I had some real trouble with this game at first and thought it impossible to score the 200. The very few people on MyGamerCard who have done it wasn’t a very motivating sight either. But I decided to tough it out and searched through every thread on every achievement forum to find as many tips as I could. I came up with some good tactics and learned many wonderful little tricks from a few forum posters and I decided to compile it all in a thread to help others who are struggling with this frustrating game.

This guide does, perhaps, not contain every best and most advanced technique to be found in this game. This is a bare minimum guide since the time I spent with the game was the bare minimum to get the 200. If anyone has better tips, feel free to post.

Thanks to BilldaCat10 and SOG S3LRAK for the threads I link to, SnapDragon for additional tips and K4rn4ge for helping me with the online.

GAMEPLAY FAQs

What’s going on in this game?
Read the help section in the game. For once in an XBLA game, it’s actually pretty useful here. This guide assumes that you’ve read this section, and played a few matches already.

How do I score a goal?
The goalie AI isn’t too bright. You can often just run up to him at a slight angle (so that the goalie and your player heads line up, but with a heads width offset to the right or left) and toss the ball straight into the goal. Another tactic that works wonders is running diagonally straight toward, say, the right corner of the goal to get the goalie to go there, then you swiftly turn left and score.

Should I even be bothering with goals?
Generally, no. You score the most points by trying to own the multiplier and the stars.

BilldaCat10 wrote a very informative post on the subject here:

http://forums.xbox.com/16432352/ShowPost.aspx

The only problem with this tactic is that it is very hard to pull off against the strongest teams. They won’t leave you alone by the stars long enough for you to get any real points. What I do against them is try to always push toward the star side, hit two stars if I can (or one if not) and let it bounce toward the goal. Then I try to score a goal. If I meet too much resistance, I run back to the stars and repeat the whole procedure.

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GENERAL FAQs

Should I buy this game?
Absolutely not. This is the most infuriatingly and absurdly unfair game currently available on XBLA. The computer cheats you out of a fair victory every chance it gets, in any way it sees fit. The only reason for buying this game might be multiplayer, in which case it’s pretty fun, or purely for gamerscore reasons.

Original or new graphics?
It’s up to your preference. While the new graphics are heinously ugly, the game plays a fair bit slower with them activated and personally I found that preferrable. On the other hand, I thought the controls felt slightly better with the original graphics. This shouldn’t be possible since they’re both just skins, but don’t ask me why the game is glitchy and weird.

If I beat one mode, like the League, do I get to keep my all my hard work that went into upgrading characters?
Of course not. That would be pretty fun and highly satisfying, but this game is neither about having fun nor player gratification.

Which mode do I play first? (Cup, League, Knockou, League Manager)
It’s up to you, really, as you don’t get to keep your upgraded characters anyway.

Cup is the shortest, but it gets annoyingly hard towards the end and you have to play every match twice.

League takes the longest, but the first three divisions are fairly easy and would be a good training ground for the other modes. Recommended starting point.

Knockout is short compared to the League, but longer than the Cup (30 matches, to be exact). Only the last couple of matches are really hard in this mode, which might make it an easier second step than the Cup.

Save League Manager for when your favorite show is on. There is no actual gameplay there. Actually, you need to hop back to the 360 channel every 3 minutes to upgrade characters and start the next match, so maybe you shouldn’t be watching your favorite show.

What’s going on? The stats don’t even matter!
That’s correct. Your stats will of course make your players faster, stronger and able to throw the ball longer, and so on, but aside from that the stats are completely worthless. Just because you far outrank an opposing team does not mean you will win easily. Even if you have 30 more speed than they do, they can still be as fast or faster than you. And just because all of your players have exactly the same stats doesn’t mean that they’re all as fast.

Why is my goalie a complete idiot?!
He just is. It doesn’t seem to matter how much you level up his intelligence. He stays the idiot he was born as. This usually manifests itself in him doing a ”saving” throw long before both the ball reaches his part of the court and long before you get control over him. He’ll throw himself to protect the goal, and land five feet away from it leaving it completely open to your opponent and you get control over the goalie while he’s recovering on the ground. And so on. You just have to live with idiotic goalie AI. Again: absurdly unfair and all that.

Why is the opposing team always EVERYWHERE while my team is NOWHERE to be found?!
Because the developers couldn’t think of fair ways to make the game hard. Instead, they made it so that the opposing team warps around the court to make sure there’s almost always three players right on top of you no matter where you go or what you do. Ever notice how when the enemy team attacks the goal, there’s ALWAYS 3-4 players running toward your goal, but when you make a run, you’re ALWAYS alone? Yeah.

Did an opposing player just tackle me while holding the ball? What?
Yes, he did. You can’t do that, though. Fun, isn’t it?

How do you turn off the auto-selecting of players? It always picks the wrong player!
You can’t. And, yes, the auto-select is insanely stupid. Watching a ball glide over the field through your entire team without being able to grab it because the auto-select is flipping out and can’t decide who’s the closest is a ton of fun. Even more fun when the opponent comes and snatches the ball up right in front of you, while you’re still struggling with the auto-select.

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THE ACHIEVEMENTS

 

DO THESE IN SINGLEPLAYER

There’s no way around these achievements. You’ll just have to put in the hard work.

001: Winner
Win a single player match.

This will come to you. I promise.

002: Super Skill
Obtain a point from each score entity.

I am actually not quite certain what this means. I assume they mean that you need to score a regular goal, and then hit each of the five stars and perhaps the multiplier as well. No idea if this has to be done in a single match or if it can be done in multiplayer as well, but there’s a 95% chance that you will unlock this by accident while going for the rest of the achievements so I won’t dwell on it.

003: Fully Pumped
Raise all the statistics of one player to the maximum in a single player match.

Despite the crappy description, this does NOT have to be done in a single match as that would be impossible.

What it means is just to raise a character to max stats over the course of a career. Any league will do. It is probably easiest in League and Cup, but you will probably NEED to do it to clear Knockout.  Either way, this is one of those achievements that will just pop up as you work towards others.

The max for League is 220, Knockout is 240 and Cup is 230 (I think).

004: League Manager Champion
Win the league as manager.

How is this supposed to be fun again? For this achievement, you get to stare at the screen as dumb AI players make mistake upon mistake while you frustratingly scream that you want to take over and stop them from doing so many stupid things.

SOG S3LRAK wrote an excellent guide to this league right here:

http://forums.xbox.com/16174945/ShowPost.aspx

I used his guide and won easily.

005: Knockout Champion
Beat every team in Knockout.

Knockout is 30 matches against each team in the game. They get progressively tougher and you need to stay tough, and your players especially need to grow tougher. Therefore, the number one tip is to make absolutely sure that you get all or at least most of the coins available in a match. The maximum earned money in a match (regardless of how many coins you grab) appears to be $500. Some say it’s $550, but I’ve never score above $500 and in the early matches I picked up coins until they stopped spawning with ease.

The number two tip is to just keep restarting if you’re about to lose, as always. This mode really only gets to be hard towards the end, and really only the final match is frustratingly hard.

006: Cup Champion
Win the cup.

The Cup is like a useless mini-version of the Knockout tournament. The only difference is that matches in this league are divided into legs, which essentially means that you have to play every match twice. This mode stays fairly easy throughout, until you hit the last match where the difficulty rises by like 1000%. As an example, I can say that I won the next-to-last match with 458 to 12 on my first attempt. Then I reached the last match and I had to restart both legs about 25 times each until I finally won them. It is absurd, but beatable if you keep quitting when you’re about to lose.

007: League Champion
Come top of the first division.

This is the longest league in the game, but it is fairly easy in the first three divisions. It starts out hard because your players are so crappy, but don’t worry about a couple of losses in the beginning. Just focus on gathering money at first; upgrading players is key and in this league, you don’t get knocked out if you don’t win. You can just keep playing in your division forever, even if you lose the season and it starts over.

It might even be a good idea to lose the first division 4 season on purpose and just grab as much money as you can in every match instead of worrying about scoring. This way, divisions 3 and 2 will be very easy. It didn’t happen to me so I can’t confirm, but I assume it would be a bad idea to let your team stay in the red part of the tables, as this probably means you get kicked out and have to start over. In other words; lose a lot, but don’t lose EVERY match. Stay above the last two teams to make sure you get to stay in the league.

Division 1, on the other hand, is really hard. Like the Cup, the difficulty shoots up like a rocket. What I did in this division was just repeat what I did for division 4. I kept losing a lot and didn’t care as long as I gathered a bunch of money. If you’re in it for the long haul, it won’t even matter if you get kicked down to division 2 again. That’ll just be a good way for you to gain more money and even better stats for your players for division 1.

It's not a good idea to buy transfer players in divisions 4-2. All transfers available there will be outclassed by your maxed-out players once you get to division 1, and you can't get your old players back nor upgrade transfers. Just wait for the $1500+ players and when they become available, you can start replacing parts of your team with them.

If you want to be done as fast as possible, just restart every match until you win it.

Also, you might think that buying the "Super Star Players" pack on the marketplace is a good help, but it isn't. Those players aren't very super at all. The only difference between them and other high-level transfer players is that you get to buy the supers anytime (whereas the best transfer players only come around in division 1) and that the supers don't really have that one skill that they suck in. Other than that, their stats really aren't that "super" compared to regular star transfers. Plus, the supers are the most expensive transfer players (yes; even after paying real life money, you still have to gather a boatload of money in-game to use them).

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DO THESE WITH A FRIEND ONLINE
 

Since hardly anybody bought the game, the online is a wasteland. The only way to get these achievements now is to boost with a friend or someone you find on a forum.

008: Streak
Win three online games in a row.
009: Conquest
Win four online games.

These speak for themselves. There’s nothing to it. If you’re interested in saving time, I suggest that you NOT score more goals than you need to as every replay wastes a few seconds which add up to much more if you keep doing it.

Also,  this  does not refer to complete matches. In online multiplayer, every match is divided into legs. You only have to win four legs, not four complete matches.

010: Owned
Win an online Ranked match by at least 100 points.

Just have your friend grab the ball at the tee-off and run straight into his own goal ten times in a row. Score 110 points just to be sure. Then go get a drink while the match timer runs out.

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DO THESE WITH A SECOND CONTROLLER (OR ONLINE)
 

These achievements are very easy with a second controller, plus you don’t have to take up someone else’s time (unless you and a good buddy get the game at the same time, in which case it is probably nicer to do these online together).

012: Big Bonus
With the Multiplier at maximum use an electrified ball to knock down 3 players and score a goal.

Just electrify the ball and pass it toward two enemy players, then run towards the goal and just pass straight onto the goalie to both take him out and score the goal. Might take a couple of attempts since you never really know where your players are and making long passes with an electrified ball can be hard. You should do this in one of the matches you play while setting up for the Brutal achievement (see below).

006: Brutal
Take out five enemy players in one match.

For this achievement, it’s a very good idea to start a “best of five” match. The reason is that the base characters with their low stats aren’t strong enough to beat up enough opponents, even if they’re standing still. This game is twitchy and the ball won’t always fly where you want it and sometimes AI players will automatically pick them up even though you’re giving no input.

Play two or three matches where you, controller one, just run around and collect a ton of money. In local multiplayer, you can earn thousands in a single match. Use that money to upgrade your characters to high levels, but make sure not to touch the second controller stats (as you don’t want them to get stronger, of course). If you have the money, upgrade every stat. If you’re running out, upgrade Aggression (higher likelyhood of AI-controlled players tackling opponents), Power and Attack in every group.

A good tactic is to just avoid the ball. Right when there’s a tee-off, ignore it and run around it and tackle the crap out of the guy opposite yours. Keep tackling around the ball to do as much damage to as many players as possible and whenever the ball goes wild because someone picks it up, try to pass it around until it lands on the ground and repeat the tackling. With this method, you’ll beat up most of the team up to the 50% mark or so (damage is displayed in the lower corners, for the currently active player). In the next half of the match, you should be able to start taking players out and if your stats are high enough, five should go down fairly easily.

Another tactic could be to pass the ball intentionally to a second controller player and keep tackling him and passing him over and over until he goes down permanently. By focusing on one player at a time you might run into some bad luck, though. If the ball goes wild, you might lose track of the player you were bullying and end up wasting too much time trying to find him again.

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Awesome guide man, very nicely done.  I can add two tips to the guide:

For the Super Skill achievement (obtain a point from every score entity) the last entity you are missing is the dome shaped thing between the goal and the center of the board.

For the Brutal achievement, just get an electrified ball and keep passing it through the goalie, you will occasionally hit an additional one to two players while doing this.  Done with second controller of course.

Maybe one day I will tackle this achievement, no pun intended!

Thanks for posting the tips! I knew there had to be easier/faster ways of getting Brutal.

Haha, I didn't even know that the dome thing yields points! Guess that's how much I care about this game.

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by passing it through the goalie, he means go all the way to the wall by the goalie and throw it across to the other side of the goal. You should have a player over there, just pass it back and forth for a while until you injure someone,  then just keep doing that until you  get the five. Nice job drogturist on the 200. Pretty soon ur gonna pass me up on the leaderboards  

Nice guide Drogturist.

Just got the long one (league mode) to finish now, thanks to your guide.

Here's a tip for Knockout and Cup Leagues.  Ties!  If you tie against the team, neither can advance so there is another game to be played.  I did this for my second opponent in the Cup about five or six times and I just racked up money left and right.  I would end each tie game with $2000, enough for a couple of full fills or a stud player.  Just run around the place and collect coins and you will be at max levels in no time.