Adidas All-Star Football

Much like the fanaticism that football fans have for their favourite teams, the football game market's biggest series gain such a following that new games can be generally be released every year, without ever making that many significant changes to the gameplay. However, they do tend to be the sorts of games that can accompany both bleary-eyed loner late nights and beer-fuelled sessions with friends week on week ad infinitum, so the cigar-toting bigwigs of the gaming industry can probably continue sitting pretty.

Despite wielding one of the biggest names in sports equipment, Adidas All-Star Football cannot claim to be one of these titles. Rather, it's a football game lying on the periphery, hoping to net a few football fans who aren't already engrossed in those bigger-named franchises. To try and distinguish itself from the big boys, who generally look towards either a full management or real-time play simulation, the game instead breaks elements of the game down into bite-sized mini-games.

The game offers you the free kick, the penalty and the rather more jovial keepy-uppy. The free kick and penalty are rather similar, the difference being that in the former there's a line of players in your way as well as the goal keeper. All that you do in these two mini-games is to select the angle, curve and power of your shot, and hope that the ball finds its way to the back of the net.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a mini-game that's a bit flimsy if it's also enjoyable, but when two thirds of a game is made up of a variations on a game that is itself distinctly flimsy and not all that much fun, problems arise.

Thankfully, the keepy-uppy game is better, even if it can't shake off that feeling of flimsiness. You control the footballer, edging left and right like a crab, trying to keep the ball up in the air with your head, shoulders and legs. You have a time limit and can perform simple combos by hitting the '2' key while the ball's in the air. There are also breakable 'adidas' letters mid-air, turning the game into something of a brick breaker clone with gravity. Its arcade-like feel works well.

To try and offset the aforementioned and ever-present frailty, Adidas All-Star Football offers up a couple of game modes. The first is just a Quick Play option, but the second – World Tour – tries to inject some challenge by introducing level objectives. You also get to choose the football player you want to play as from a number of famous names, and there are different countries in which to play the games.

However, these walls housing the mini-games are walls of jelly. Yep, unfortunately it's all wibbly wobbly inconsequential fluff. Players are little more than names, places little more than a background tile, and the difference between the Quick Game and World Tour modes is so transparently unimpressive that the former has no real place in the game; World Tour is quick enough by itself.

We may not be dealing with a name the size of Championship Manager or Pro Evolution Soccer here, but Adidas is hardly a no-name brand. Alas, the big name is not matched with a big game. Offering three mini-games (only one of which comes close to offering any sense of fun) with no real longevity just won't cut it.