Soccer Gaming

New Star Soccer is an independently designed game, developed by the people at New Star Sports. Unlike many football games, which concentrate on team play, New Star Soccer focuses solely on the individual player, taking a youngster up from a trainee through to potential international stardom. Our Soccer Gaming review of the title is here to give our community a little information about the franchise, as well as offer you the opportunity to win a copy of New Star Soccer 2010 for the PC.

New Star Soccer is a mix between an RPG game and the Be A Pro / Become A Legend mode currently popular in the major football gaming franchises. You start the game as a custom player, customising features such as your appearance, physical attributes and personality. You can then pick which league to join and which team to sign for. You start as a youth player, with a very basic contract and depending on the team you sign for, a certain limit to your playing opportunities. Sign for Chelsea or Arsenal, and expect to end up on loan within the first few weeks, whereas going to a League One or Two club may be your best chance of finding regular for team football. Straight away, this gives a dimension to the game away from the FIFA / PES game modes, as you feel a genuine interaction with the club you are at.

You are given several information screens, similar to that of a football management simulation. All serve a different purpose, ranging from your personal stats, to information about your team to your relationships within the game. This is where the real RPG element comes in to the game. With limited free time and energy levels each week, you have to make a choice on whether to socialise with friends or spend time doing training.  As the season progresses and you continue as a player, there will the opportunity to develop relationships with a girlfriend, have children and get married. All of this in turn affects your happiness and well being. Again, it is this level of depth that separates New Star Soccer from anything else on the market. If you make it to the top, you can earn sponsorship deals, buy new vehicles and property and enhance your media profile, which in turn earns you more money. The mobile home at £10,000 is well out of your budget when you start the game, but one day you may be able to spend the £100,000,000 on your own private island! Living the dream!

Perhaps the best feature in the whole of the RPG element on New Star Soccer is the inevitable pit falls of professional football. Spending time with your mates or refusing to sign autographs is one thing, but the world of football is occasionally ravaged by addiction to gambling, drugs or alcohol, and all of these are a key part of New Star Soccer. As a young player earning a couple of hundred pounds a week, clicking on the Casino button might seem a quick way of earning a bit more money, but as you start to lose more, you may earn a negative reputation with the media, which will cost you potential revenue or even your place in the team. Choosing to take performance enhancers may give you a momentary advantage in terms of being able to train a little longer, but the affect on your body may mean your manager asks you to check into rehab. All these decisions are fully in your control, and the games at the casino and the horse racing are fully interactive.

Unsurprisingly, New Star Soccer suffers from EA Sport’s dominance when it comes to licenses. From player names to team names, everything is one or two letters off being correct, and whilst this may seem frustrating at first, it doesn’t really make too much difference. Playing for Wulves or Bleckpool is to be expected from a independently developed game, and at no point do you really wonder who that player is or which team that was! 

The in game action is a real make or break feature on a game like this. It is also a fine line to judge because with a small development budget, it is not fair to compare the game to the big boys, who throw hundreds of thousands of pounds into development and then have huge marketing teams to match. On the other hand, New Star Soccer 2010 retails for £17.99, the same price as many of these mainstream games now cost in the shops. When setting that price, reviewers and gamers alike must take into account the game they are getting for their money, and this proves to be one of the few criticisms of New Star Soccer 2010. The on pitch action is very little more than a modified Sensible Soccer, with the added perk of only controlling one player. Unlike “Sensi” you have a sprint button, a lob button and a call for the ball button, but other than this the player animations, movement and game play is very similar. In fact, I personally find Sensible Soccer’s graphics slightly more appealing than the semi-3D models on display in New Star Soccer 2010. The AI is frustrating, and away from the ball players seem to be in their own dream world. This may have not been noticeable should I have been able to change the player I was in control of, but the CB who kept on dropping into his own penalty area, conceding space and ultimately allowing a shot started to really grate on me. The controls work well, with the option of mouse, keyboard, and combination of the two or a joy pad. The keyboard keys are fully customisable, and really take my back to my spectrum days.

All the above said, the in game action is playable, and from my experience with the series, is improving in each instalment. I would rather New Star Soccer offer this kind of game mode and do it to a standard which means I can tolerate playing as opposed to try an enhanced 3D version that renders all the other excellent features pointless. After playing it, FIFA and PES really show their quality, but I think the whole thing that must be remembered is the New Star Soccer does the other aspects of the game, much better than Be A Pro or Become A Legend.

New Star Soccer 2010 is definitely worth the look for any footballer gamer. It offers a huge level of depth with ‘character development’ and has some game modes that will really make you sit back and smile. The in game action is average, but everything else is well above, and you really feel that the developers have spent the time on the product, and also are real football fans! There are several times when I have been playing the game and wondered image if Konami did this, or why can’t EA Sports include that, and for an independent developer, that is exceptional praise indeed.

The trial version of New Star Soccer is available for free download by following the link to http://www.newstargames.com/nss2010.html. The site also features a video of the game in action, and the ability to digitally buy the game online. To coincide with this review, New Star Games have very kindly given us two free copies of New Star Soccer for free, which can be activated digitally. If you are interested in winning a copy, simply e-mail me on dan@soccergaming.com with the answer to the following question:

Name two other games developed by New Star Games (not including the New Star Soccer series).

Please include your e-mail address on your answer, and only one entry per e-mail address. The closing date for competitions is Monday 31st May 2010, and winners will be chosen at random from all the correct entries. Please put the term New Star Soccer in the subject bar of your e-mail, and good luck