Instead, the core gameplay boils down to move, pass, tackle and shoot. Gone are staples of the genre, such as dash buttons, off the ball runs and custom tactics. Pixel Cup Soccer 16 ($0.99) is another fantastic addition to the growing roster of soccer games, and focuses – for better and for worse – on the simplest arcade elements of the beautiful game to provide an extremely fun footballing experience that is easy to pick up, hard to master and even more difficult to put down.īefore you plunge into Pixel Cup Soccer 16, your expectations and assumptions of soccer games must be left at the door.

The reductionist approach of games such as New Star Soccer (Free) – where only a few elements of the sport such as scoring goals are focused on – fits mobile gaming so much better, as instead of trying to port a console experience which simply doesn’t fit on the iPhone, they play to the smartphone’s strengths. It’s rather telling that the best soccer titles on handheld devices are the simplest.

Pixel cup soccer 17 apk