more often with this. Then there’s auto, which actually selects rods based on where the ball is. This is the easiest. There are also several different player options. For instance, there’s a rotational boundary, which means that it will rotate at a max of 180 degrees from side to side. There’s paddle direction. Normal is to move your mouse left to to rotate the paddle left and thus hit the ball to the right. Opposite is of course opposite. Then there’s mouse sensitivity options. I stopped playing around with it, when I was sure there was no combination of options which would allow me to control it well enough.
Okay so. The control is a pain. I have a suggestion, but the developers may not take it because they’ve already released. In any case I would suggest one more mode of control. Manual with mouse control. What this means is that you would have to left-click on a control rod, and hold the button down while you rotated the rod by shifting your mouse from side to side. This would give it more of a feel to real-life foosball, where you’re having a hand on two rods, although this would only be one rod at a time as most users only have one mouse at a time. This is just a suggestion, but essentially click-drag control. I think I might have a better time with that. In any case I can’t seem to really play, it frustrates me trying to control it.
The graphics are fine for what they are. They’re fairly pleasant to look at. The sounds are adequate, and the music while good, doesn’t seem to change at all. I just seems to be the same tune over and over, and I can’t find anywhere to change that song.
Final Analysis: Much too difficult for me. If you like a challenge, though, maybe this is for you.
Name: Foosball Maniac
Developer: Cybertron BT
Price: $9.99
Where you can get it: Foosball Maniac download page.
Tags: Foosball Maniac, game, games, independent, Indie, Simulation