PSP

Well, England have qualified for the World Cup. The group were in consists of Togo, Ecuador and Japan. Should be simple enough, even if Togo turn up.

Another annoyance: Michael Owen seems to run at exactly the same speed as the Austrian defenders. Hmm.

I’ve had to stop playing because my PSP’s battery died. Bah.

There are several annoyances. There’s the weird behaviour of bad teams, who just run the ball off the field for no reason, or run back into their own half when they really shouldn’t, or kick the ball in weird directions. The game sometimes doesn’t check the strips of opposing teams properly and if I also forget I can find myself having to tell the teams apart by the colour of the shorts – which makes things difficult. The game shows facts on the loading screens… well, I assume there’s more than the one fact I’ve seen during the loading of every single game I’ve played so far.

So, annoyances. But none of them stop the game from being really good fun to play.

Very early first impressions after one game are good.

I didn’t read the manual, so just jumped in and tried to work out the controls as I played. Got the basics down easily. Played as England against Hungary, which should have been easy. It was eventually, but at 70 minutes we were a goal down and down to 10 men after Rio Ferdinand got sent off for another sliding tackle from behind. (Square button.)

But then Rooney slammed two home and Owen got the third and all ended happily.