You can see new screenshots from the game below before heading beyond the break to read our hands-on and see the new trailer for Academy of Champions. It's a bit like a Hogwart's for soccer, except without all the death and killing and such. But is there magic? Oh yes ... you can actually play as Sam Fisher in full-stealth mode. Find out more inside.
Seriously, just watch that trailer and tell us it doesn't remind you in the slightest bit of Harry Potter. No? Paintings / photos coming to life? Brightfield = Gryffindor? Scythemore = Slytherin? Tri-Wizard Cup = Academy Cup? It all falls into place ... and also the fact that the game is like one big Quidditch match where the quidditch = soccer. Very sneaky, Ubisoft.
Despite the similarities, the game is actually quite fun to play. You're a student at Brightfield, the greatest soccer academy in the world, and Pele is your headmaster. Your goal is to advance your soccer skills and defeat the evil Scythemore team. As you progress through, you'll learn different soccer skills and start to form your own dream team. There's an in-game calendar similar to Madden that allows you to prepare for a game by practicing soccer skills, and these will up your points. Gain enough and you can buy items in the Academy store, which includes power shots, as well as items for your avatar to wear.
Games are 5 on 5 matches, and there are seven different field environments to play on throughout the game, and these get populated as you score. For instance the "America" environment has different icons that drop from the sky as you play: a bald eagle, an amusement park, and so on. These take up residence around the edge of the field and are purely to add aesthetic flavor as you can't interact with the environments, although they do look spiffy and provide nice eye candy while you play.
Gameplay itself is simple: move around with the thumbstick on the nunchuck and the A button passes and the B button shoots. You'll do a bit of aiming with the B button when you're trying to nail a goal, and while you're on defense the A button provides you with a tackle. Dribbling itself it automatic, and the controls are definitely kid-friendly. FIFA lovers will find them far too simplistic, but casual Wii players will enjoy it.
There are some WiiMotion Plus tweaks throughout the gameplay, offering more accurate high and low kicks, and the Balance Board can be used for minigames, including bouncing the ball on your knees and rolling it up and down your arms and around your neck. Mastering "Around the World" where the ball fully encircles your throat is pretty hard, and you look a bit goofy when you're trying to do it. There are over 12 minigames that include a variety of controls, and don't all involve you looking like you're doing yoga, thankfully.
You can also purchase power moves as you accrue points, and these are over the top, cartoonish moves like turning into a whirlwind and blowing past an opponent and so on. As you progress through the game, you can start unlocking full teams to select, and the All-Ubisoft Team best illustrated the power moves: you have Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, the Prince from Prince of Persia, Altair from Assassin's Creed, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, and a Rabbid serving as your goalie.
Sam can slip his goggles down and go into full stealth mode to sneak past defenders, Altair has a massive power kick that can knock several opponents down as it heads towards the goal, and so on. Once we played as this team, we didn't want to be anyone else. Seriously. When Fisher uses his stealth you hear the powerup phweeee sound of his goggles, the game just won us over at that point.
With cartoonish graphics and gameplay that isn't very difficult, you'd tend to write this off as a kids game. But when we were playing multiplayer 1 on 1, it was a lot of fun even without the power moves. Academy of Champions is a title that looks easy to dismiss on face value, but it'll well worth picking up if you're a Wii owner.
