Sensible Soccer Skillz

Footballing ability often runs in the family, especially at the highest level. A quick glance around the current England dressing room reveals no less than three players in Frank Lampard Junior, Rio Ferdinand and Gary Neville whom have famous fathers or siblings.

Likewise, Sensible Soccer Skillz is a chip off a famous footballing block, issuing from the same stock as the original Sensible Soccer, which was a legend back in the late 80s on home consoles. More recently Sensible senior showed it could still cut the mustard in it's twilight years, putting in an admirable performance on mobile, but can Skillz live up to the family name?

In truth it's immediately clear that Skillz is more nephew than son of Sensi. Rather than the box-to-box match simulation, this set-piece specialist plays its own game, or rather its own series of mini-games made up of penalties, free-kicks and corners.

Rather than controlling an entire team, here you take charge of one 'goal scoring superstar hero' or goalkeeper at a time with the ultimate aim of filling the onion bag more often than the opposition. Everything's controlled by one context-sensitive button and, as you can imagine, this makes for an incredibly accessible game that's capable of providing short bursts of gameplay that are ideal for filling thirty seconds.

There are also some genuinely fresh features which are distinct from Sensi or indeed any other footie sim we've played, like the way you have to evade defenders at corner kicks or the ability to cycle through a variety of defensive walls for free-kicks.

Despite these differences there are clear family resemblances, however, in the diminutive players, cheeky sense of humour (most evident in the player celebrations or touchline reactions) and also in the controls themselves. Although the basic direction (and height) of shots is determined by a large rotating arrow, by moving the joypad after the ball is struck players can apply a decidedly familiar after touch to bend the ball beyond the keeper.

As you might expect, this does at times allow for some sublime (not to say nostalgic) moments as free kicks are curved around walls. Yet it's also serves to highlight some of the deficiencies.

Where the after touch system in Sensible Soccer was a subtle art to be mastered, the clunkiness of its execution here tends to feel more as if it were applied by hobnail boots than via Beckham's mercurial slipper, providing massive banana curves or none at all. Similar clunkiness is also evident in the goalkeeping performance, with a dive seeming to cover an entire third of the goal, regardless of timing, in one situation, but then needing to be precise to keep out a shot when aftertouch is added.

Whilst it's true that practice does improve matters (particularly in the free-kicks and corner modes), the reality is is that there simply isn't enough depth to keep you coming back after the first hour or two. Once you've won the tournament with a couple of teams, the only real option is to increase the difficulty level. Though this does provide a small additional challenge (in that the targeting arrow moves more erratically and opposition players are sharper), it only really adds another 20 minutes at most.

A multiplayer option of some kind would have raised the bar considerably and even if this couldn't be achieved a few different challenges or trophies to compete for surely wouldn't be asking too much.

Ultimately Sensible Soccer Skillz is perhaps a victim of expectation. It definitely shows some nice touches of its own, manages to evoke memories of the original and offers game play that's ideal for short bursts. But there simply isn't enough variety or depth to sustain a career or truly live up to the expectations of the family name.