Street Power Soccer Review

"Really Lacking."

Campaign

September 1, 2020 at 3:58am
By Jason Stettner

This is a rather interesting title. It’s essentially a shrunken down take on Futsal, which in itself is a smaller form factor version of Soccer/Football. This is a very arcade-like take on the sport in general, with some minor power-ups and over the top action. At the same time, it’s somewhat slow which is odd. To really kick this off I’d like to mention that this is priced far too high for what the value here is. I do not typically like to consider price when reviewing things such as games, but when I see a price point way out of reality in terms of what the product is providing I absolutely must factor this in.

I think, if this were a cheaper offering like other similar arcade titles then this might be a better option. The core style of play isn’t actually too bad, but they try to bloat it in a very lazy sort of way. The “campaign” is just a selection of the modes available in the play now area. If you happen to do the insanely boring tutorials in play now, you’re forced to do them in the campaign again, what a drag.

Anyways, the modes are freestyle, trickshot, street power and panna. Freestyle is a hilariously bad rhythm matching game. Panna is a fast little battle. The trickshot mode was neat concept wise; but sort of just standing there and kicking the ball at, or in things. The heart of this is the Street Power, and that was actually alright. There is also multiplayer to this, but no matchmaking that I saw which is ultimately perplexing. You have to invite people, that’s severely disappointing.

Gameplay

The visuals aren’t anything too special, with the courts being surprisingly well done. Those were appealing, and there is a good selection of them. They typically have some neat visual theme to match a location from around the world. The characters take on a bit of a cel-shaded type aesthetic, it works for the arcade feeling of this experience.

At times some of the styling used in the menus or the general gameplay did feel generations old. You move about playing in matches of 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3. You can do a number of moves to evade opponents, pass or shoot with a neat curve effect Some surprisingly well done base mechanics I suppose. The power-ups didn’t really do much, seemed kind of pointless in their execution.

I will note another highlight is the customization, that was impressive in terms of options and depth. There are some difficulty options in this as well if you need to adjust how hard it is. The character smiles were unsettling too, just saying. That leads me into the animations, which were rather rough and in general the play felt very wonky. Something was constantly off whether you were dashing across the course or trying to pass.

The Conclusion

Street Power Soccer is an incredibly overpriced experience that is lacking in content, variety and excitement. It just sort of blasts popular songs and hopes you’re looking past the various shortfalls. There really isn’t a whole lot to this one, and I hate dragging pricing into game reviews but this one is priced far higher than what it can hope to provide.

Sure, the customization was well done and I did have fun with the core mode. It’s just that there isn’t much to this and it gets boring really fast. The other modes are honestly sort of pitiful. A shame as the courts are decently varied and well done, I will note it’s weird a tutorial map is locked for just the tutorial.

I would have liked more background context in the courts, seemed too minimal at times despite the court itself being typically awesome. I also must mention that it gives uneven Gamerscore when earning Xbox Achievements. I don’t factor that into the score, but it was just one more thing to turn off interest on this one.

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Street Power Soccer Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Reverb

Rating Overall: 3.0