Handball 16

Handball 16, developed by Eko Software and published by Bigben Interactive, launched in November 2015 as essentially the first dedicated handball simulation on PC. The sport itself is a genuinely fun basis for a video game: think basketball crossed with indoor soccer, six attackers trying to work the ball around a defensive crease before launching spin shots, hip shots, jump shots, fakes, and dodges past a goalkeeper who can use both hands and feet. On paper, that sounds like a blast. In practice, the execution is rough. The game ships with four modes - quick match, season, career, and online - but the content in each one is thin. Career mode lets you create a player, earn points through matches and challenges, and accept recruitment offers from clubs across the French Championnat de D1, German DKB Handball-Bundesliga, and Spanish Liga Asobal. You control the whole team during matches, not just your created player, which at least gives you full tactical control. Season mode runs you through a full league campaign. Neither mode has much depth under the surface: no transfers in Season, limited customisation in Career, and no difficulty slider anywhere in the game. You get one difficulty setting and that is it. The gameplay itself is where things get genuinely frustrating. Attacking has some workable moments once you learn the 24 offensive tactics and start chaining passes to create shooting lanes. Defending, though, is a mess. Teammate AI is passive, animations are stiff and scripted, and the goalie behaviour feels random even on straightforward shots. Controller recognition was reported as broken for many users at launch, meaning a lot of people ended up playing on keyboard, which makes the already awkward controls worse. There is no tutorial or training mode to ease you in, so new players are basically learning by conceding goals. Online multiplayer is effectively dead at this point, years after release, so that mode is not a realistic selling point anymore. From a couch co-op angle, local match-up is available one-on-one, but there is no split-screen in any meaningful sense and the game does not support more than two players. If you were hoping to bring this to a group night, it is a hard sell. The "four friends" test it fails decisively. The audio has competent commentary with the expected repetition, and the court lighting looks decent, but player models are generic and crowd animations belong to a much earlier console generation. If you grew up watching European club handball and have been waiting years for any video game to represent the sport, there is a narrow scenario where this scratches an itch. The licensed teams and real player stats from the 2015-2016 season are genuinely appreciated. For anyone else, the clunky controls, absent difficulty options, dead online, and razor-thin mode depth make this a hard recommendation at anything close to a full price. Riley, Scout Team