Oh dear.

Real Football 2009 looks wonderful on the N-Gage – the art department totally earned their wages with the menus and graphics on show, the 'digital pack shots' and in-store graphics. It's about the only unqualified success in the mess of Real Football 2009.

Gameloft's latest release for the N-Gage platform is, amazingly, a port of an existing mobile game, namely Real Football HD. What's been added to the N-Gage version is the usual grafting of progress points to make up the 1000 N-Gage Arena points, along with some higher quality sound. Beyond that, the core game play is the same, the initial preferences are the same, and it all feels rather cold, clinical and... average.

I wonder just what Gameloft do to port these games and if it involves any extra gameplay testing? As well as moving your selected footballer around in the game, you have three action keys... “pass”, “shoot” and “wiggle about a bit to avoid someone.” Given the N-Gage is built around two action keys on the top of the device, you'd think the two main actions (pass and shoot) would be under them.

Nope, the main key, to pass the ball, is actually the cursor button. The most popular action key is now in the most awkward place, as any movement towards the middle of the cursor area stops your player running. I can see why, under a regular mobile game, you would follow the java paradigm of putting the main action under the central button (or the '5' key), but it makes little sense on the N-Gage.

You could argue that people can re-define the keys themselves, but that's a cop-out in my opinion. The expected control set when you pick up a game should be the default. There doesn't appear to have been any effort placed in making sure the title fits the N-Gage dynamic. If it was good enough for a regular mobile release, then it's good enough here, seems to be the thinking from Gameloft.

There's also a blatant problem with sound levels, as the crowd noise changes rather abruptly to a louder volume when you get closer to your opponents' goal. It's not linear, but a sudden step up, as if a new sound sample is being played (which it is), but there's no effort been made to blend the two different sounds to create a cohesive crowd.

All of this is a shame because there's a half-decent football game trying to break free in Real Football. The obvious comparisons in the N-Gage environment is with Electronic Art's FIFA series, now on its second yearly release with FIFA 2008. Rather than go for the realistic approach exemplified in FIFA, Real Football feels more arcade-like. There's less emphasis on tactics, although you can still select your team formation and if you should be attacking or defending, but one notable omission makes it hard to try anything other than kick the ball up the pitch and hope (which admittedly has done Scottish Football no harm in the last twenty years).

Without a radar, showing an overview of the entire pitch, you lose the ability of having a good overview of all the action and are left with what you can see on the screen. And while it all looks pretty and well modelled (and I'd say that the graphical quality is on a par with the FIFA N-Gage titles), the gameplay underneath just does not match up to that same quality. Whether it is hurt by sluggish reactions to the control system, too much computer control of players on your own team, or a general malaise in quality control I don't know, but there is no sparkle to this game.

And thanks to a lack of licensing, Real Football can't use certain team names, so look for the Manchester Reds (Man United) and Merseyside (Everton) to take to the pitch in 'The League.' Which just looks silly and amateurish.

Real Football makes the same mistake that Need For Speed Undercover made. It's boring.

After reviewing FIFA, I kept coming back to the game and was happy to play it for fun. In the case of Real Football, as I approach the end of this review all I can think is that I won't have to run it again, and that fills me with a sense of relief. That's a bad place to be.

I'll give Real Football one tip of the hat, and that it does get better after the initial experience, but unfortunately it's starting from such a low threshold that it doesn't lift the game high enough that I can recommend it. You're all more than welcome to try the demo, but Real Football doesn't make it over the dividing line of 50% between 'try this game' and 'ignore this game'.

AAN Score: 46%

-- Ewan Spence, April 2009