Real Winners: Victoryball

This is a tough one, and even as I type this review I am conflicted about giving it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. The recommendation I am making comes with a lot of caveats, but the very attractive price makes it worth taking a chance on. I love this type of game, and these developers have gone all out trying to cover the bases of a good "couch arena" competition. The 4 varieties of match (basically Foosball (“Victoryball”), Dodge-Ball, Capture the Flag (“Trophy Troubles”) & King of the Hill) are sprinkled with power-ups and craziness and some pretty funny gags. The games “power ups” which add obstacles, Weapons, change the size of the players or even turn them into cars is nicely implemented, and scoring sometimes becomes secondary to seeing just how nuts things can get on the field. Growing up with 8-bit consoles, it seems to me this type of play-with-friends game would be far more popular, but there seems to be only a handful them on Steam that I try to snatch them up whenever I find one. They are perfect to play with kids, and “Real Winners” has both a great concept and a fun look to it. I so SO wanted to love this game. But... and there are a LOT of buts... First of all, its buggy. The game was just released 2 months ago so perhaps they will be addressed, but right out of the gate there were issues with the camera obscuring ends of the playing field, players becoming stuck after collisions, and other minor glitches. Also, players sometimes interact with objects inconsistently, with one player triggering a ‘perk’ automatically, while the same player needs to hit a button to do so. Still, early days, so not a deal breaker yet (assuming the devs are planning on patching this thing up a little). Then there is the “feel” of the game. Some of the movement feels muddy and slow, and some controls are counter-intuitive. As the controls are not customizable, this can make for a much steeper learning curve than a game of this type should have. This may be something that players can adjust to over time, but after a couple of days with this game I am still having trouble figuring things out. Granted, in the chaos of a match with some friends, this might not be as much of a problem, but I found playing it with my child frustrating as I could not explain the cause-and-effect certain moves or buttons made. The camera also has the same problem many of these arena type games do, where the field of view doesn’t give a lot of headroom where the scores are located making visibility a little more obscured than is comfortable. But then we come to the two most troublesome elements of the game. The first is the Menu Music… oh dear lord the Menu Music. It is a short and repetitive loop that will drive you rapidly insane. It’s a minor issue, easily solved with a mute button, but it’s there. The second problem is far worse: this game NEEDS a “Play Again” button. Some matches are very VERY short, which is fine, but to then have to go back to the home screen, pick the same scenario, then pick your team and robot for all players, and THEN get to play again… it seems the setup takes longer than the actual game. There should have been the option to just hit a button and replay the same match without going through all the setup again. For every gripe I have so far, THIS is the one that caused the most frustration… and the one I hope the developers might go back and patch. I hope they fix it because, despite all the gripes, there is a fun little game at the core of all this. Competitive “Couch Arena” games like this are not very common, and this one covers a LOT of bases. I love the variety of the matches and I think the style and humor are very enjoyable. Despite the many issues with the game I still have to recommend it as it does a lot right, and when you aren’t being held up by some of the glitches it can be a very immersive and enjoyable experience to play with a buddy or three. With just a few little fixes and tweaks, this could be a really fantastic game, but as it stands its still worth the price of admission for the things it does right.

Awesome!! Having a lot of fun playing with friends. Not that many games like this and I love local multiplayer!!