iFoosball – iPhone Review

Developer: Spruce Technologies
Price: $1.99
Version reviewed: 2.0

iPhone Integration: 5 stars
User Interface Rating: 5 stars
Re-use/Replay Value: 4 stars
Overall Rating: 4.7 stars

For all those people who are wondering what foosball is, it’s a table-soccer game.
I being a major foosball fan, really wanted to try out iFoosball for the iPhone/iPod Touch and so I did.
The game actually has a lot to offer; excellent 3D graphics, enjoyable game-play, customizable matches and some bonus features which you won’t find in your everyday foosball game.

The game loads reasonably fast, once your in the game menu you get several different options which you can customize:

• Difficulty: You get to choose from ‘easy’ to ‘hardest’ (hardest is almost impossible to beat!)
• Rows: The number of rows you want on the table, you get to pick from 3 rows to 4.
• Time: You can add a time limit to your game if you want to.
• Goals: Here you choose the number of goals that are required to win.
• Color: Finally if you don’t like the look of your foosball players then this option is for you! 4 colors to choose from.

Now once you have finished customizing the settings you can move on to the game.
The opponent always gets to start, once kick-off has taken place all you have to do is move your finger side-to-side on the screen and by doing this all the rows will move in the direction you moved your finger. You cannot control a single row of players, they all will move. To shoot you can either move your players towards the ball and they will automatically hit it forward or you can quickly tap the screen once the ball is close to your player and they will spin and shoot it (however in a real foosball game spinning is a foul!). The score is displayed in the center of the field and is quite hard to spot at first.
The opponent can be quite tough depending on the difficulty you picked.
Now the game also features power-ups, there are only two which will appear at random in the middle of the game.

To use a power-up you have to wait for it to appear (on the top-left or top-right corner of the screen) and once it does you just have to shoot the ball with the tap method.
There are two power-ups:

• Bullet-time: It’s basically a slow-motion mode in which the ball can be moved left/right by tilting the iPhone/iPod Touch. (If you guide the ball
  perfectly in this mode then you will always have a 100% chance of scoring).
• Super ball: This fires the ball straight through your opponents players and they have no chance of stopping it.

iFoosball is great for all foosball fans alike and even new-comers. If you have nothing to do then why not play a 3-goal game and kill the boredom.
The game is presented quite well and is a lot of fun, I recommend you give it a try!