Ah yes, the good ole times… Playing some foosball in between classes and even sometimes past our classes. Foosball brings back some fun competitive memories, so this game brings one big smile to my face.

Illusion Labs, the team behind Touchgrind and the Labyrinth games for iPhone and iPad have just released Foosball HD, a brand new game exclusively for the iPad (due to the larger screen surface and the nature of the game). Foosball HD is a single or multiplayer above-the-table view of the classic game of Foosball.

If you are not familiar with the game of foosball, think of it as playing soccer with all the players impaled on sticks. The basic point of the game is simple, maneuver a ball down the playing field by spinning and rotating the players attached to your color’s given poles. While the concept is simple, this is a game of strategy and careful planning. Knowing when and how hard to spin your players to score on your opponent’s goal is tougher than it sounds. Foosball HD is presented in an overhead, top-down view and everything from your players to the ball are rendered in crisp clean 3D graphics. Colors vibrantly pop, making it very attractive to the eye.

Foosball HD has two basic game modes, single player and multiplayer. Single player of course pits you against an AI opponent who is quite fun to play against and does offer a good challenge. Then we have the crown jewel of gameplay for Foosball HD, two player multiplayer. You and a friend each sit on opposite sides of the iPad, controlling your choice of either the red or blue team players and go head to head for bragging rights. Playing this mode immediately makes you fully realize just how awesome it is to have same-screen multiplayer games on the iPad; they work fantastically and are a heck of a lot of fun.

In Conclusion

Bells are whistles are not what Foosball HD is about, and that’s the beauty of it. Fire it up, play a round, turn it off. Single player and multiplayer is what it has to offer, plain and simple. The pure amount of polish and good fun this will bring for just $2.99, you can’t go wrong. If there’s one thing I’d like added to this game, it would be online multiplayer. All it would need to be is a simple option to match you up with someone, bare bones even, no fancy options. This would be a fantastic way for Illusion Lab’s to extend the life of the game.

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