Street Power Soccer preview: The other side of soccer

While there's an entire fandom to soccer and the action on the pitch, there's more to it than that. There's an entire subculture dedicated to bringing soccer to the streets. And that's what Street Power Soccer is mainly about. This effort from the team at SFL Interactive and Gamajun Games focuses on the other side of European football, where freestyling is king.

Street Power Soccer doesn't take players to the pitch, but rather to different street locations around the world for 1v1, 2v2, or 3v3 sessions. Players can select from 25 confirmed stars of the street soccer world like Sean Garnier, Liv Cooke, and Raquel Benetti. The Street Power Match mode is where a bulk of the competitions take place, with the objective to score five goals in five minutes. This emphasizes on arcade-style play, offering each character two different superpower moves while also filling the field with different power-up items that can offer boosts or debilitating effects on opponents.

But if there's anything that Street Power Soccer is about more than anything else, it's style points. That comes into play in Panna mode. Panna is moroe commonly known in English as "nutmegging," the act of kicking the ball between your opponent's legs. This mode has players go one-on-one with the standard soccer rules still in place. The difference is, while scoring a goal is good for one point, nutmegging is worth two points. So how does nutmegging work in this game? Players can perform different stunts to fill up their energy bar. A filled energy bar will trigger a series of button prompts on both sides. If the player on offense wins, they'll nutmeg their opponent. Considered an extreme humiliation in street soccer culture, nutmegging can be worth more than two points. The KO variant mode will make nutmegging an automatic win.

There are a few other modes that focus on the cultural element of street soccer. Freestyle turns Street Power Soccer into a rhythm game, more in the vein of Dance Dance Revolution. Hitting different combinations of buttons will perform different tricks and while not every move combination will be provided, exploration is a big part of the fun. If you can stay with the rhythm and perform to the beat, you'll earn big points and you can also win one-on-one showdowns with friends.

Meanwhile, Trickshot will go from a field on the street to... the literal streets. The idea here is to aim at various targets and perform different trick shots. Think something along the lines of landing a ball into a distant trash can or ricocheting a shot off some safety cones. Target difficulties vary and are worth different point amounts.

This is just a sample of what players can expect from Street Power Soccer. With dozens of unlockable outfit pieces, as well as music from the Black Eyed Peas, DJ Snake, and Snap, SFL Interactive and Gamajun Games are aiming heavily for atmosphere and look to be on their way to capturing what it means to be a part of street soccer culture. Street Power Soccer is set to release on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch later this summer for $49.99.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?