PandaBall

When I loaded up PandaBall for the first time, my mind raced with possibilities. I mean, besides bamboo and kung-fu, I have no idea what kind of things pandas are into. So color me disappointed when I discovered that this new game from first-time developer PandaBall Aps was nothing more than soccer with furry animals. What's even more disappointing is that this unimaginative sports game is broken to the point where I wasn't able to even finish it. So frustrating.

Don't be fooled by the name, because PandaBall is nothing more than an arcade-y 4-on-4 version of soccer (or football, if you prefer). The jungle fields are much smaller than the usual pitch, which does a good job of speeding up the action and leading to high scoring games. We get the usual assortment of basic offensive and defensive moves, along with a few high-level maneuvers that make this game slightly deeper than FIFA Street and Super Sidekicks.

What sets PandaBall apart from those other soccer games is that it includes a few different power-ups, which can often be the difference between winning or losing. You'll find items littering the field that will boost your speed and make every goal worth twice as much. There are also power-ups that will negatively impact the opponent, such as luring uncontrolled pandas and transforming the other team into babies.

But even with the different items and pandas, I still couldn't get beyond the idea that this is just soccer with animals. And outside of the locations, there's really no reason why it had to be pandas. You could swap in monkeys, sloths or almost any other kind of furry creature and you wouldn't have to change much. I'm fine with them riffing on soccer, but it sure would have been nice if they did more with either the animals or the sport.

Unfortunately, that isn't the only issue I have with PandaBall. As I mentioned at the top, this game is broken. The painfully straight-forward single-player campaign has a bug that makes everybody run in place for some reason. You can't move, pass the ball or anything useful, the athletes just run in place waiting for the time to run down. It's infuriating, especially if you're behind and trying to milk that clock for last second points. This happened to me so much that I ultimately gave up on the road to victory and retired from the PandaBall league.

Without the bugs, I probably would have given PandaBall a tepid recommendation. Although it doesn't do much with the theme, it's still a fast and enjoyable game of soccer. I like that it's easy to control and has a few tricks up its sleeve, leading to a much deeper experience than I was expecting. Too bad the developers don't do a lot to justify the pandas being there and it's annoying how barebones this game is. Even if you're a fan of both soccer and panda bears, you're better of off waiting until the game-breaking bugs are squashed.