Master Kick: Review and Giveaway

It seems like every medium has tried to recreate the world’s most popular sport. There’s the interactive table version of soccer, called foosball. And then there are tons of soccer video and computer games that try to realistically imitate the sport. However, few computer games have attempted to emulate the look and feel of table soccer, but that’s exactly what’s been done with Master Kick. And there’s one really good reason why it might be a better alternative: a decent foosball table can cost more than $100, but you can get Master Kick free if you win MacApper’s giveaway.

In the game, players choose from five teams representing cities around the world and from a list of arenas that include grass, mud, snow and indoor (the terrains are simply for aesthetics and don’t affect play in any way). Games can end either after five goals are scored or after three minutes, though it would be nice if you could set the game length. Finally, you can set your squad’s formation and the difficulty level of your computer opponent. Sadly, none of these options are saved after the application is closed, so you’ll have to reset them every time you play. Play modes include single match and a league mode, which is a nice idea but doesn’t save your stats or progress if you quit the app.

Anyone familiar with foosball or the sport of soccer should be able to instantly pick up and play Master Kick, and since the game supports nine languages, everybody can join in. You control a team of 11 virtual plastic men on four horizontally movable bars. The bars can be controlled using the mouse or the arrows, and shooting is done either by clicking the mouse button, pressing the control key or using the left or right arrow keys. You can hold down the shoot button to get a more powerful spin, and it designates which bar will shoot when the button is pressed by whichever is closest to the ball. Unlike actual foosball, all bars move together, meaning you can’t control them individually. If you’re playing with the keyboard, you’ll probably want to use the arrows to shoot instead of the control key, which doesn’t play well with Spaces on Leopard. There’s no option to customize the keyboard layout.

The relatively simple gameplay resembles a more advanced version of Pong, and its graphics are almost as outdated. The sprites, static terrain and cutely animated crowd gives Master Kick the look and feel of a Super Nintendo title. Its sound effects, like the ever present “hrah” crowd noise, are equally retro, which can be good if you appreciate the nostalgic feeling games like this offer. However, there’s no defending the incredibly annoying techno music that blasts while browsing the game menus. When I booted the app up for the first time and heard the hair raising theme song, I immediately quit out and curled into the fetal position. Fortunately, I found the volume slider buried away in the options menu, thus solving my most pressing concern. In testing, I ran into a bug that muffles any sound on your system that’s not generated by the Master Kick app when using an M-Audio sound interface, but it works fine using a MacBook’s built-in speakers or through the headphone port.

Developer Industry Entertainment’s first foray into Mac gaming is not bad but does have room for improvement. In the current version, Master Kick boots up in a small window with no option to resize or play in fullscreen, but fullscreen support is coming in the next version, says Nemanja Bondzulic, the game’s lead developer. Master Kick is only compatible with Intel Macs, but the next version should be a universal binary, Bondzulic says. Industry will also add local and network multiplayer supporting all platforms.

“All versions of the game are identical, even the mobile versions and they are [built] from the same code base,” Bondzulic says in an email. “Players using, for example, Palm and Mac will be able to play one against the other.”

Industry Entertainment has given MacApper four licenses to give to our readers! Three of the free licenses unlock the Mac version, and one works on all platforms, which also includes Windows, Linux, Windows Mobile and Palm OS 5. If you want to enter the giveaway, comment on this review with a feature you would like to see implemented in Master Kick, and mention if you would prefer the master license, stating which of the supported platforms you own. The giveaway will end on May 2nd. And remember, if you don’t win, the Mac version of Master Kick costs $19.95, while a full license unlocking all platforms costs $29.95.