Here’s the description:

See if you have what it takes to compete in the ultimate American Football Field Goal Kicking competition.

Field Goal features multiple kicking challenges, realistic graphics and insanely addictive flick to kick game play.

Flick Kick™ Field Goal Features

• Intuitive Flick Kicking: Control the angle and curve of your kick with the flick of your finger.
• Ultimate Football Challenge: 360 degree wind with shifting severity. Anything from a light breeze to gale force winds must be taken into account
• Multiple Game Modes:

– Sudden Death: The classic test of skill. No time limit, just keep making kicks to add multipliers to your score.
– Arcade Mode: kicks are taken from five different positions. Score as many points as you can. The last kick at each position will award you bonus points if you make it.
– Time Attack: Quick Fire Flick Kicking! Make as many kicks as possible within the time limit – Don’t buckle under the pressure!
– Practise Mode: Perfect your technique and learn how to become a kicking master

• Online Leaderboards and Achievements with OpenFeint Support : Show your friends that you’re the best kicker around
• iPod Library Access: play your favourite music during the game
• Stunning 3D graphics!

And some screenshots:

Here is the awesome trailer for the game:

I’ve already downloaded it, because I’m a sucker for well made sports games, you should grab it too!

Source: AppAdvice

- Added ability to “Nudge” players. This gives you a new level of control while still keeping with the spirit of the original game. (Feature can be turned off)
- Tackling works better now and is more consistent.
- Players are a little less random, run a little straighter.
- Added option to turn off the passing timer we added in the 1.1 update.
- Newest (and by far the best) version of Open Feint added.
- Added ability to play the game with a fixed overhead angle.
- Fixed some bugs

As you can see, a lot of the issues we had during our review seem to have been taken care of including the less random movement of the players. This is great news, and on the TouchArcade forums, they had discussed adding a Season mode as well as online multiplayer. This game just keeps getting better and better!

Apparently the update isn’t out yet, but the Lite version, which incorporates the new features, has hit the app stores!

Super Shock Football is a pretty strange game. Being based off of the table-top electric football games that originated in 1947 and reached the height of their popularity in the 50’s and 60’s it can be assumed that a large percentage of people with iPhones and iPod touches have never actually played the game.  The premise is simple enough, arrange your little players in formations (which have very little impact on the outcome of each play) and then press a button that makes the field start vibrating and moves your players in whatever direction possible, passing the ball when you feel it’s necessary.

Overall the game plays very well.  The controls felt very precise and other than the occasional bout of lag they were very responsive.  My only real major gripe with the gameplay is with the whole vibrating football mechanic.  When I say that your players will run anywhere I really mean ANYWHERE.  More often than not the majority of your team will immediately head for the sides and get stuck on the stadium walls, leaving the game to actually be played by 3 or 4 players that are spinning in circles.  This can start to get really frustrating, especially when it seems to only affect your team while your opponent’s players all rush straight to the end-zone.  Oftentimes you feel more like you’re watching a little league game where half the players stand around eating grass and chatting than any sort of real football.  I understand that the hectic movement is a central part of the classic table-top game, but it begs the question that if your core game mechanic is immensely frustrating then what is it doing in a game.

You'll see this pretty often

The way to counter your team’s erratic movements is by passing the ball to any player that seems to be heading in the right direction.  Thankfully Super Shock Football features a terrific passing mechanic that is really where the game’s fun comes from.  The longer the pass you try to make, the smaller the target you have to hit.  Add in the fact that you need to compensate for the receiver’s movement and you have something that’s both very quick to master and feels super satisfying when you can pull off a really long throw and have a player catch it in the end-zone.  I found myself forgiving most of the flaws brought on by the vibrating table mechanic since not having to control the players means that you can focus entirely on perfecting every throw.

True to its predecessor’s origins, Super Shock Football has a distinctly 50’s exaggerated cartoon graphics style.  The character models look great and have a surprising amount of detail when the camera zooms in, and the stadium itself looks terrific.  You can use the tilt controls to adjust the camera angle and multi-touch to zoom in, which I often ended up using just to have a nicer view while players ran.  The menus themselves all look pretty good with the same authentic retro style of the rest of the game.  Normally I would criticize a game for not having any music while you play but here I found that the lack of noise during game time really helped with the whole classic football vibe.  While you play you’ll only hear the occasional sound of the ball being caught or the ref’s whistle blowing, the audience cheer as you near the end-zone and a chorus of marching band music when you score. It’s small touches like these that really make the game’s atmosphere more immersive.

Wee! Camera angles!

There are three different difficulties to play on as well as a local multiplayer mode included.  After only a few games I felt comfortable playing on the hardest difficulty since so much of the game relies on luck.  Also included is support for OpenFeint’s superb social network and achievements system that is becoming more and more standard among some of the app store’s best games.  Overall, Super Shock Football is a pretty fun game.  The randomness of the movement can be pretty frustrating sometimes, but once you begin to look past it and master the passing controls you’ll have a blast with this game.

The Game

I bet he’s a catcher.

9 Innings: Pro Baseball 2009 is a very full-featured baseball simulator that has you managing a baseball team. You can play on multiple modes: Exhibition, Tournament, Season, and Homerun mode. Exhibition mode allows you to play 3, 5, or 9 innings as any team against any team and is a great way to get a hang of the game and practice. Tournament mode places you in a tournament bracket against other teams in a bid for first place. Season mode has you starting fresh with zeroed statistics for every player on your selected team and going through a season facing different teams in different stadiums, trying to win the championships. Last but not least, Homerun mode is essentially home run derby mode where you try to hit as many home runs possible before running out of pitches, trying to also get the highest score possible.

Aw crud.

If you can tell that I am not really going deep into every mode, there is a good reason: I only have so much room to write. 9 Innings is a terribly deep game, and I wish I could describe to you every single little aspect of it. Instead, let’s talk about the game mechanics instead. Batting is simple enough, there are three buttons – swing, bunt left, and bunt right. Personally, I’m horrible at bunting so I have stopped using it, but batting is all about the timing and pitch recognition. Once you master the timing of the swings, you will be unstoppable. Running the bases is pretty much automated, just click on the little icons of the players on the bases to have them run, and click on the icon between the bases to have them run back. Pitching is another beast, having you select a pitch, pick out where you want it to hit, and timing the control meter. At the same time, you have to manage the pitcher’s stamina and accuracy, ensuring to switch out when you need to.

Lastly, fielding is mostly automated, your fielders will usually throw it to the most appropriate person possible. Of course, this isn’t always true. Fielding is probably the most aggravating part of the game because your fielders aren’t exactly the smartest peas in the pod. I have had an opposing batter hit a blooper into right field, and instead of my right fielder throwing it to first base for an easy out, he chose to throw it to the cut off man, who then decided to throw it to second base. Very well done gentlemen, you have not only made fools of yourself, but you have made a fool of this entire organization!

Don’t choke, don’t choke, don’t choke!

Silly annoyances aside, the game has three difficulty levels for each mode: Easy, Normal, and Hard, with the amount of automation decreasing with the increase in difficulty – Hard is completely manual. In addition, there are achievements to be attained as well, ranging anywhere from “hit a solo home run” to “everyone on the team gets a hit”. The achievements have been really difficult to achieve on the higher end of the spectrum, but it is part of the reason why I have been coming back. These achievements in 9 Innings all give you points which you can put towards upgrading your coaches. Coaches offer greater depth for the game, giving you bonuses that you can upgrade as well as other types of coaches that you can unlock.

Graphics

The graphics of 9 Innings: Pro Baseball 2009 are cartoony in style but are not exactly impressive. Although the animations are smooth and the sprites are quite detailed, this was the weakest part of the game.

Sound

9 Innings: Pro Baseball 2009 has a great soundtrack that reminds me of the old sports games on the NES and SNES (Which surprisingly fits the graphics and art of the game) and the sound effects are top notch. Nothing more satisfying than the crack of a baseball bat signifying a very strong hit.

Additional Comments

I don’t feel I have played the game enough to really give any additional comments, despite having played for at least 8 hours now. I am very surprised at the depth and addictiveness of the game, and I wish I had played it much more before writing this review. While I would have normally suggested multiplayer modes or online multiplayer modes, I really could not imagine sitting there for half an hour to an hour playing 9 innings all the way through with someone, but it would be nice!

Conclusion

9 Innings: Pro Baseball 2009 has to be one of my favourite games for the iPhone thus far. There is something satisfying about being able to play a complete game of baseball in a multitude of modes, with plenty of achievements and unlockables to find. A definite must have, so go out and get it!

The Game

Baseball Slugger can be boiled down to one simple concept: home run derby. The great thing is that you can play it in four different modes, keeping the game nice and fresh! In case you aren’t aware of what home run derby is, it is essentially one of my favourite parts of all-star weekend for baseball: there is a pitcher and a batter, the aim of the game is to rack up as many home runs as possible before you get 10 outs. An out will either be a strike or a foul, and a home run is when the ball goes over the fence.

Alright, all explaining out of the way, we can discuss the four different modes. First and foremost, there is training mode, which lets you test out different pitcher styles (Over, under, side), hand (Left or right), speed of pitches, and pitch type. This is to get you accustomed to all the various curveballs (Hyuk hyuk) that a pitcher can throw at you during the course of 10 outs. Personally, it has been really helpful in figuring out where knuckles, sliders, sinkers, and splits will land in the box as well as recognizing them as soon as they are thrown. All of these pitches always throw me off, and being able to practice against them has been phenomenally helpful.

Classic mode is just plain old vanilla home run derby, pitcher throws you a ball, you smash the hell out of it, and you rack up your home run count. The pitches are generally fast balls into the strike zone at various speeds, and outs are everything that isn’t a homerun: strikes, fouls, and hits. On the ninth out, you are offered a golden ball, which, when you hit a home run with, will give you an extra gold ball, which acts as currency. More on that later. This is the one mode you want to play if you want to build up your number of home runs both in one game and overall, because the pitches are pretty easy to hit and it goes by real quick.

Arcade mode is a completely different beast. Pitchers are now throwing different types of pitches at wildly different speeds, in an attempt to get you to go down swinging. There are poles all over the field to differentiate between the different sections of the stands you can hit home runs to, and hitting a home run to each of the different sections will make you “Cycle” where you begin calling out where your home runs are going to go, and you get a bonus if you actually make the home runs get to where you called them. There are also different pitch power-ups, such as the score doubler and tripler, golden ball, reduction of 1 out, and a whole other gaggle of different power-ups that can be applied to a ball should you hit a home run with it. The aim of Arcade mode is to get as many points as possible, within 10 outs. Unlike Classic mode, hits count for a small amount of points instead of an out in Arcade mode, which gives you a bit of breathing room when it comes to facing nasty pitches.

Last but not least is Matchup mode. This is essentially the online portion of the game where you can face off with other people playing Baseball Slugger online, in a scary mix of Classic and Arcade mode: there are three different rooms with pitchers throwing different types of pitches (Straight fastballs in the rookie room), but you are trying to outscore your opponent through power-ups and called home runs, and all the different ways you have to get points. Matchup mode was my favourite mode in Baseball Slugger simply because you are facing off with someone online, and you’re basically trying to maximize the points given to you from every single home run. Once someone reaches the limit of points, the game ends, and you gain or lose some rating, and you gain a bit of gold balls.

One of my gripes with Baseball Slugger is the currency: gold balls. Initially, I was going to make fun of the name of the currency itself, I mean come on, balls! But after quite a while of playing, I noticed that unless you’re getting all of the achievements, gold balls are VERY hard to come by. Matchup mode gives you 1-10 gold balls per match, and there are the golden balls in Arcade and Classic mode which give you 1 gold ball each. Items are typically 50+ gold balls, and that is for the second level item stuff, whereas the highest level bat, the “Bat of Thunder” is 2950 gold balls, which is an INSANE amount especially considering everything at that level will be approximately the same price. Seriously, it will take a whole lot of grinding just to even get this bat, which may or may not be worth it. Sure, it keeps me coming back to build up enough gold balls to get it, but damn what a grind.

Graphics

The graphics of Baseball Slugger are quite superb, the character models and stadiums are all in 3D and they have quite a realistic range of motions. All of the models are pretty detailed and they all have a unique look about them, and the customization of the character is quite an awesome feature. Overall the game looks extremely polished and it is apparent that they spent quite a bit of time ensuring everything looked great.

Sound

Baseball Slugger has a generic rock soundtrack that doesn’t really do too much for me, but it definitely gives you that excited atmosphere that you really need for a home run derby game. The sound effects for the game on the other hand, are superb. They are very crisp and clear, and for some reason the crack of the bat and the cheers of the crowd make me really happy. Really, I sit there grinning like an idiot whenever I’m on a roll with my home runs.

Additional Comments

I really wish there was some sort of chat function online, because I feel like I really need to talk trash sometimes. For example, one of the fellows whom I faced online was being outright demolished by me, and he kept asking to have a rematch. There were several instances where he was about to win and I would just come storming back and take the game. I wish I could have just said “Really? Again? Now I’m embarrassed for you.” but then I remembered, good sportsmanship is key to having fun in sports.

So I guess they should probably leave out chat… But I would like to add that the online play is extremely polished, and it is a very fast-paced game online that can end in seconds! I am mighty impressed at what they were capable of doing for online matchups, and I look forward to seeing more of these kinds of matchups in other iPhone/iPod Touch games.

Conclusion

Baseball Slugger is a terribly addictive game that will have you keep coming back to smash more balls out of the park. Baseball fans will have to buy this game, but non-baseball fans will have just as much fun playing as we do!