A great acrade FIFA alternative, though not one I'll constantly be coming back to.

User Rating: 7.5 | Academy of Champions: Soccer WII
Arcade football. Hmm. Not something you see every day. Ubisoft have tackled it, and at the end of the road, it wasn't bad.

The idea of the game is to pit yourself as either a boy or a girl and work up through the ranks to become the ultimate football champion.

You can collect EXP and tokens by winning matches and minigames. You can use the EXP to upgrade your characters and the tokens to buy valuable items and gear.

The game has set talents that any player can use. You can also use a dodge while you're on the ball. Both of these require Talent Energy, which you get by winning jostle, headers, tackling or passing successfully and scoring. When your talent bat is full, you can shake the Wii Remote to use your talent.

Apart from that, the gameplay is pretty similar to FIFA. You can send low and high passes and low and high shots. You can jostle for the ball and fight to win headers. And even an arcade game needs the traditional score-and-win thing.

The good side of the game is that there are many characters to unlock, the gameplay is addictive and it's basically a good choice for gamers who aren't really ready for real football simulations. The bad side is that the movements are mostly stable and unless you wrap everything up initially, there isn't much to do when you complete the game. And why can't you play co-op?

Overall, it's a good idea for arcade fans.