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.

Back in 2013, the original Blood Dragon roared its way into gaming legend. A spin off of Far Cry 3 and using its game engine, it served as a tribute to every 80s action film and science fiction pop culture reference and simply won over all who played it. With a kick ass sound track and lead hero, Rex ‘Power’ Colt, a Mark IV Cyber Commando Super Soldier, voiced by the icon that is Michael Biehn, it built a huge following that each year since has pestered and begged Ubisoft to do a sequel to it. At E3 2016 during the Ubisoft Briefing, a surprise announcement was made that answered those prayers….well almost. Fans were gifted with the immediate release of the sequel, but it was not what fans had expected yet, Trials of the Blood Dragon was born!

Trials of the Blood Dragon is a merger of Trials Fusion and the tone, style and universe of the original Blood Dragon. I like many fans was left scratching my head at the above trailer as the first was a FPS and played like a Far Cry game. So the notion that the sequel would now use the Trials game series as its basis was unexpected. But it was the sequel so I was genuinely keen to get my hands on it despite not being a huge fan of the Trials series.

Trials of the Blood Dragon (or ToBtBD from now on) is a single player story campaign that uses Trials gameplay to tell the story of Roxanne and Slayter, the teenage children of Rex Colt and Dr Darling, who at the end of the first Blood Dragon became an item. Set years after the first events and now in 2019, we learn that Dr Darling went missing during their childhood and that Rex Colt was slain in battle in Vietnam 4. The kids are Mark VI Cybernetic Super Soldiers themselves and following in their father’s footsteps, jump straight into the war to avenge their father.

The story campaign consist of 27 story missions set in different locations from Vietnam, Miami, Space, Mars and even Hell itself. Each location has a different theme and uses the Blood Dragon style of visuals, power rock soundtrack and cultural references which has now shifted to the 90s to tailor for the age of the twins. It all certainly has the look and feel of what made the original Blood Dragon such fun but the change in gameplay is still the main focus of this sequel.

As you can see from the gameplay above, you take turns in controlling each of the twins who have very different styles of gameplay. Whilst both have riding skills, it is Slayter who is the main specialist rider of the two with Roxanne the stealthier on foot action hero twin. The riding is very much of the precise Trials mechanics where navigating course full of hazards and obstacles against the clock and dominates most of the gameplay in TotBD. Utilising many of the techniques found in Trials Fusion, the levels can range from very basic and easy to manage tracks to very complex tracks later on which I found to be very frustrating and at times broke me out of the game experience but after plugging away and being patient I was able to complete the track, even if the number of faults I triggered were embarrassingly high for that completion.

The use of Trials to base TotBD on will be off putting to many as Trials is really about skill in being able to manage control of the bike both in positioning it into and out of hazards and mastering throttle control and knowing when to use speed and power for the level you are on. Trial and error really is the key to learning the different levels and for his reason each track has a generous checkpoint system and pressing B will reset your position to the last checkpoint you passed or you can press select and restart the whole mission. You are graded and scored for how well you complete each level and your results are placed on an online leader board to compete with the community or friends. The compulsion to improve your time, score and grade will have you repeating the missions or at least returning to them later to see if you can do better and with 27 story missions alone, that is a lot of gameplay to have. But the world of Trials is not as accessible as the FPS style of the first game, so it was a really nice surprise to find that TotBD also mixes this up for the player.

Switching from bike riding to the platforming and shooting gameplay does help to keep the levels fresh. The platforming feels less precise than the bike riding and often can be a little clumsy as you make your way through the level in stark contrast to the precision needed when on the bike stages. They never feel as difficult so can end up having the sense they are more of a mini game to the bike sections but I feel they break up what at times are very frustrating riding levels and should you have a bad grade and sore in one bike section which perhaps has left you feeling a tad rubbish, these non bike stages act as a pick me up to keep your play and the story progressing.

The story is told via cut scenes before, after and during the levels and use an animated visual style keeping in tone with the Blood Dragon presentation style that won over so many. The voice acting is corny but very much in the 90s theme this sequel uses with my main criticism being that the character of Rex ‘Power’ Colt in the first game was created and executed so close to flawlessly in the first game, that the kids never really pick up that mantle in the sequel. They are fun characters, my favourite being the bras Slayter, but both lack the impact that Rex has as a controllable character. The story itself is actually longer and has more depth that the original Blood Dragon and it unfolds at a great pace as you move from the different locations and level set within them. The different gameplay styles come together fluidly to make this sequel interesting enough for fans of the original but the infusion of Trials will still put many off I fear.

I really enjoyed TotBD, I found it challenging but accessible enough with its different gameplay styles to make it fulfilling to play through out. The 90s references all work really well in introducing Roxanne and Slayter as the children of Rex Colt and the story has really clever twists and moments in it. I do wish however that the sequel had followed the FPS route, and it would have been more appealing to fans just because of the nature that Trials is as a game. I would say that TotBD is well worth giving a go for fans of the first and if you have any intrepidation over the Trails element, there is enough around it to make this game highly playable. With collectibles, bonus levels and secrets to discover and unlock, Trials of the Blood Dragon offers so much to be a good sequel but it just never delivers the same experience as the first Blood Dragon which is disappointing but not a reason to hold back on a really fun follow up.

Now I am very much looking forward to and hopeful that a third game will join and take the Blood Dragon saga forward to new heights.