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http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/06/04/the9-creates-the-winning-goal-on-facebook/
With the World Cup just around the corner, it’s no surprise that we’re beginning to see soccer-manager games appearing in force. We’ve recently reviewed Playfish’s FIFA rendition and Watercooler’s more casual Epic Goal; today, we’re looking at yet another soccer game, with the difference being that it’s from a Chinese company. Developed by The9, based in Shanghai, Winning Goal takes all of the more familiar elements and marries them with newer mechanics to give this soccer app its own unique flavor.
The goal of Winning Goal is straightforward enough: manage your soccer team to be the best. Players are granted a starting lineup up of five players that, based on their attributes, are placed in the offensive, defensive, or goalkeeping roles. From here, they can challenge up to six random people (or friends) to automated exhibition games.
These matches are just a visual display of your players’ skills, taking 90 seconds to play out. Everything is presented in a simplistic, top-down point of view with a narration on what’s happening scrolling past at the bottom. Most players skip this sort of animation, which would be nice in Winning Goal, in which it’s truly lacking. Unfortunately, the skip button doesn’t currently work.
Once each match is over, players earn a chunk of experience and a random Prize Drawing. This is one way you can improve your team, as the potential rewards include new players (of varying talent), extra experience, and player skills.
Skills, actually, are another rather important feature to point out, as The9 actually takes a curious route. There are two types of skills: Player and Manager. As noted, player skills are won randomly after a match during your prize drawing, making it prudent to play the maximum number of games a day. Once the skill is applied, it will be used randomly in the automated matches.
The only real downside is that the randomness may leave out individual players. The manager skills address this issue, with talent trees resembling those in World of Warcraft (perhaps a little too much). Sadly, it doesn’t appear that you can pick and choose which skills to take. As we leveled up, they were just filled in for us. All the same, they look pretty cool, and act as passive bonuses applying to offense, defense, or team strategy.
There are a few other ways to improve your team as well. The simplest means is by scouting new players, which takes the greater part of a day to do. Over time, information about the player is slowly revealed, and once completed, they can be recruited to the team. Interestingly enough, this is also one of the social mechanics: if you wait around too long to recruit someone, your friends can snatch them up without having to wait. This makes for an excellent risk versus reward mechanic for having multiple friends playing with you.
Individual player stats can also increase as a reward for betting. This is actually a wonderful inclusion for soccer fans, as players can bet on actual soccer games ranging from league games to the World Cup itself. By betting one of your players, and picking the winning team, they will level up and improve all attributes. Of course, if you lose, they will level back down, and if they are level zero, you will lose them completely.
Beyond skills and new players, Winning Goal has a number of other novel features. Players can challenge not only other managers in league games for profile trophies, but also World Cup championship teams from the history of the sport. They can even attempt to create what is called a “Dream Team” that is made up of all of the biggest players in soccer, both past and present.
If we have any serious qualms with this soccer manager, they’re in the presentation department. The app feels very bloated and busy. On the homepage itself, it looks more like a Microsoft product than a game, with buttons and links littering the interface. Granted, it’s all crisp and clean, but the intricacy is likely to terrify your average Facebook user. Moreover, while the collection elements are great, the lack of player control in customization is a bit disappointing.
Overall, Winning Goal can very well appeal to both soccer fans and team manager fans. The betting is a wonderful way to marry the app with the sport itself, and the collection element will keep many users playing for a good long time. That said, with a number missed customization opportunities and the sometimes overwhelmin, interface, just as many users may be driven away. Luckily, most of the major issues are on the surface, leaving the possibility of easy improvements to the game. |
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发表于 2010-6-5 15:51:00
