Recreating the whole, complex game of NFL on a mobile phone isn’t easy. Hey, even Madden took a few tries to get it right on full-fledged consoles. But there’s one aspect of American football that lends itself to be made into a quick game to pass some time: the field goal.
Pik Pok‘s latest title isn’t the first attempt at a field goal-based game, nor is the gameplay something new and innovative — it’s already been tried plenty of times with other sports such as soccer and rugby. And with the NFL itself, you have games like NFL Kicker already in the market.
So is Flick Click Field Goal 2014 worth your time and bandwidth or is it just another game that tries to capitalize on a winning formula?
Flick To Kick
The gameplay mechanism of Flick Click 2014 is pretty basic. There’s a football in the middle of the ground and you have to swipe upwards in the direction you want to kick it. The objective is to hit it right in the center of the goalposts, i.e. between the uprights and over the crossbar.
Depending on how close to the center you get, you will earn a varying degree of points. There’s no danger of kicking too hard or too feebly, but you do have to keep other factors in mind, such as wind, which can deviate the angle of your kick. So while kicking, you have to take the wind into account and kick at an angle to make the shot.
The game is essentially an endless round of this, pushing you further and further back on the pitch to make the shot, and increasing the wind resistance along the way. Rack up a high score, connect with friends on Facebook and compare who has the highest, whether weekly or overall.
There are a few boosts you can earn and buy, such as Perfect Zone (to increase the bullseye’s width in a shot), Great Weather (to remove all wind) and Prime Position (to change your kicking position to right in front of the goalpost).
Just Not Good Enough
Now, if this was the first game of its kind, I can see the appeal of Flick Click Field Goal 2014. But when there are options like NFL Kicker 13 available in the Play Store for free, I don’t see the point of it.
NFL Kicker follows the same basic gameplay while including better graphics (including players, complete with celebrations), better gameplay options (such as controlling your ball’s trajectory in mid-air to add swing), and more modes of play (such as coffin mode, where you have to kick the ball out of bounds and get a bonus for landing it on a bullseye first).
Given that, the low-effort graphics of Flick Click Field Goal 2014 and the amateurish sound effects do not make me want to recommend the game.
Instead, your time and memory is better spent downloading NFL Kicker, which offers all of the features of Flick Click Field Goal 2014 for the same price tag of free, while adding more stuff and better gameplay.
