By John Walker on March 23rd, 2010 at 12:59 pm.
It’s impossible to resist a demo of a game called Handball Challenge Training Camp. What could it be? Diego Maradona’s guide to winning at foot-to-ball? Er, another joke relating to a sport I don’t understand? No no, it’s a German game of Handball simulation. Knowing you, you probably know all about handball already. I sure didn’t. But then, I’m still not quite sure what rugby league is. So if you want to play it in gaming form, perhaps even to discover its very existence, you can totally do that now.
This is a fully licensed thing, even with multiple music tracks and so on, in the vein of an EA or 2K sports game, although clearly with a sliver of the budget. It’s rather still in German. All the text is English, but the characters in-game speak German with English subtitles. And what exactly is going on is a little mysterious. I had to run around a cone, then do something where the controls hadn’t been explained to me, and then it crashed. Which wasn’t perhaps the most clarifying experience. However, to get a slightly better idea you can watch this trailer:
Racist!
report
What’s wrong with being racy? ((c) Kieron Gillen 1975 – 2010)
report
Wait, does that mean Kieron is going to die this year? Would buying comics be a worthwhile investment?
report
The Monster finally finished digesting him.
report
Wow, with jokes like that you’ve got to wonder how KG doesn’t have kids yet…
(on second thought he may in fact have kids, I just assume that since he never mentions them and still has time to do anything other than claw at his reproductive organs so as to ensure that he never repeats his mistaken progenation- that he indeed does not.)
(geeze, on third thoughts I hope that the reason KG doesn’t mention his hypothetical love child/ren isn’t because they died in some tragic incident involving an accidentally thrown knife during a discussion about the various merits of Star Craft… That would make me a right royal prick I suppose.)
on fourth thoughts I think that perhaps these gigantic leaps of [il]logic are due to me spending the last few hours playing Ben there, Dan that and Time gentlemen, please. I should sleep now.)
report
It’s a riff on SPINAL TAP, you fool!
KG
report
How much more funny could this be? Quite a bit.
report
I bet this game’s rpetty handy.
report
The best sports game since Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge?
report
The best sports game since Peter Shilton’s Handball Maradona?
report
The best game since Jesus Christ’s Cross Training*?
*See also the straight-to-budget sequel, Kevin Leddins’ Cross Training (review copies not advanced to the press).
report
We played it in PE a few times. Not a patch on Crab Football, really.
report
Handball, that is. Not Handball Challenge Training Camp.
report
@ BooleanBob: And that’s why you’ll never be Hand-to-ball champions. Eye of the tiger, an’ all that.
report
Crab football! I’d completely forgotten about its sheer brilliance. That has got me all nostalgic for the days of the plaground.
report
Is it just me, or is that simply soccer with your hands?
report
Nope, that’s football with just your hands.
report
In the sense that there are two teams and each try to get the ball in the other team’s goal, yes it’s like football played with hands. The ball, playing field and goal are much smaller though and the game’s a lot faster and more brutal than footballl though.
report
The tactics are quite different as well, a lot of time is spent in front of either teams goal (and in front of the line which marks the area only the goalie may be in.)
report
And here was me hoping for a simulation of that most noble of sports: Eton Fives.
report
Re: 10/mar/handball.jpg
I don’t know what is the key word here. Precission?. I have the feeling to be “there”, even with bad graphics or low poly model it has a authentic feel. Nice. /hat
report
No whiteboard is complete without an XB0x 36O controller.
report
It is the shape of a Playstation controller with the colouring of a 360 controller: these Germans are sneaky!
report
Racism!!
report
This is what gaming makes us.
report
I don’t think they could have made it look less fast or powerful
report
Turn based, using tile graphics, moving the tiles graphics with a sloooow animation. Showing the speed of the ball as fractions of the speed of light.
report
I played handball when I was a teenager. I always thought it would be difficult to make a handball game. I’m downloading it now with a stupid smile on my face …
report
It’s crap and it crashes like Jhon said. Don’t know why but I feel the urge to play the “No russian” level again and again. Alan Titchmarsh was right and videogames lead to violence and frustration…
report
Caption for the heading image:
“Thes Blu dot es a playor colled George. He es friend of ours. George vas supposed to bringder hockey sticks so ve could be playing Hockey? But he forgottdem. So, ve had to invent der new game: Kick der shit out of George.”
report
This just makes me want a quality Ultimate Frisbee game…
report
Looks a bit like Anco’s (bobbins) Tip Off basketball game. I’m without sound so I’m assuming it has authentic squeaky shoe noises to go with those snazzy reflections.
report
From occasional drunken excursions into Eurosport’s late-night Peculiar Sports coverage, I have concluded that the world’s easiest job is handball goalie. Literally all they do is stand in front of a five-a-side football net while people hurl a ball past them from about six feet away. I have never seen a handball goalie actually save a goal; perhaps the aim is more to accrue style points as you hurl yourself despairingly in the general direction.
I often wonder whether it would still be possible for me – a thirtysomething desk jockey with a spare tyre – to win an Olympic medal. I’ve narrowed the possibilities down to handball goalie (professional sport’s air guitarists) and the guys who sweep the ice in front of curling stones. I bet I could get to Olympic level in ice-sweeping in a month or two.
report
Wow… a training camp… that will capture the audience ^^;
And Trailer first class…
no comparison to !
report
didn’t work as intended… real thing
report
I remember watching this at the last summer Olympics. Many obscure Eastern European nations seemed to be very good. I also remember the Polish woman’s team were especially vibrant to watch.
As for a game I’m not very interested. Still waiting for a good lawn bowls sim…
report
It’s only obscure in the sense that it’s widely played in every european country except the UK.
report
Ok a joke about cheating in football in a post about Germans? Don’t you have any decency at all? One word, 1966.
report
Isn’t that two words? or three words if you don’t use a hyphen…
Or in your case not a word at all but a number…
report