In some respects this remake is actually good. The menu music is reasonably fitting (though repetitive over the course of the campaign), the character portraits, team designs and menus keep the gritty future-cyberpunk feel of the original and the gameplay itself is very similar (I.E. mostly fast-paced and pretty fun).
However, I could never really 100% enjoy the campaign experience, andIn some respects this remake is actually good. The menu music is reasonably fitting (though repetitive over the course of the campaign), the character portraits, team designs and menus keep the gritty future-cyberpunk feel of the original and the gameplay itself is very similar (I.E. mostly fast-paced and pretty fun).
However, I could never really 100% enjoy the campaign experience, and in fact the game has really disappointing omissions both from the perspective of a modern game and even when compared to the original (which is some 23 years old!)
First of all, the animation seems distinctly lazy for a 2013 remake. The sprites are passable but nothing special, and the effects on pick ups around the arena are pretty underwhelming. The "victory animation" played during goals and injuries looks jarringly stupid, with your players doing silly pelvic thrusts and jiggling about like kids.
The injury animation is actually WORSE than the original, with the cool little "zoom windows" showing players up close lying on the floor bloodied or celebrating goals actually gone completely. Instead you just get the old med-bots (cool) and your guy doing the stupid thrusting animation (lame).
The team balance is atrocious, though, which is what really killed the fun for me. You're either matched against teams with awful players who you steamroll 400-0 in a really boring fashion...or your 2 star team is up against a 5 star team of completely maxed out players who proceed to score 18 goals while knocking your whole team unconscious.
You can't even tackle these players in a match up like this to get the ball even if you've been maxing your Power/Tackle stats with a newer team, so you just sit there for the whole game getting a massive beatdown: really, really lame.
Eventually your players also develop to 5 stars after you've played enough of the easy tournaments, at which point these games also become too easy and there is no challenge at all...
Management mode is bare-bones, being practically identical to the old game. You can slowly increase stats of your guys in the gym, or buy new players. However, to get a 5-star guy you have to play about 3 tournaments, saving the whole time, while your opponents can have 9+ 5-star guys right from the start, and their team make-ups never change. Again, LAME.
All in all, fun if you want a quick taste on Steam of what Speedball 2 was like, but fails completely as a modernisation and even detracts from some of the cool features of the original.… Expand
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