Galacticos Football – Game Review

I am a fan of football (as in soccer) management games and I was really happy to hear that Galacticos Football, a social game by Fantasy Moguls, is out there, allowing me to crush my Facebook friends in one-on-one soccer fixtures. Therefore I quickly created a team, selected some players and started playing. Should you give Galacticos Football a try as well? Read on to find out!

The first thing you’ll notice when starting to play Galacticos Football is the game’s simplicity: Fantasy Moguls have created a title for the 21st century, the century of speed. With just a few clicks you’ll have your team selected (you’ll have to choose from two pre-made squads) and you’ll be ready to play your first games.

In order to play a soccer match in Galacticos Football, you simply have to click the “Play match” button and choose a team from the hundreds of the available ones. There are no leagues or divisions (as we know them in football) and basically anybody can play against anybody, as long as they click the button. When choosing your opponent, you can see the estimated stats of their team (ratings for defense, midfield and attack) and based on what your team has, you play the match or choose somebody else.

Playing a game is also extremely simple: there’s not even text to tell you what happens on the court, not even a few short sentences! You just see the timer go and loads of goals being scored. You don’t know why and stats definitely don’t play such an important role as you’d like them to. Even more, you can’t even select your own squad, which is even more frustrating. Basically, Fantasy Moguls have turned a game of soccer into a game of luck. A quick game of luck.

You have 18 players to start with – real players from the real life clubs, which is a great addition to the genre – each with a stat value. You can’t have more than 18 players, and every time you transfer one in, you must transfer one out. That’s why the only working strategy in the game is to sell your worst players for the best available ones. And then hope that they’re picked up for the team (a completely random process).

Tactics are also very limited – you can choose from three formations only and you can’t alter anything about them. Honestly, I wasn’t able to see a solid difference between the formations – neither regarding my team’s play or the other team’s play, but there must be something…

Whenever a match ends, you are awarded some money and reputation points, as well as a few pixels to fill your progress bar. Funds are used for transferring better players while Reputation Points in Galacticos Football are used to get stuff from the club’s chairman (more matches to play, bonuses for your team, extra money) and I would advise you to try spending most of the points for extra money, and only then for boosts.

Basically we can say that Galacticos Football is a good game that still needs a lot of polishing and a few buckets of depth added to it. It’s quick, it’s fast, it has tons of teams to play against and it’s generally fun, but there are so few options you can choose from and luck seems to play such a big factor that you’ll sometimes get beaten by a team that’s completely inferior to yours. I know such things happen in football, but in Galacticos they tend to happen a bit too often…

So the question remains: should you play Galacticos Football? If you are a fan of the game and you’d love to strive and get the best players join your virtual club and you don’t care too much about the depth of the game (like tactics and positioning), then yes, go ahead and give the game a try. On the contrary, if you love Football Manager titles just because they offer you so many options and you can tweak so many things – then stay away from the social soccer game Galacticos Football!