Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival on PS4 – The DVDfever Review

Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival brings back to videogames one of the classic football gaming memories of my comparative youth.

I don’t watch football on TV, but do love a great videogame about it. Never mind Atari ST vs Amiga, Blur vs Oasis… oOne of the great battles of the late ’80s and early ’90s was Kick Off vs Senisible Socer. Both were great fun, and one of them also featured Eddie McGoldrick, who was playing for Crystal Palace at the time I was at University. I’m sure he’s a perfectly competent player and now is Northampton Town’s youth team manager, but I remember my mate, as him, tripping me up, and me shouting out “Ooh, Eddie McGoldrick, you cheating *******!!!” 🙂

I digress to a degree, but it shows the passion that such a game creates and, thus, the passion of the game’s creators, this one coming from Dino Dini who brings his classic original game back to one of the latest consoles (currently on PS4-only, but surely an Xbox One and PC version is just around the corner?)

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Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival – 1st match – PS4 (1080p HD, 60fps, DTS 5.1) – DVDfeverGames

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How can you play the game? If you’re on your tod, there’s the single player option with the CPU providing formidable opposition. If you have friends round, then, obviously, there’s the two-player game. If online is your world, then the network play choice will allow you to create your own team. Finally, there’s another offline mode – the European Cup. Instead of playing just individual matches, you can get stuck into an entire league of entertainment.

The Kick Off games are huge fun but not easy to play, because you have to keep kicking the ball ahead of you, gently, as you head towards the goal. Unfortunately, if you’re a bit of a bell-end like me, then it takes about three seconds before the other side steal it away from you. The trick is to kick it ahead and hope there’s another player in the vicinity. If in doubt, don’t worry if you boot is over the edge at the side (I’m sure there’s a technical term for that), requiring a throw-in from your opponents, as that’s better than them scoring a goal with it.

If you can be brilliant at football, then you can curve the ball round with after-touch, bending it like Beckham, as they say. To add to the realism, whenever you tackle another player and slide across the ground, marks appear on the pitch, and remain throughout the game. They wouldn’t have done so back on the Atari ST or Amiga, due to a lack of computing power – the same reason why, when you finally got the car you desired in Grand Theft Auto III on the Playstation 2, EVERYONE suddenly had it! And also why, as you looked at a load of people walking about, if you turn around… pause… and then turn back, they’ve all gone!

Because this isn’t FIFA or Pro Evo Soccer, the names are slightly off, eg. Wane Roonie and Jo Hert playing for England, but that matters not to me. You can’t identify one from the other, anyway. Or, at least, I can’t.

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Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival – 2nd match – PS4 (1080p HD, 60fps, DTS 5.1) – DVDfeverGames

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Practice mode (below) is a bit weird, encouraging you to shoot at the goal when there’s no keeper, or try something a bit tricky as in seeing how many passes you can make in 30 seconds (not many when I end up kicking the ball into next week), so I’ll just stick with the main game.

Also, if you know anything about football (unlike me) then you can change your tactics to suit, eg. 4-4-2, 4-2-4 and 5-3-2 formations.

Kick Off is the master of the effortless one-button shoot/pass fun in football gaming. The graphics and sound are uncomplicated as the gameplay shows, but this allows for concentration on the gameplay and fun, and it gets that bang on. In fact, it updates the visuals superbly to 1080p HD resolution, knowing just where the game needs a sprinkle of refurbishment, whilst not adding anything unnecessary.

Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival is out now on PS4, and click on the packshot for the full-size image.

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Dino Dini’s Kick Off Revival – Practice mode – PS4 (1080p HD, 60fps, DTS 5.1) – DVDfeverGames

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Important info:

• Publisher: Avanquest Software
• Players: 1-2, online multiplayer, leaderboards
• HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
• Languages: English

GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT	8 8 10 10
OVERALL	9