For the moment, put aside our fixation with the real soccer and concentrate on the true crisis of our civilization: the kit pack. Yes, boy, Dream League Soccer 2020 has been given a glorious 17.3 megabyte zip file of Barcelona kits by some kind of digital handmaiden, but not with a bang but with a piffling 512 x 512 PNG.
These images, painstakingly exported in 8-bit depth (let’s not be extravagant now, we can’t spare a single morsel of texture), are ready for you to download. Yeah, I know. My salvation is a click away.
A click that will, in a scenario not immediately outside the boundaries of the imagination, whisk you out on a digital journey where the virtual players wear just that bit more accurate shades of navy and claret.
The software developer insists that the quality isn’t inferior and who am I to argue with in 8-bit revolution? After all, it’s the industry standard for . . . soccer kits of six years ago.
But why should you care you might ask?
The short answer, my friends, is authenticity. These kits take their cue from the actual 2020 season away kit for Barcelona with some alternate colors you’d never thought you wanted so much.
For there is truly nothing like the exhilarating simulation of a pixelated Lionel Messi (or faceless placeholder) racing down the pitch in a lovingly rendered away uniform, before blazingly failing to score from 12 yards.
As real as you can get.
The real theater, meanwhile, is the installation guide. This is where you have two quite noble options. You may, if you so desire, retrace the ancient, labyrinthine byways of your C: drive, go find in there the Holy Land that is the DLS 2020 folder and manually paste the assets in, showing the efficiency and dogged singularity of the stoic veteran code breaker.
Or you may take the infinitely more modern way, if you have a mind.
Left click on the Add Boying tab, copy and then right click on the URL, selecting ‘Paste’ and then sit down and watch as the game verifies its use by polling an upstream server, hits you with ominous blue buttons that read ‘Approve’ and prepares itself for the death of a thousand clicks.
Your defenders will continue to part like the Red Sea, your shots will continue to rattle the post with depressing regularity. However at least you will be going through these paces in a bitingly 8bit tribute to Catalonia.
The developer concludes this entire adventure with an optimistic ‘I hope you like it.
And you know what?
You probably will.
Not because the game is any different but since modding a soccer kit provides a momentary presumption of mastery in a turbulent virtual universe.
A placebo for the soul of sports gaming.
So, grab the kit and do it. Lift the files. Glare into that abyss of 512×512. One caveat: the kit may evolve, but the AI’s capacity to infuriate remains infinite.
