A lazy, sloppy and tedious remake of a classic.
After an incredibly long loading process, my first game began. The sides were supposedly blue and red. In reality, one side was black with a slight bluish tint, the other black with a slight reddish tint. Add to that a dark ball and background, and it was virtually impossible to see what was happening. Actually, the game had somehow assigned all controls to a single gamepad button, so there was not a lot of playing to do in any event. An attempt to reconfigure the pad from the in-game options menu saw the game crash to desktop.
The next attempt was with keyboard controls. Unfortunately, after changing the shooting buttons from mouse to keyboard, they refused to work. Several restarts and curses later, a look at the config file revealed that the game was trying vainly to find the new key assigned, the letter "D", on the mouse. It could recognise that a key had been pressed, and assigned that as the new control, but failed to note it was on the keyboard rather than the mouse.
This, then, is the reinvention of Speedball 2, a lazy, sloppy and tedious remake of a classic. From the utterly unimaginative names to the spelling errors and general careless nature of the design, it is obvious this is a half-hearted effort that is only going to irritate fans of the original.
Though players now have individual (if generic) appearances, the original graphics are in some ways preferable - at least it was possible to see which team is which. Running motions are astonishingly choppy, and would be better suited to the Sega Master System than a 2008 PC game. The AI is simply dreadful, often ignoring the ball altogether or running away from it (even the goalkeeper).
Aside from the addition of jump and dodge buttons, the gameplay is remarkably similar - it is simply the murky graphics that make things difficult. While it is certainly desirable to maintain basic similarity to the original, it makes for pretty limited gameplay. The new teams add little to the game - indeed, they all seem quite similar in ability, in stark contrast to the original.
The slow loading times are boring, and in the game the replays and cut scenes are just irritating. This is not a game where you will be celebrating a spectacular goal - most scores come from AI errors.
Undoubtedly the main interest in the game comes from multiplayer, but really, I'd much rather hook up a Sega Master System with two controllers than waste any more time on this.