Football Heroes League

Do you know what happens when you take a heaping handful of incredibly generic character designs, a cup of Rocket League, a dash of FIFA, three teaspoons of Super Mario Strikers, six teaspoons of microtransactions and a bag of frustratingly bad game mechanics and mix all the ingredients in a household assistant, blend for four hours and then just leave it to sit in the pantry for a few weeks? Then you get Football Heroes League and it's not a very well baked cake. Not at all, actually.

"Yes!" I thought when Petter asked if anyone wanted to review Football Heroes League. I hadn't heard of it before but I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised by a nice mix between Rocket League and regular car-free football. Having played the heck out of both FIFA and Rocket League over the years, it certainly sounded like something for me to sink my teeth into. So, with my hands in front of the computer and keyboard, I started the game and waited to be enchanted and gripped by yet another cheeky football-like battle simulator, but all that delight and engagement was completely absent and my mood was lowered to division four somewhere.

Let me start with the superficial, that's where the majority of the content is anyway. The design is so bland and generic that I was frozen in front of the screen when I first saw the game in motion. It's clear they've looked at Fortnite and thought they'd emulate their recipe for success. Highly recognisable characters that people will pay good money to dress up in different clothes and themes. Unfortunately, they missed the mark there, and quite badly. To me, who is not at all familiar with the development of the game, it looks like they asked an AI bot to design a character and then modelled it in 3D and pushed it straight into the game. It's not just the characters that are boring, generic and mealy-mouthed - the whole game has that tone in everything from the menus to the football pitches and the way the players celebrate the goals with Fortnite dances with a high (high!) cringe factor.

It is probably appropriate to describe a little about the structure of the game and what you actually have to do. Football, everyone knows what it is. You kick a ball into the goal and score. It's the same recipe in Football Heroes League, but it's a bit like the developers, Run Games, have gone out of their way to make it as gooey as possible. Gooey? you're thinking - and yes, it's a fair question. You can play two-on-two or three-on-three and although the pitches are relatively large, there's no surface to play any football on because all the players are frantically pressing the shoot buttons and repeating special abilities over and over again so that anything that might resemble football is thrown off a cliff and relegated to just goo.

Nor is it helped by the fact that control is unnecessarily difficult to master. It's certainly possible to master it, but it's hard to find the motivation to even wander a bit on the way there. I played Football Heroes League on computer, with mouse and keyboard and it was not a great experience, in retrospect. While running, you are supposed to aim with the mouse when passing or shooting. The idea is also to hold down the right mouse button to dribble the ball while jumping with space and running fast with the shift key. Add a few extra keys (Q, E and R to be precise) to accommodate the special attacks. A little extra spice is added when you shoot and have to hold the left button on the computer mouse just long enough to fire a shot that doesn't roll along the grass like a senile turtle with rollerblades. If you want to get fancy, you can do that too, of course, pressing a few buttons here and there to dab the ball in the air. It may not sound difficult, but then add both players and opponents who do everything to sabotage even an attempt to play real football. What makes it even worse is that no one is playing the game, so the developers have crammed it full of bots who obviously didn't see Zidane, Messi and Bergkamp play football. It's a constant churn and... well, gooey.

Then the game is poorly optimised too. It often drops down to 40-50 frames per second and that even though I have a nice computer. It's worth mentioning that the game is released in Early Access and that Run Games will hopefully fix flaws and improve the game before it is released in its final form. The graphics in general are also not something to be proud of. They're grainy and there is a motion blur filter over the game that cannot be turned off. With all the graphics settings at max, it looks okay but falls down because it is, once again, so ridiculously generic.

Let's return to the characters once more. We have five football heroes to choose from and I thought I'd introduce them one by one. First we have Jett Kenzo, apparently a deadly striker who can shoot the balls so hard that the shots burn right through the opponents. Then there's Frostine, a midfielder who can control the midfield with the help of ice. The third hero is called Beckers and she too is a fast, quick and hard fighting midfielder. Next to last is Leo, a lion who is also a defender, and a strong one at that, easily breaking the legs of unsuspecting footballers. Last in line is Bun-E, who with his army of robotic rabbits creates an impenetrable defence. Together they create the most generic bunch of characters ever created, and that's not a bad thing.

The biggest problem I have is with Bun-E and her bunny mates. Not only is her design clearly ripped off from D.Va from Overwatch, but her army of bunnies is the most annoying thing I've ever encountered in a game. They literally run around her in the game, adding even more goo to an already gooey game. Like all the other characters, her special attacks are frustrating as she can send the bunnies like missiles down the field and further (!) add to the gooey mess that is Football Heroes League.

The feeling I get is that Run Games have rushed this game out to beat Sloclap's new football game - Rematch. They want to ride the wave, the hype and grab players before it's released. It didn't turn out well, unfortunately. It's definitely a shame because this is a genre that could definitely use more quality games. What I would have liked was more space, more opportunity to actually play football and less generic rubbish. Unidentified and boring, that's Football Heroes League in a nutshell and I hope Run Games can stir the pot and fix the game before it's released, but to be honest I don't think it's possible without throwing everything in the bin and starting from scratch.