Review: Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival

Football video games have always been hugely popular, great to control your favourite footy team and take them to virtual glory, often more so than in the real world (speaking as a Gooner!) and the level of detail and depth in modern football games are simply amazing. But before FIFA and Pro Evolution, there was Sensible World of Soccer and before that there was Kick Off. It has been 30 years since Kick Off took home computers by storm and much has changed since my old Amiga days. Now as a Playstation 4 exclusive, Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival is bringing Kick Off back and the nostalgia feeling is high for me with this, but can this release bring enough to the table to recreate what was…the beautiful game?

I often look back to my Amiga days with huge fondness. It was a simpler time in terms of hardware and the focus on amazing gameplay is what made so many games iconic and the stuff of legends. Kick Off was the first football video game I fell in love with its top down view and fast paced action. When I heard that it was being brought back as a Playstation 4 exclusive release my smile and hopes for it were huge. It was going to be a remastered version but it promised to keep all the original styles and gameplay as it was but brought to a modern console with online play. This was a chance to showcase the very game series that, pardon the pun, kicked off a whole genre in sports computer games that led to Sensible Soccer and then Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA.

So with much excitement and intrigued my launched Kick Off Revival on my PS4 and simply soaked in that amazing menu music once again, so much so that I left it running for a good ten minutes as I edged the volume on my TV just a little bit higher each of those minutes. This was going to be a nostalgia trip of epic proportions, or so I hoped. Nostalgia has a funny way of building expectations and clouding judgements with the reality being far different from hopes and this is the case with Kick Off Revival.

For the asking price of £7.99 as a digital purchase from the PSN Store, or you can buy a full retail boxed version for £14.99, you sadly do not get a whole lot. Kick Off Revival is very limited on what it offers players as it starts off with two main menu choices to pick, Play or Practice. Practice will transport you to a training field where you control a single team on the pitch with a number of challenges to complete triggered by taking the ball into certain circle zones scattered around the pitch. Now it has to be said that this is a practice mode and no a tutorial, at no time will the game offer to teach you how to do any of the skills that the challenges are based on, so it will be left to the player to work it out for themselves how to do each one and then to practice that skill which is something that the traditional and somewhat unchanged Kick Off control system in Revival makes very difficult without any guidance.

The controls have remained exactly how they have always been in Kick off which uses a single button for kicking, passing, shooting and tackling. Unlike modern football games, Kick Off never has used what is known as the “sticky foot” system which enables the ball to stick to the feet of the player with it for better control. Instead you will need to master how to keep the ball whilst trying to use the single button system to control what to do with it. When a player has the ball a single press with kick the ball forward with only a minor level of control whilst holding down the X button will hold the ball to your feet for more refined movements but this locks your player to be looking in the same direction as the moment you began to hold X, which makes it rather awkward to aim where you want to place the kick if all you are doing is slowly strafing and player is looking the opposite way. A hard press of X will kick the ball powerfully forward. It can all feel very chaotic at times and just far too frantic as you fight to not only win the ball but to control it enough to do something with it other than aimlessly booting it forward and hoping you have a player on the end of the kick to carry on. But this is all very original Kick Off, but back then when I played using a single button joystick or more often, the keyboard of my Amiga to play the game, holding a modern Dual Shock 4 pad with all the buttons for none of them to be used at the same time of having a very precise analogue stick for movement seem all but redundant as you chase the ball down. I would have preferred to see some refinement, keep the gameplay that Kick Off was known and loved for, but acknowledge that its control system needed updating for a modern audience and hardware and perhaps even of used a “classic” control system for the faithful and a modern “arcade” control system to make it more accessible and natural for a PS4 Dual Shock 4.

Outside of the practice area you do have the main core of the game within the Play menu. Right now all that is available to play is either local two player friendly, a single player friendly and ‘Netplay’ to challenge players online. The main and only tournament option available is the European Cup, which is a recreation of the current Euro 2016 tournament with the default groups reflecting the real life tournament although it can be randomized if you choose to. I was hoping and expecting to have a few more options than that, but it also means something else that was disappointing to me that Kick Off Revival only included European International teams and players, no club teams or club tournaments to take part in. Those familiar with how football games work with licensed teams and players will appreciate that Kick Off Revival does not have the license rights for the teams it features so players will have similar sounding names to their real life counterparts so we have Joe Hert in goal for England and Harris Cane as a striker.

At this moment the game also lacks any editing options to rename players, something that I would have expected to be a natural inclusion but again, it is absent for this released version. I say at this moment because on the day Kick Off Revival came out, a press release to accompany it announced that new features will be coming to the game in future title updates and patches. These ‘coming soon’ features are simply a list of things that quite frankly should have been included in the released version such as adding penalty shootouts for cup final matches, a yellow and red card system and different referees with some more harsh than others. The promise of the addition of more teams is welcome but the inclusion of club teams and cup with customisation options are currently down as ‘further down the line’ additions as 2 Vs 2 player matches.

That really is the kicker for me, I gave Capcom a hard time over how it released Street Fighter V with a similar lack of content and features that it quite simply should have included in the released version of the game and has paid the price both in sales and reputation by not doing so. Despite Kick Off Revival being a cheap arcade title, for the asking price I do believe all of the above should have been included from the start, rather than releasing to cash in on the current Euro 2016 tournament hype. The nostalgia would have been enough to bring the old faithful, like myself, to the party and word of mouth would have broadened the appeal even more so. But you cannot help but feel this is a game lacking of options even for the low asking price. The gameplay is very old school and whilst frustrating is full of fun to have if you were a player of the original games.

But if you are coming into this as someone perhaps new to Kick Off and more familiar with modern FIFA and PES, it is going to feel like a right mess with the promise of new features all being rather down the road, a tad off putting. After 30 years my memories of the first Kick Off games are still enough for me to smile whilst playing Kick Off Revival, but the glaring lack of options and refinement that could have been so easily improved with a fresh control system and use of a ‘classic’ control type alongside far more obvious mode inclusions could and would have made this an absolute must have title. But right now, it is light on content, harsh on accessibility and it will need to rely on the nostalgia factor to get people interested in it for now. When the new features are added it will certainly be worth the current asking price, but it pains me to say that the video game that truly kicked off the video gaming love of the beautiful game, has not aged well and this revival has sadly done little to bring anything modern to make it feel as though it still has a place.

With practice and time you can get used to the control system but never enough to feel 100% in control of what is happening on the pitch despite the AI clearly being able to. I will always enjoy seeing the lines in the pitch of the many 10 metre epic sliding tackles made in a match but frustrated when those tackles are executed when not wanting to do so. Kick Off Revival is a look back to a very different time in football gaming, but it needed more polish and more content that it released with and that for me is deserving of a Yellow card review.

How it avoids a second yellow and a red card sending off will all be determined by how fast the future content plans are implemented.