by Joost Steffensen

Created on: April 24, 2008   Last Updated: April 27, 2008

Playing foosball on the computer sounds like a challenge. How do you copy the hand movements necessary to move from defense to attack and back again? Is is possible to play with two players on each side. Is it possible to imitate the complicated holds and feints that accomplished foosball players have mastered.

I think it would be possible, but sadly Masterkick is not the game to do it. Instead of being able to move the goalkeeper the defense and the attack separately you all move them at the same time. That of course makes it easier to play and learn the game, but it also severely limits the control you have over the players.

When I play foosball I like to have my defenders fill up the gaps left by the mid-fielders. This is not possible here. The only way you can defend is by moving your players up or down. Have you figured out which game that reminds you of? Yes indeed, PONG, the very first computer game.Now I have played variations on pong before, but those were a lot more enjoyable.

The only other measure of control you have is shooting. Strangely enough the way the players shoot in Masterkick is by using an illegal move known as spinning. Now spinning means that you simply give your bar a nasty twist so the players spin out of control. As a result you can kick the ball really hard often resulting in goals. Now the reason this move is illegal is that it simply takes away control from the players and brute force is awarded over skill.

Which brings us back to the lack of control Masterkick offers. You move your players up and down and if you are lucky enough for the ball to land at one of your players feet the only way to continue is to click the mouse and spin your players. Now trying to get of an accurate shot this way is like playing tennis with a golf-club. Passing the ball is out altogether.

Which brings me to the most annoying part of Masterkick. The foosball table appears in a small pop-up on your screen. Now normally i have no problem with that. However since you move the players up and down with your mouse it often happens that the mouse button doesn't actually hover over the pop-up. Now if you click to shoot when this happens, the game pauses and you have to click "resume game" to continue. After a while this got so annoying I simply stopped playing.

Now the graphics are typical for this type of desktop game with clear sharp contrasting colors, but nothing spectacular. It is actually quite reminiscent of the pin-ball game that came standard with windows '98. The music is very brash loud techno-pop, not anything memorable and the first thing I turned of.

The only nice feature is that you can choose between different line-ups with either more defenders or attackers depending on your preference, the only actual improvement on the original foosball concept. However here I'm again annoyed that unlike real foosball there are only three moving bars instead of four.

I most definitely won't be buying this game. I give it 1/5.

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