Football Up 3D (Nintendo 3DS) Review

The first thing to be noticed is that Football Up 3D actually represents a curious anomaly: a modern football game that doesn't even try to mimic FIFA or PES mechanics? How peculiar! To be fair, it actually reminisces about a different duopoly, from an era when other games - such as Kick Off 2 and Sensible Soccer - proved themselves immensely popular, thanks to their snappy, arcade controls and fast-paced, yet somehow believable play style.

EnjoyUp surely went that way with Football Up 3D, as it pretty much managed to capture the same flow of said titles, bringing back to the table an old-fashioned football simulation, with the visual frills that would be expected from a release of today. Unfortunately, in spite of the good intentions and some neat ball physics, the game stumbles on various problems. No matter how smoothly it plays, compared to its Wii counterpart, it keeps looking a bit too unpolished: AI malfunctions, unforgiving difficulty curve, and occasionally clunky controls still persist, compromising an otherwise solid structure.

What Football Up 3D offers in terms of content is enough to keep gamers busy for months: up to 50 national teams and two different fields to choose from, quick Exhibition matches, a World Cup tournament, as well as a Training mode to practise with movements, tactics and schemes. On top of that, it's possible to set the match duration - from six-minute skirmishes to a lifelike one-hour-and-half venture - and the team formation, even though the latter can also be switched during gameplay by tapping L.

Not surprisingly, Football Up 3D features simple and arcade-like controls: both Circle and D-pad direct the player, A, B and R fire up high, low and trick shots respectively, with the same inputs commanding the tackle while defending. Hurdles arise with a rather disastrous dash - triggered by the Y button - which doesn't provide a continuous sprint, but instead a weird series of flicks that kick the ball too far away, making for an easy steal and a systematic overturn in the rival's favour.

If there is one technicality Football Up 3D borrowed from Anco's and Sensible Software's masterpieces, it is the 'after touch.' It allows the player to change - quite dramatically so - the ball's direction mid-air, after a shot or a pass. It's a familiar throwback for the more seasoned players, and it adds a level of strategy and precision to the action on the pitch. It is also a gimmick that requires fully mastering in order to stand a single chance against the CPU.