Developed/Published by: Size Five Games
Released: 20/07/2017
Completed: 6/08/2021
Completion: Finished the story mode!
Trophies / Achievements: n/a
If you’re familiar with me, this blog, or even any of my appearances on the Insert Credit Show you’ll be well aware that I consider Sensible World of Soccer one of the greatest games of all time and I wish it came out every year on modern consoles with updated rosters and everyone was playing it online against each other like what it was FIFA.
Unfortunately, it does not. So, even though I boot it up every once in a while, I generally chase the dragon by playing other footy games, of which Dan Marshall’s Behold The Kickmen has been on my radar for a while and once I noticed it was on Switch [“Not a very good radar, then”–Ed.] I picked it up, what with the Switch being the indie handheld of choice (until the Steam Deck shows up, I suppose).
Now. I’m pretty sure I remember reading a review of this where the reviewer got really annoyed at it for sneering at football. And I can see it, in that saying things like “foot-to-ball” or whatever is tedious and just about as boring to people who like football as football is to football non-likers, but Behold the Kickmen has a genuinely funny, absurd little story that you’d have to have quite the chip on your shoulder to take offence to, and the “wrong” football, even it actually came from an sneery, anti-football stance… creates a really interesting video game???
Being annoyed at this because it offends the beautiful game is a big old waste of time. Behold the Kickmen is mostly played like football with a “bullet-time” like mechanic for aiming, shooting, and tackling, but what makes it interesting is that each action you perform while holding possession (or not losing possession for too long, anyway) adds to a multiplier that increases the amount of money you’re going to make when you score a goal. If the opposing team scores a goal or the half ends, you lose it all.
It leads to a really remarkable game where it’s not really about goals–until it is. You’re much better pissing about in mid-field, passing and dodging, until you need to score or lose it all. I played on the default settings and to be honest the AI was nothing to write home about and I beat them handily, but maxing my multiplier (and scoring in time…) became the game, and I loved it.
There’s issues with it–it’s technically “funnier” to have a round pitch but it’s a lot of wasted space and the slow-down is a bit stop-start and means there’s no multiplayer (which I think would work!)–but it does what any good “football” game should do in making every goal feel incredible. The daft story that you follow as you win games had me lollin’–although there’s several set-ups that don’t actually have any pay-off and I wished that there was more of it (I’d be tempted to play again to see if anything different happens if I make different choices, but I suspect not.)
Anyway if you like sports games or games with interesting design twists this is worth every penny of the couple of bucks it’s going to cost you on Switch or PC. Pick it up!
Will I ever play it again? If it had multiplayer I would. Just turn off the slowdown, see how that works.
Final Thought: It includes a theming that parodies Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe, the second greatest game of all time behind Sensible World of Soccer [“Steady on”–Ed.] but sadly doesn’t do anything with the theming like adding score pads on the side or slide attacks or something because, I guess, that would be a completely different game. But now I want to play Speedball 2…