Dynamite Pro Football

You have to feel for England's Jamie Carragher. The scouse centre-half would walk into many national teams, but because he's English, he's behind John Terry and Rio Ferdinand in the pecking order, forcing him to grab the odd game filling in at full-back when someone's injured. Although that seems to be quite often, at the moment.

Extend that metaphor to mobile games for a second. You have to feel for any publisher releasing a mobile footy sim, given the competition from the likes of FIFA 07 and Real Football 2007 (or its 3D version).

Short of being Pro Evolution Soccer – and we covered the long delay of its mobile version last week – there's not much a new football game can do to compete. Unless, of course, it can do a Carra, and make use of its versatility (i.e. innovative features) to convince mobile gamers it's worth bothering with.

So to Dynamite Pro Football, the new game from German publisher Ojom. What does it offer that isn't supplied by EA Mobile or Gameloft's big-budget titles? Well, nothing. That doesn't mean it isn't a fun game – it's nicely-designed and accessible to play – but it's hard to recommend buying it when the competition is so much better.

The structure is fairly standard. Based around international football (it features all the teams from the last World Cup), you can play friendlies, or enter the Cup itself. There are three difficulty levels – Amateur, Professional and World Class – and you can enter a Training mode to get used to the controls.

The game doesn't feature licensed player names, so the England team is packed with the likes of Kole, Lambard, Backham and Roon. Oh, and goalkeeper Robinwife, which at least made us smirk.

Matches take place using a standard side-on perspective, with colourful graphics and a decent amount of pitch shown on-screen. The controls are accessible, too – you use the number keys to move in eight directions, while '5' passes or tackles, '0' hits a long pass or slide-tackles, and the '#' key shoots.

Passing is crisp and to feet, and you won't be left cursing the controls when defending. There isn't much control over where your shots go other than the power level, though – certainly not compared to Real Football's slidey cursor aiming system.

It's knockabout fun, and fine for a few minutes of ball-blasting, but it's hard to see why you'd buy Dynamite Pro Football instead of one of its rivals. You can't do tricks, through balls or sprint, and for pure arcade thrills, it's not as much fun as last year's dark horse of the mobile football world, Playman World Soccer.

Like Jamie Carragher, Dynamite Pro Football offers good, honest endeavour instead of glitzy thrills, and isn't quite good enough to dislodge the regular top dogs in its category. However, unlike Carra, it doesn't offer any extra versatility to sneak a place at the top table through other means, either. Must train harder.