When you launch Real Football for the first time, you can choose to take control of a club from a number of leagues across the world. Pro Evolution Soccer fans will no doubt be glad to see the return of teams such as 'Man Red', as Gameloft hasn't acquired the rights to the names of most of the teams available. This certainly sets the tone for the rest of the game, which has an extremely casual feel about it.
There's only one game mode available to you in Real Football, in which you take control of a club and guide them through a season, in a similar fashion to career mode on FIFA. Unfortunately, you can't just dive into a friendly game to take on the CPU or your friends. Always one for a challenge, I chose to take control of Blackpool to begin my career - you can select teams from the first two tiers of english football - and was immediately given the chance to make serious improvements to my side, by signing none other than Neymar for free... It's quite apparent that realism isn't high up on Gameloft's list of priorities.
In a similar fashion to the old LMA Manager games on PlayStation, Real Football goes beyond matches, allowing you to control every aspect of the club that you choose when you launch the game. You can upgrade everything from your stadium to the club spa, but as Real Football is a freemium game, this all cost money. Real money.
The freemium model may be popular on Android, to provide a steady stream of income after a game has been downloaded, and to combat piracy, but unfortunately, it makes Real Football a lot less enjoyable than it could be.
If you're taking the whole club management thing seriously, you'll want to make sure that you have adequate training facilities, a good hospital, and an attractive spa. Yes, a spa can actually help your players avoid injury.
So, you want to upgrade your hospital to level 3. Great, that'll be 15 coins please. Don't have enough money? Great, you can buy more using your hard earned, real money. These upgrades don't come cheap either; 1300 coins will put you back 70 quid! For that amount of money, I can buy FIFA 13 on the PS3 and pick up 24 beers to go with it. Even the smaller purchase of a "fistful of cash" (20 coins) will cost you £1.49.
Once you've purchased an upgrade, the kick in the teeth comes when you have to wait 3 hours - in real time - until it's completed. Is there anything more annoying? Of course, you can hurry things along a bit, but it'll cost you more money. Basically, Gameloft is squeezing every penny it can out of you through every aspect of the game. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind paying for a game that I'll spend a lot of time on, but by the time you've played a season of Real Football, you may as well have bought a season ticket at your local club.
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