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Academy of Champions: Soccer

by Neal Ronaghan - June 7, 2009, 11:40 am EDT
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I have found the heir apparent to Sega Soccer Slam, and it is glorious.

For anyone who's been keeping score, I'm a big fan of arcade soccer games. So when I heard Ubisoft's Academy of Champions was playable on the E3 show floor, I decided to try it out. I came away from the game being incredibly blown away.

Academy of Champions is a vibrant, somewhat childish soccer game that has a main story of a player-created avatar going through a Hogwarts-like school run by soccer legend Pele. In this lengthy story mode, you play lots of soccer, recruit different players for your team, and play various mini-games.

There are tons of players in the game, including some popular Ubisoft characters. For example, there is a team of Rabbids and a Ubisoft team consisting of Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell), Altair (Assassin's Creed), The Prince (Prince of Persia), Jade (Beyond Good & Evil), and Rayman. The best part is that all the characters are worked into the story somehow. Sam Fisher is undercover, Altair is looking for a challenge, and the Rabbids are just there. Outside of those two teams, Pele, and Mia Hamm, the rest of the teams are comprised of kids, which is a little disappointing, but I didn't get to see a lot of them to see if they had a lot of personality or not.

The Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls are fairly intuitive as I picked them up very quickly without knowing them. The A button passes, the B button shoots, the C button changes players, and the Z button dashes or dodges. It is very reminiscent of games such as Sega Soccer Slam and Mario Strikers. There are two in-game mini-games that pop up in gameplay, Jostling and Header. In the Jostling mini-game, two players are fighting for the ball and you have to press the correct D-pad button to try to go past them. In the Header mini-game, you have to tap the A button quickly to beat the other opponent to the header.

You also have a special bar that builds up as you play good soccer. You can use this bar to dash around the court, or use it for a special move, called talents. The generic characters only have a pool from a couple different talents that are based on their body type, but all of the special characters have their own unique talents. For example, Pele does a bunch of fancy footwork and then takes a big shot on goal, and Sam Fisher puts on his night-vision goggles and stuns everyone and then can march on over to the goal.

While it wasn't featured, the game will be compatible with Wii MotionPlus and use it to accurately direct shots and passes. According to a developer, it won't contain any of the delay that games like EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis and Red Steel 2 have because it only uses the positioning of the Wii Remote and not how fast it is going.

There are over 10 mini-games, one that makes use of the Balance Board. In the Freestyle mode, you use the Wii Remote, Nunchuk, and Balance Board to kick the ball around in the air for as long as you can. You have to maintain balance and make sure your character keeps the ball near him.

I might be in the minority on this one, but I think Academy of Champions is going to be a fantastic arcade soccer game and I am eagerly anticipating its September release.

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Genre Sports
Developer Ubisoft

Worldwide Releases

na: Academy of Champions: Soccer
Release Nov 03, 2009
PublisherUbisoft
RatingEveryone
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