FIFA Street 3

I, like many other kids growing up in an English town, played quite a bit of street footy as a lad. This was a scrappy and brutal affair played by a varying number of scruffy kids. There was no time or space for extravagant tricks, unless you wanted bruised shins and grazed elbows.

FIFA Street 3's take on street football is a rather Americanised game of showboating, played by a bunch of hipsters who seem to have come directly from a sportswear photo shoot. It's a bit like one of those hip-hop dance-offs you see in music videos but with more, well, balls.

Like it or not, there's no denying that the whole FIFA Street series is a slick franchise. For the third outing, EA has decided to steer away from the console-style kick-about and plump for a fairly standard array of footy-themed mini-games. Which is more of a risk than it sounds, given that FIFA Street 2 was pretty successful at what it did.

While the change of tack hasn't quite paid off, FIFA Street 3 does a lot of things very well indeed. The first thing you'll notice is the typically excellent EA presentation. The menus, the world you move about in, the character models – they all possess that unmistakably glossy EA feel. But then, you would expect that.

The gameplay in the main My FIFA Street mode shows some ambition, offering up three hub stages around which you wander, chatting to 'Freestylers' (that's loiterers to you and I) and accepting challenges. These range from booting a ball against a wall to playing keepy-uppy. Each of the six games employs a very different game style and requires a unique skill-set to succeed.

Freestyling, for example, resembles a rhythm action game, requiring you to press the corresponding buttons as they pass through a box. It bears very little resemblance to, you know, football, but hey – it certainly is 'Street'.

Striker sees you playing football ten-pin bowling, only in place of pins you have to knock down dustbins. With assorted pin formations and numerous objects placed in your way, you need to apply after-touch to steer the ball around the obstructions or ricochet off them in search of a strike.

Of course, such variety can cause problems when it comes to consistency, and so it proves with FIFA Street 3. We struggled early on to meet the quota for the Volley and Chipping events due to some fairly clumsy and inaccurate controls. Moving onto the Freestyle and Dribbling tasks, though, we cleared them first time with ease. In the case of Dribbling, we put in a horrendously mistake-filled round, but still won a gold medal.

Such inconsistencies smack of a lack of play testing and overall balancing from the developer. Perhaps a little streamlining – possibly losing an event – would have allowed the developer to even out the experience.

Regardless of these issues, though, FIFA Street 3 offers an ample experience for your money. As mentioned before, you'll have to play through three hub sections, winning gold medals in each event before you can face the pro on each level. Peter Crouch, Gennaro Gattuso and Ronaldinho wait at the end of each stage with a modified challenge for you to face.

Whether you'll retain your interest through three lots of the same game, playing the same (albeit modified) duds repeatedly is another matter. There are extras such as the five hidden Golden Balls dotted throughout each level. Another neat touch arrives when you beat the record points score on any game, at which point you'll receive a text message on your in-game mobile from a pro, telling you they've managed to top it. It encourages you to go back and have another go.

Ultimately, though, we can't help but look at the sweeping changes EA has made since the previous iteration of FIFA Street and see this as a step back. If you're after a slick and sizeable collection of footy themed mini-games (well, you might be) then you can't go far wrong. But for the true football fans among you there are plenty of superior alternatives.