Do You Really Know About Soccer? Review (Xbox Series X|S)

As a Brit, I’d say that the odds of being locked into a heated discussion about football are astronomically high. It doesn’t matter if you even enjoy the sport, or even if you make it painfully clear that you have little to no interest in watching each and every fixture. If there’s a local quiz machine or an argument taking place anywhere within spitting distance, then you can almost guarantee that football (or soccer, if we’re taking this conversation across the pond) will always be at the forefront of the tongue. Thus, we have a question that frequents the water cooler like clockwork: “Do You Really Know About Soccer?”

For the record, I know a little about football, but at no point would I refer to myself as a walking, talking encyclopedia who has an infinite wealth of knowledge about the sport. Enough, perhaps, to add a mere two cents to a conversation and spout out nonsense about the referee and “how that red card was out of order.” But that’s about as far as I can take it. And so, with a game like Do You Really Know About Soccer? it feels as if I’m a gazelle in a lion enclosure, or the moron who pretends to know a lot more than the average enthusiast. Unfortunately for me, this particular quiz machine doesn’t reward me for trying to score a goal.

Do You Really Know About Soccer? dresses itself up as a visually appealing, almost cartoon-like quiz game that fancies itself as a short interactive experience with a football twist. And to some extent, that’s what it brings to the pitch: a tier-based trivia game in which players answer questions about the “world’s most beloved sport” and, with the aid of various power-ups, climb a tower to reach the prestigious title of soccer guru. Like your average pub trivia machine, then — but with an owl as a mascot. Don’t ask.

Without pretending to be something it’s not, Do You Really Know About Soccer? promises to deliver a fun-fueled trivia game that can leave you feeling satisfied and confident about your vast knowledge. And it does — when you actually answer a question correctly and add you name to the apex, that is. Essentially, though, what you have here is a familiar quiz game that leans on almost all of the same trivial trappings. Questions fall before you in no particular order, and the tiers that pave the way to the apex gradually begin to unveil tougher questions as you make your ascent.

Thankfully, there are special abilities here that add an extra layer to an otherwise textbook trivia game. For example, you have a power-up that can act as a failsafe for when you input an incorrect answer. It’s a small thing, and in no way does it elevate the existing blueprint. But, it does provide a little extra sauce to what would be, with all due respect, a rather boring game with no real competitive edge. Not that you would approach a game like Do You Really Know About Soccer? without having an interest in the sport. Cough.

Frankly, the devil is in the details here. As the game openly implies, soccer is the sole buoy that keeps this trivia game afloat. In other words, if you have little to no interest in the sport, then it’s highly unlikely that you’ll enjoy answering questions on the subject. That being said, the earlier stages in the game tower aren’t all that difficult to complete. It might not be on the same wavelength as a kindergarten questionnaire, or even an eye-rolling exam that asks you if a football is square, triangular or circular. But, you get the point. You don’t need to know a lot about soccer to get your foot on the ladder — but you do, however, need to know your stuff if you plan on climbing it.

On the first floor, you have laughably bad questions to answer. An example here would be, ‘what footwear does a soccer player wear?’ If, by some chance, you select flip-flops in this case, then frankly, you might as well abandon all hopes of ever reaching the second floor. On the second and third floors, however, you have tougher questions to answer. ‘Which team won the 1974 World Cup’, for example. But, again, you get the idea. Three floors stand between you and the apex, and eighteen correct answers are required to complete the quiz.

The bad news here is that, despite there being a thin layer of complexity between its tiers, you don’t have a great deal of questions to answer here. In fact, if you decide to take another stab at the tower, then you’re more than likely going to bump into the same trivia questions. The point is, there isn’t a lot of replay value behind this seemingly deflated ball. To add insult to injury, as the game doesn’t offer an online multiplayer mode or anything outside of its vanilla tier-based quiz system, you really don’t have much to sink your teeth into. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good for a quick game, but it also loses its appeal rather quickly, annoyingly.

As I mentioned earlier, you do have power-ups to use here. In a similar vein as, say, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the game offers you the chance to take two incorrect answers from the list or, in some worst case scenarios, skip a question entirely. To that end, you do have something of a crutch to lean on for when things begin to take a turn for the worse. Google, too, tends to help in most cases. Not that I’d condone any form of cheating, mind you.

The answer was cleats, by the way, not flip-flops.

Verdict

Do You Really Know About Soccer? might not grace the back of the net with its owl-shaped ball, what with its lack of questions, online functionalities and game modes, but to give credit where it’s due, it does make a good effort to find the goal, at least. Granted, it isn’t a trivia game that you would naturally look to for getting your usual football-related kicks, but, like a substitute, it serves its purpose as meat in the room, nothing more, nothing less.