Giveaway of the Day - Football Live

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of potential cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain why your reasons for the feedback you post. Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment. Thank you.

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Installation:

Today’s game giveaway Football Live downloads to a 67MB zip file that unpacks to a dual activation and set up file and a read me that contains installation instructions and the Terms & Conditions. To newcomers to the Game Giveaway dual activation and set up means that once the game has been installed it will automatically register itself, so there’s no need to look for a registration key. The game installs to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Neogen2 Creations\Football Live

I think the install path may depend upon where you last installed a Game Giveaway. Please do check the install path before you continue with the set up wizard because I’ve found some games even install into the last games folder, which could cause problems. (I think this has something to do with the Temp cache). If this appears to happen please would you report it here, thank you. The installed game is 90MB in size.

Today’s game does place a shortcut on the desktop though not in the Start menu programs list. If you wish to place a shortcut in the Start Menu/Programs list, go to the installed games folder and right click on the games executable and select ‘Create shortcut’, then cut and paste into a folder that you’ve prenamed Football Live (or maybe Soccer Live for our American cousins), or if you wish Fly Games with a sub folder Football/Soccer Live, then cut the whole folder to the following path:

C:\Users\named account or administrator\app data\roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

To find the above path you will need to make your hidden folders visible, which can be done by selecting Folder options from the Control Panel (found in the Start Menu). you may have to change the view from ‘Category’ to small Icons via the view by deop down menu to the top right of the control panel window. when the folder Options window opens select the ‘View’ tab, then scroll down to where it says ‘Hidden files and folders’ and select Show hidden files, folders, and drives. Make sure once you’ve completed the task to change this back otherwise there is a danger that you may delete or move folders from the system. If you feel this is risky create a restore point before you start the task, but to be honest, it’s very easy and unlikely to lead to any harm to your operating system.

The path will be different if you are using XP or earlier. I’ve posted a tutorial in the Games discussion forums HERE

Introduction:

Football Live is a football/soccer game inspired by classic football games, trying
to keep their ideals intact: Easy to pick up and play, hard to master.

Reference accessed November 2011 HERE

Football Live is a game inspired by old-school football games like Sensible Soccer and Kick Off, trying to keep their ideals intact: Easy to pick up and play, hard to master.

Reference pdf manual

The Game:

Football live has quite a lot of options to explain. I will give a brief explanation here, but i would suggest you read the manual that you can find installed in the games main folder. It’s a pdf document so make sure you have Adobe Reader otherwise you won’t be able to access it.

when the game boots up you are faced with an array of choices from the main menu ranging from friendly matches, a career mode, tournaments and training as well as an editor a tropy room and options.

The options allows you to configure the game in several ways for example you can change the difficulty from Very Easy through to world Class via five choices. You can select how you are going to observe the game via camera amgles. these are Vertical (which is the default setting), Vertical Near, Vertical normal, and Vertical far. There’s also an horizontal viewpoint and a top down. You can also choose the ball style such as classic, dots white or the default ball. here’s a ball control selection which includes normal and free control. you can adjust the Match length and the game speed via sliders as well as toggle off bloom effects and windowed/full screen.

The editor allows you to change virtually everything to do with teams and players from their names, the names of the towns and countries as well the skill of each player. You rank each player according to skill via a slider. All the controls are intuitative.

Each of the four playing modes offers something slightly different though the basic mechanics of each mode are similar. For example cllicking on either the friendly or the training modes allows you to choose to play in one of four european leagues (English, spanish, German and Italian) or if you choose to play a tournamant you can choose from 16 national teams from across the globe, for example, several European countries as well as African and South american and evn Japan (though no American team). Choosing a league will enable you to play in the premier disions in each of the leagues mentioned above, though some changes to teams may have occurred since this game was built last year.. I’m not into football so wouldn’t know the difference..

Each of the leagues has sixteen teams to choose from. You will notice that all of the teams names have been changed slightly so as not to interfere with licencing. I presume games like the Football Manager series, Fifa Manager or Championship Manager hold all of the licences to use official team and player names, but that’s just a presumption.

Once you’ve chosen your team, a brief look at the key bindings for gameplay (which can be found in the pdf manual as well), is followed by the squad management table and pitch layout. you can move your players around to correspond to the player positions which are marked out on the small plan view of the pitch. There are 11 positions to fill. you can select what ratio of players will play as defenders, midfield or attackers via the small window just below the plan of the pitch (field). There are seven combinations to choose from for example 4x5x1 means 4 defenders, 5 midfielders and 1 attacker, or a 4x3x3 combination which equates to 4 defenders, 3 midfielders and 3 attackers. you just click on the selections till you find the one that you want to use in game. The choice is dependent on the skill of each player you field. for example if you place three attackers who are ranked very low against an opposing team that had strong attakers you are likely to lose your match. You can also choose the way your players play by biasing the game towards attacking, defending or playing normally 9that is with a combination of attacking and defending skills).

All of the various codes used in the squad management table, for example GK means Goal Keeping abilities; the higher the score for this the better the goal keeping abilities the player has. Tac means tackling, the higher the tackling skill, the more likely the player is going to get to the ball. you can see descriptions of all of the various abbreviations in the manual. I would strongly recommend you read the manual before playing this game. The following information has been copied from the manual. There are some useful tips that may improve your gameplay experience if you take heed:

General Tips:

If you’re losing, make your team play more attacking football and change to a more attacking formation as soon as you can. By the end of each game, the opponent will try to defend the result and it will be much harder to score then.

If you have fast wingers and forwards with good heading ability, it’s recommended that you use them to run down the opponent’s flanks and cross the ball to the center. It’s likely that there will be a forward waiting to head the ball in.

Goalkeepers are much easier to beat if you shoot the ball when you are close to them than from long range. It’s possible to score goals from large distances though, just pay attention to the goalkeeper’s positioning and make sure your player is has a good shooting ability and strength.

Career Mode:

In the career mode, if you can’t win at least try to play well. Playing badly and not getting results will get you fired in no time. To appeal the fans, try to maintain as much possession as you can and attack and create as many goal opportunities as you can. Even if you don’t score, near-goals will get your fans pumped up. Of course, sometimes risking too much when you’re winning might not be a good idea but playing defensively against a weaker opponent and the fans will not like it so you have to maintain a good balance- always remember that results are more important than the exhibition.

If you’re playing against a very strong team and are expected to lose, try maintaining the possession and avoid taking risks unless you’re losing. A draw will be enough for your fans.

Aftertouch:

You can bend the ball by using the direction arrows the moment after you shoot. Scoring goals using the aftertouch can be hard and require some training, but they are very satisfying and it’s a great way to score goals once you have the hang of it.

How well you can bend the ball is limited by the player’s Flair attribute.

Game modes:

Friendly Match – A simple match where you can play a opponent of your choice.

Career – Play an entire season with a team of your choice and fight for your objectives while avoiding being fired due to bad results and not playing well. If you are just starting out it’s recommended to choose a smaller team otherwise you’ll be expected to win almost all your games.

Tournaments – Play one of the 5 available tournaments in the game with a team of your choice. You can fight for the English Cup, Spanish Cup, Italian Cup, German Cup and World Cup.

Training – Train your abilities by playing with a team of your choice, but without any opponents except for a goalkeeper. It’s recommended to spend some time training, especially if you are a beginner.

Editor– Edit all the players and teams available in the game, namely the player names, looks and attributes, and the team names and ratings.
Trophy Room– Here you’ll be able to see which trophies you won, with which teams and difficulty mode. Show off by taking screenshots !

Features:

Fully 3D engine with different cameras for you to chose
Fast paced gameplay, with adjustable game speed
Realistic ball physics
Score spectacular goals by mastering the aftertouch system
Unique career mode where your performance do matter, almost as much as results
Many tournaments, including the world cup
Many teams, including both clubs and nations
Team and player editor included
And much more !

Controls:

You can use a keyboard or game pad to play this game. The following are the key bindings you need to know to be able to play the sensible soccer like game.

A – Long Pass/ Tackling
S – Short Pass/Switch Closest player/ Take the ball of the opponent
D – Shoot
W – Pass into space
Shift – Run
Arrow keys – Move player
Enter – Skip menu
Escape – Open ingame menu

Images:

You can see a slideshow of about 20 images from the game HERE

System Requirements:

Conclusion:

This isn’t a game for those who just want to have a quick game to fill in some time. It takes a lot of though and planning to play the game successfully. This isn’t my type of game, so found it difficult to review. Overal though I think it’s a well constructed game that’s reasonable priced, (though that doesn’t concern us here because we are getting it for free).

You can post comments and suggestions over in the appropriate forums over on the developers site HERE

I found the game an above average game in all aspects; the score averaged out at 7 out of 10

There is a free online soccer game that you can play for free. You can check it out via Steam called International Online Soccer

http://store.steampowered.com/app/90007/?snr=1_200_200_260_103_4

Score:
Gameplay – 7
Graphics – 7
Audio – 7
Replayability – 7
Originality – 7

Overall 7 out of 10

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

If you are having problems unzipping the game giveaways zip file, for example getting a message saying the file is invalid try using a different file archiver such as 7-Zip http://7-zip.org/ , J-Zip http://www.jzip.com/ , CAM UnZip http://www.camunzip.com/ , Hamster Free Zip Archiver http://ziparchiver.hamstersoft.com/en/home , GZip http://www.gzip.org/ , B Zip2 http://bzip.org/ , peazip http://www.peazip.org/ , ZipUnzip http://www.info-zip.org/UnZip.html , FreeRAR Extract Frog http://free-rar-extract-frog.pwpw.de/ , RAR File Open Knife http://www.rar-file-open-knife.com/rar_file_open_knife.php , ALZip http://www.altools.com/ALTools/ALZip.aspx , The Extractor http://theextractor.org/ , RarZilla Free Unrar http://www.philipp-winterberg.com/software/rarzilla_free_unrar.php

Okay, that should be enough. there are actually many more free versions available. also there are other commercial titles such as the well-known WinRAR, Stuffit, WinAce, NXPowerlite and Corel Winzip Pro, but IMO 7-Zip is probably one of the better freebies. I did purchase a copy of Stuffit when it was on sale a few years ago, but didn’t like the interface for some reason, so hardly ever use it.

The game is bugged. I cannot believe that the developers spent three years in developing the game and werent even able to remove bugs from a final match statistic … or whatever that should be. A wonderful example for a rushed realease. No. That is NOT good. I just needed to use ctrl+alt+del to kill and continue with the game (after this comment) after just 7 minutes of gameplay. Well, if i really continue to play. Bugs will kill every football game. You know Ascaron software? They got bancrupt because of bugs in their football managers. So developers: beware!!