Kick-Off Review

It's less than a month until the European Football Championships, otherwise known as Euro 2012, start and soccer fans will be rejoicing at this prospect. While it's not quite as big as the World Cup, it will pit the likes of Germany, Italy and France against each other, as well as my own team, England. So what better time of the year to check out Kick-Off than this?

Kick-Off is an e-book designed specifically for the iPad. It tells the history of the soccer, from its Chinese roots to its medieval rules and structured beginnings in British schools in the 19th century. It's a pretty gripping story for soccer fans. Seeing how the game changed from a mob rule type brawl to the organized game we know today is fascinating.

Much of the focus of the app is placed on the development of the Football Association in the UK, and how things changed across the 20th century. The affect of both World Wars played a crucial role in how things changed and Kick-Off explains it well.

Throughout, there's a flurry of attractive photos demonstrating what occurred as well as a few videos of the action unfolding. Pele features in one prominent clips but not all are as interesting. That's about it for interactive content with everything else just a regular book.

Kick-Off is easy to browse through, although at times I found it awkward to flick through the pages, instead scrolling downwards by mistake. Kick-Off does have one particular annoyance in that the initial app download gives way to a 300mb or so download for the full package. It's only needed once but it's a little baffling as to why it's required rather than just downloading all at once from the App Store.

While Kick-Off doesn't revolutionize in terms of interactive content, it's an enjoyable enough read for soccer fans and at the current price is a fun way of spending a short while reading.