Possibly my most-played game

I have to admit that it took a long time for me to get used to the controls, but once I did I found that I ended up playing this game all the time, almost always in an 18-game, two-minutes-per-game league where I play England (which may be a little odd as Im from the US!).

Yes, the controls are strange. To move a player forward you swipe from the top half of the screen to the bottom half. It sounds backwards, but it makes sense when you think of it as the way rowing a boat works. To kick the ball you swipe upwards from the bottom of the screen to the top. You can apply "english" to the ball depending on the way you swipe, even to the point of bending the ball around opposing players. Thats not easy to master, however.

I started out at the easy level and was beaten almost all the time. I kept playing, though, and eventually moved up to medium and then on to hard (they call the levels Amateur, Semi-Pro and Pro).

Yes, many of the reviews say the controls are crazy. However, its worth practicing because once you "get it" the game is incredibly fun to play. I can take a 10-minute break and play three complete league games. I can often win the league but not every time, so even though Ive "mastered" the game theres still some challenge to it and it hasnt gotten boring at all. Theres also a World Cup tournament mode, as well as skills challenges. Some of those are incredibly difficult (in a fun sort of way). I may never be able to score 5 out of 10 free kicks against Germany as it seems almost impossible to bend the ball around all their players, but I still keep trying it every now and then.

You can set the games to be as long as 6 minutes, although I keep it at 2 minutes. You can also use the tilt sensors to move the players, but I havent actually tried this since my first few games. It was impossible to control at the time because I was still learning how to move the players but now that I know how to play the game it might add a new dimension to the play. You can also play against someone via Bluetooth but Ive never tried that either.

If you like soccer/football youll probably like this game, but it *will* take you quite some time to get used to the controls. I have found it worth the effort, although I can see how others may give up before getting good at it simply because its hard to master how the game works. Theres a practice mode where its your 5 players against only a goalkeeper, so you can work on it until you get the idea. I spent a lot of time in that mode until I felt confident enough to play against a full team, and even then I got beat pretty much all the time until I got used to the game. But putting in that time has paid off as I play this game all the time and enjoy it immensely.

I almost never write reviews, and certainly not ones this long, but Ive gotten so much enjoyment from the game that I wanted to try to balance out the negative reviews a little bit. If you look at the chart, you can kind of see theres an odd distribution of ratings. Almost nobody is in the middle, and practically everyone else loves it except for the people who gave it only one star. If an apps truly bad youd probably see a few five-stars and a ton of one-stars, with a slow increase along the way. That this game has a lot of one-stars and a lot of five-stars with not much in the middle says to me that the people who get the controls love the game, while others dont get it and therefore hate the game. Im obviously in the group that loves it.

selgart about Touch Soccer 3D