At first I was all over the shop. I couldn’t even remember how to do through balls. The speed of the game (much faster than FIFA) and the passing system also threw me off for a while.

Mexico went 1-0 up, but my mighty team of Swedes came back to win 2-1.

After the first half of my first game, though, I was back in business and very much enjoying myself. It’s just… it’s just that it’s not FIFA. The more I play of FIFA, the more special I think it is. I should go and delete it now, before I get too attached, and have a rethink when it gets updated.

I should definitely do that.

“Just go and delete it already! This is getting tiresome!” <- Reader's Voice

It’s a shame, then, that the commentators thought the final was a semi-final. No, Clive and Andy, I won’t be looking forward to the final, I just won the bloody thing.

FIFA 11, you see, is brilliant, but buggy. Goalkeepers drop balls and then refuse to kick them. The commentators refer to cup matches as friendlies and think Wembley Stadium is Villa’s home ground. That sort of thing. It’s never really anything very serious, but there are some terribly rough edges. (Especially on the iPhone 4, it seems, where slow-down is a real problem. I’ve had the odd stutter on my 3GS, but it’s generally been absolutely fine.)

Get in!

It’s a game engine that has huge potential, but as well as being buggy it’s lacking in a lot of features you’d expect a flagship game to have. Multiplayer, for example. Or Manager mode.

Look past all that, though, and just play the game and it’s brilliant. It’s hard at first, but once you get into the rhythm of it and work out the timing it eases up and I wasn’t troubled in my last few matches on Beginner difficulty. If I was keeping the game on my phone I’d definitely up the difficulty for my next cup run.

Unfortunately, as I said yesterday, it’s just too big to keep around. I’m down to 150MB of free space on my iPhone and it’s just not enough. FIFA has to go. It must. I just can’t bring myself to actually delete it yet. It’s too good.

Oh, the humanity!

Here we have FIFA 11. It is, basically, the brain to PES’s brawn. A much less physical and muscular game of football, but one that rewards thought and patience. Initially sterile and unfriendly, the more you play it, the more it reveals itself. I’m still have the odd WTF? moment when one of my players boots the ball off the field for no apparent reason, but these are lessening the more comfortable I get with the controls.

It's a hard game, even on Beginner difficulty, but rewarding.

It’s a very good football game, with amazing commentary and great graphics.

The tragedy, then? Well, it’s 858MB, and, good as the game is, I really don’t think I can keep it on my iPhone. I haven’t got that kind of space lying around. I had to sacrifice a lot to install it and now I’ve got no space left. So I think FIFA will have to go, which is a crying shame.

I’ll just have one more game first…

Guess what you have to do here.

Brilliant, evil game. Whenever I start it up I seem to lose hue amounts of time in the blink of an eye.

And now it’s even got a new game mode where you have to hit targets.

Bye, bye life.

There’s odd annoying cosmetic issue, such as teams taking to the field in strips that are far too similar in colour, making it hard to make out your teammates. I pretty much exclusively play quick matches, so after a couple of misplaced passes I usually quit and try again with two more random teams. I can imagine it being hugely annoying in a cup match, though.

Some chaps playing footie.

The most serious issue is that the game decides which player you’re controlling using a set of arcane, seemingly random rules. When you’re attacking it’s obviously fine. You control the player with the ball and then switch after you pass. In defense, though, it’s never obvious which player the game will give you. World Soccer Champs just chooses the player nearest the ball, which is at least predictable. PES, though, seems to throw you around all over the pitch. It’s not enough to ruin the game, or even stop it being brilliant fun, but it can be annoying.

The iPhone version? Astonishing. Absolutely astonishing.

Now, I’ve not played any of the big console videogames for a few years, but this iPhone version of PES is revelatory. Never have a played a football game that felt quite this physical. There’s a real sense of weight and consequence to everything that happens on the pitch. Smoke and mirrors, maybe, but whatever the reason, it works to give a very convincing sense that real football, with its mistakes and flukes and human players, is under my control.

It’s like I’m seeing a whole new world of football, just there, in my phone.

I'm using the more traditional of the control schemes, avoiding the need for tilts and swipes.

I started the game up last night and kept going back, again and again. It’s just wonderful, with the default difficulty level feeling just right to me.

Now, of course, is where I should be gasping to try a fuller version of the game (or even a recent console FIFA), but I think part of my enjoyment comes from the two-button control scheme. Extra sticks and buttons might just overwhelm me.

It’s amazing, though, just this. I’ve enjoyed football games here and there – FIFA World Cup on the iPhone has given me a fair amount of enjoyable matches – but with PES and World Soccer Champs (two very different, complementary takes on the sport) I feel like a gaping hole in my gaming life has been filled.

Incredible.

So, I decided to make a team of country music stars. Waylon and Merle up front, Willie in goal, etc. It doesn’t take very long at all to set the kit and name the players, but why the game uses a slightly-unresponsive custom keyboard and not the iPhone’s built-in keyboard I don’t know.

Nice kit, huh?

The boys and girls of the team.

Here we are in action. I made the short name of the team CTY rather than CNT. I'm mature, me.

We’re not that great, according to the stats, but I’ve winning games against bad teams, which is good enough for me. I’ve just started an eight-team tournament, so we’ll see how that goes.

Buggeration.

Yeah, see I knew that would happen.

Still, only 1-0. Could have been worse.

I’m gonna go and listen to country music.

Not, you know, physically. I can still type. I haven’t stood up for a while, so I guess my legs might have stopped working, but I can still feel them, so they’re probably okay.

No, I’m paralysed in top iPhone footie game World Soccer Champs.

(And not because of the low memory issues. Running the System Activity Monitor app before starting the game sorts all that out.)

It's a bit like chess. Only instead of playing chess, you're playing football.

I’m paralysed, you see, because I can’t quite bring myself to play the game. I got England through to the second round of World Cup. (Or the World Tournament or whatever they call it to avoid giving FIFA a million, billion dollar-pounds.) We’re going to face Germany in the second round.

And, I suspect, we’re going to lose. But if we win I’ll have got further than ever before. So I don’t want to play, because I’m going to blow my chance for glory.

I have no belief in myself. Hardly surprising, really, when we only won the group because of some lucky penalties against Algeria and the USA.

I need to work up the courage to play the game at some point, then dust myself off and start again if I lose. But it’s Germany, man. Germany. My arch nemesis. The Master to my Doctor. The Palpatine to my Mace Windu. The mega shark to my giant octopus. The meddling kids to my pissed-off, costumes-obsessed janitor. The Jason Voorhees to my sex-crazed, reefer-smoking twenty-something teen. The snakes to my plane.

You get the idea.

Still, at least I don’t have malaria.

Score!

Its kicking mechanism doesn’t stand up against Flick Kick Football and Deadball Specialist, but I like that the keeper isn’t a mere obstacle and the World Cup structure to the game is great.

The runt of this little litter, maybe, but worth a look.