Go! Go! Beckham! Adventure on Soccer Island is a platfomer starring the one and only, (you guess it) David Beckham.

This game comes from the publisher Rage (the same one who released a Beckham game on the PS1), so maybe they wanted to do something with the license before expiring, I don't really know.

The game is just an average platfomer inspired very obviously by Super Mario World (especially in the color palette). Even the title screen is reminiscent of the title screen on Yoshi's Island. Sadly, the comparison stops right there, because as you might guess, this is not Super Mario World by any means. Let's talk about gameplay:

Go! Go! Beckham! is divided in 5 worlds. The first four ones have 10 stages each and a boss at the end. The final world has around 5 stages and then the final boss.

The overall world is divided in "leagues" or "division" (since it is a footbal game, they are just using those terms), so you are climbing the divisions until you get to the very best one on the game (like climbing through League One, then Championship and finally the Premier League).

Each stage takes around 5-10 minutes to beat, so you can finish the game in around 3-4 hours (wich in this case, it's a good thing). All the stages in the world you are playing at have the same background and color palette, wich ends up being boring and lazy. The levels itself tend to be empty with not much to do except to collect all the coins in the level (only for the sake of collect them all) with some enemies sprinkle here and there. But, the main gimmick on this game (apart from Beckham) is that you use a ball to defeat the enemies, and collect the coins. The ball can be shot in eight directions, can be used to defeat enemies, to collect coins and to finish the stage by shooting it at the goal.

The thing is, for the first world, the pace is super slow. Beckham walks rather than running, everytime you shoot the ball, you have to pick it up, you cant really jump that high. It is not until you defeat a boss that you gain power ups and then the game is more fluid. You can run faster, jump higher, and you have a magic whistle that you can use to recover the ball automatically from anywhere on the stage. The game itself is so short, I don't know why they will deprive you from having fun from stage 1. By the time you have all the power ups, you are more than halfway through a game that last less than 4 hours.

Overall I would say play it without trying to collect all the stuff in it because you gain nothing from doing it. If you can manage to beat world 1 and not get bored, then you will not be for the rest of the game.