Puma Street Soccer

Although this initially appears to be little more than a thinly veiled advert for footwear and potato chips, beneath the crass commercialisation lies a reasonably playable game. It does what it says on the tin, and street soccer is the order of the day, with four-a-side matches taking place in a variety of outdoor locales including an airport, a car park and a port. The default players are generically named, and some come replete with disturbing facial hair. However, according to the manual, genuine superstars such as Matt Le Tissier, Gianluca Pagliuca and Didier Deschamps are hidden somewhere in the darker reaches of the game, although we've yet to find them.

Puma Street Soccer might sound rubbish on paper, but it actually works quite well, and requires markedly different techniques to your common or garden football game. Due to the size of the goals - and the erratic shooting method - the keepers are often hard to beat in a one-to-one situation, and greater purchase can sometimes be found in hammering a wall-ball off the hoardings and into the path of an oncoming player. Headers, scissor kicks and so on can be utilised, and the game also features a so-called 'super shot': once a certain number of shots have been on target, players are awarded superhuman powers culminating in the ability to fire in a howitzer from almost any area of the pitch. However, when the boot is on the other foot, so to speak, it's crucial to keep possession, something that is occasionally all too easy.

As a change from the norm, Puma Street Soccer is a devious little game, although 40 quid is perhaps a bit much to ask.