Cyberball 2072 – 360 – Review

Cyberball 2072 is football game
where you exchange humans for robots and the football for an actual bomb. As the
norm, the main goal of this game is to score a touchdown. The catch in this game
is that every play brings the bomb closer to going off, unless you cross the
50-yard line or score a touchdown. Your team can get destroyed by either the
bomb going off or even from general gameplay. You must make repairs at half time
or replace the player with upgraded robots in the game.

This game originally came out in
1989, and if you compare it to football games that were released in the same
time period, you can tell that it had a few features that were ahead of its
time. You can see on-field view when you are calling your plays, situational
challenges, and other things that are still in modern football games.

There are three modes of play in
this game. First in the “rookie league” in which the game just gives you a team
and lets you play a game. Next up is the Regulation Cyberball, where you get to
choose your opposing coach, the team you want to play with. This is important
because the coaches have various win-loss records, and the teams to choose from
are stronger in certain areas, such as passing, running, or balanced. Game
Breakers mode is where you are given a few plays to try to score a touchdown.

The AI in this game is not that
difficult to beat, in fact it gets even easier if you are playing with a friend.
This is especially true if you have played in Madden game. All you have to do is
recognize the patterns in the AI and you will soon find the way to get around
them and beat the computer every time.

The graphics for this game are
decent, but honestly I have better looking games on my NES from the same time
period. The animations for the robots are really good for a game that was
released approximately 18 years ago. What I find really annoying is the audio
for the game. It is extremely repetitive and even more annoying. If you have
this game you will soon been looking for the mute button on your TV.

Since I never played the original
game I did a little reading up on it, and after reading it I was baffled since
the original game had multiplayer. The arcade cabinet had two screens and four
controllers, allow up to four people to play against each other (two on one
side, two on the other). So I was pretty excited to see what kinds of
multiplayer action that I would get to play in with my friends or even online
and, to my horror, there was none. The only form of online gaming is that two
players can be on the same team against a computer AI, even using Xbox Live!
This is a complete and unforgivable omission to this game. Half of the fun of
playing football games is playing against another human and not the computer.


Review Scoring Details for Cyberball 2072

Gameplay: 4.5
You can find some fun in this game for a short time, but pretty soon
you will find it repetitive and boring.

Graphics: 3.9
The various animations are nice, but other games from this area look a lot
better.

Sound: 4.1
Annoying, that is the only word that comes to mind when you think about
the audio for this game.

Difficulty: Easy
Since you can only play against the AI, this game is really easy –
especially once you know how to play the game.

Concept: 6.2
The concept of this game is pretty cool, robots playing football with a
bomb.

Multiplayer: 2.0
Who wants to only play this game in co-op mode? Even if you go online,
you can only play with another person and not directly against them.

Overall: 4.5
This game is not worth your money or even the time it takes to download
it. Not having the ability to play against another human is a huge strike to
this game. Bottom line is to avoid this game.