These days of football fever are probably the best time of the year to play KickOff, an original online football game.
KickOff follows the trend of online casual games you can play for free, just by registering a free account on the game's website and downloading the client. This time football (or soccer, if you prefer it that way) is the main subject of the game, but not in the way we're used to seeing it: in a big stadium, with a crowd of people roaring and 22 professional players running after the ball. Kick-off focuses on street football, on those casual matches you play against your friends in the neighborhood.
The game in itself is quite easy to control. There are only three keys for different kinds of pass and shoot, besides the arrow keys to control movement. Graphics don't follow a realistic style, but are based on a more manga-like design instead, using bright, shiny colors and paying a great attention to detail.
KickOff includes three different game modes: a practicing area, free gaming against people from all over the world and a complete league that you can only enter when you obtain the necessary license. This license, together with the so called "tics" (a kind of user points), is obtained by playing matches. Tics will also eventually allow you to acquire new abilities and new items for your player.
The only main drawback to KickOff is its server problems. While testing the game I was disconnected from the game twice, which automatically closes the client as well. I also had some minor lag issues while playing online matches. Hopefully these problems will be solved soon and we can all enjoy an exciting online soccer game for free.
KickOff is an enjoyable online football game with which you can play fun matches againts people from all over the world, though you may have the odd server problem while playing it.
