Street Soccer 2

Football's greatest stars are often said to come from the streets. The likes of Maradona, Pele, and Ronaldo all famously emerged from humble or disadvantaged backgrounds. Whether playing barefoot on beaches, kicking empty cans along back alleys or side-stepping through seedy side streets, for them the Beautiful Game began in a rather rough manner.

And rough, it turns out, is Street Soccer 2's speciality.

As the name suggests, the action revolves around a tougher, more urban take on football. No snazzy graphics or big names, just down to earth bruisers punching above and below their weight. The basic aim is to make your way across the city with your bunch of merry misfits and beat rival teams until you face top dogs East United FC, a name that conjures up fear in even the roughest of men.

Playing Street Soccer 2 for the first time, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's already taken a pasting: the players move around erratically, the controls feel like they need sedating, and the characters don't seem to have any necks.

Keep playing, though, and you'll soon discover the controls are actually very intuitive. For instance, you only need to press in a direction and the player will keep running, which takes some of the hassle out of proceedings. Turning and dummying are very easy to master, too, as is the way in which you can hold down a button to judge the power of the shot. In fact, there's a beautiful simplicity in Street Soccer 2 that will remind you of playing five-a-side or kicking about in the park with your mates.

There are also, however, distractions that may or not appeal. Arguably the biggest is that every now and then a couple of players will decide to stop the game and have a fight. This is your cue to have to start kicking and punching the opposing player by frantically whacking buttons until he's floored. The first couple of times this happens it's something of a fun novelty, but thereafter it becomes a nuisance, bordering on very irritating, and a waste of quality football time. Not even the inclusion of bikini-clad women to carry the stretcher can change this.

Back to the positives, and the game's classic overhead view works well, with the players and ball moving across the screen fluidly, while the locations are different enough to make the game interesting. The visuals are hardly the Sistine Chapel (the players don't have necks, remember) but they mostly perform their function competently, and are suitably accompanied on the aural side of the equation.

So Street Soccer 2 has the odd problem – things that sound fun on paper (such as street fighting in the middle of street football) that aren't so much fun in practice. But if you can put up with the niggles, you'll find a game that proves you don't always need the glitz and the glamour of the sport's biggest licences to play a very enjoyable game of digital football.