BeFootball's SuperPlayer VR is running an Immersive Football World Cup with $1,000 in prize money through December 18th! Get a head start on the competition with some of the tips and find more infotmation at the end of this article.
SuperPlayer is part of the immersive universe of BeFootball, an ecosystem dedicated to soccer and designed by professional players. The experience offers realistic physics at the service of the most practiced sport in the world. At present the game is split into two core modes, headers and goalkeeping, with a third rhythm-hybrid mode in work.
Headers
The objective of the headers modes is to break scoring panels arranged around the goal, each of which has a point value attached to it based on the difficulty of the shot. Balls are serviced from pink portals arranged above the top bar. The portal which will be serving a ball next will have a highlight and arrow pointing to it just before the ball is launched. Within the headers category, there are two modes -- standard header mode and levelled mode. You can also play the standard mode with a group using the party mode and passing around the headset.
Standard Mode
The standard headers gameplay requires you to break panels to make more challenging higher-value panels appear. The progression of panels appearing is always the same, so you can practice a specific series of hits. Once the first center panel is broken, you will always have at least a couple choices to go after, and the targets are almost identically mirrored left to right so you can shoot whichever way you prefer. At the end of rounds the balls begin to appear faster than targets respawn and from more angles, so you will need to keep an eye on multiple launchers and targets. Make sure that every ball makes it into the goal, however, since even if you break a panel it won’t count if the ball doesn’t find the net.
Generally speaking, you should be chaining targets in the same section of the goal – either in the middle or working out towards one of the corners. The deeper into a particular target series you go, the more points you can potentially earn. Some targets may initially be worth less points than other available options, but they often uncover much more valuable shots once a few are broken. Experiment with different target groups and see what works best for you!
The value of the panels is color coded approximately as follows to help pick out high value targets on a glance:
Blue: <2000
Green: 2000 – 3900
Yellow: 4000 – 4500
Red: 5000 – 7000
Purple: >7000
Levelled Mode
The levelled game mode has 7 stages to play through, increasing in difficulty as you progress. More like a guided practice than the standard mode, you are given far fewer options – usually only one – that you must hit to unlock the next target. The objective is to clear all of the available targets, for which both the difficulty and quantity grow with increasing level. Like standard mode the order of targets is fixed and can be memorized, but since they spawn one at a time you will llikely need to keep a close eye on them as they tend to respawn while the next ball is being launched at a more consistent pacing.
Goalkeeping
The goalkeeping mode has you defending an undersized goal from a variety of attacking shots. Similarly to headers modes, goalkeeping has portals which illuminate before sending a ball at you. You start with three portals serving up mostly straight or slowly arcing shots. This quickly accelerates in number of portals a ball can come from, the frequency at which balls are served, and the difficulty of the shots to block. Evenually you’ll even see a few shots that defy physics to test your reaction speed.
The key to the goalkeeping mode is maintaining a combo. You can get many times more points for saves on a long combo, but a single miss will reset the multiplier to 1x. The difficulty of the type of shot to block can also increase your score as much as 10x per ball. Additionally, you will be scored slightly differently based on how you save the ball with increasing points awarded in the following order:
Deflections with one or both hands open
Punching the ball away
Catching the ball with one hand
Catching the ball with two hands
Using your head to deflect the ball
Standard Mode
The standard goalkeeping mode has you stopping a 90-second series of shots from along the front of the penalty box. Standing at or just inside the goal line will give you the best field of view and the best position to guard from balls approaching at the most difficult angles. You can always step forward to block inside-out curving shots but sometimes you'll just get unlucky, however, and two balls will reach the goal far apart at around the same time. Don't fret if you miss one or it slips just off your fingertips. It's near impossible to save them all but the key is to regain your flow even if it means letting a few balls past to get a handle on the next streak in the later timeframe where combined multipliers can add up to massive points.
Endurance Mode
The endurance mode will instead give you a limited amount of time that is treated more like health points. Missing shots will cost you some time and saving shots will add time to the clock. Saving the harder shots will grant you greater amounts of time, allowing you to greatly extend the length of a playthrough if you get consistent saves. The frequency and difficulty of shots fluctuates or plateaus unlike the standard mode which constantly increases. At the moment though, you can be "too good" to the extent that you'll never run out of time -- maybe we'll see the balancing revisited sometime soon.
The Virtual World Cup
The Virtual World Cup runs parallell to the 2022 World Cup and consists of a multi-week scoreboard. Players will fight through the group stages and bracket play -- if they survive the onslaught of shots and setpieces. Each match will have the player participate in a round of standard goalkeeping followed by a round of standard headers. If your combined score is high enough, you will be deemed the victor. The total points gained across each of the rounds will be tallied and added to your total on the scoboard after each round. The players with the highest combined scores after the World Cup concludes win!