Bulky Pix brings us a Revo Solutions developed game, Magnetic Sports Soccer which mixes table football with magnets to attractive effect. But the range of effect is limited.

The game is sort of cool really. You have a standard table football-like setup with goalies and a 2-1-2-1 setup (see image) where your players and the opponents share every line (unlike table football). The ball is obviously metallic so that the magnets at the feet of the players attract it (or perhaps it’s the other way round?) and the players are spring-loaded. Pulling back on a player with your finger determines the power and direction of the shot and all players shoot equally well.

Now it’s not extremely accurate to begin with and the touch screen is fairly sensitive when it comes to shooting so you might have to take awhile and get used to the controls. There is a nice feature where if you max the power on your shot you lose a lot of accuracy which is a common problem in a lot of applications (throwing a baseball or football, kicking a soccer ball, etc). I feel this adds a little bit of realism to the game.

The men on the field have limited mobility and for all intents and purposes can be considered stationary. However, they do jiggle from left to right a little bit allowing you to fit a tight shot past them from time to time and their magnetic attraction will help Bend it like Beckham as it were. I’ve actually scored off a ricochet that got pulled into the goalie’s area of attraction and curved around him and into the goal. You do have some minor control over the goalie with the ability to move him left/right while your opponent has the ball. Once the shot is away it’s all on automatic though.

Another interesting feature is the Tilt which allows you to tilt the table briefly, often upsetting a shot or helping steal it away from the opponent.

Aside from all that the game is straight forward. Score more points in the time allotted to win, or reach the preset number of goals first. The game includes both single player (quick match and challenge via Scoreloop) and multiplayer (2 players on 1 device, Local Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and online play). There are three stadiums (grass, dirt and steel) but I haven’t seen much of a difference in the way they play and don’t believe they have any bearing on gameplay. The steel table does turn all of the players into robots though.

The graphics aren’t amazing but they do their job well as do the sounds. Of course if you get tired of the game’s sounds you can throw up a playlist of your own tunes and listen to that instead. A nice added bonus that a lot of game developers should include in their games as well. After all, the iPhone is more than just a game platform.

The game is fairly challenging as there are few straight shots to be made and you have to work on predicting the bend of the ball and or how it will come off the wall. With the variety of ways to play multiplayer you should easily be able to find some opponents once you have mastered the computer (which is tougher than it might appear at times). The thing that is missing is some sort of season or league play. That would have truly rounded out the application and scored a hat trick of great gameplay, features and fun.

Further Screens: