Fluid Football

New Star Soccer is an elegant, nonsensical thing that has almost nothing to do with football. It's a brilliant flicking, swiping, strategic, goading machine, wrapped up in a football kit because it needed to be wearing something.

Fluid Football, on the other hand, is riddled with the beautiful game, from its bones to its oddly clammy skin. And where New Star Soccer is lithe and exciting, full of tricks and wiles, Fluid Football is the fat bloke in the stands with his hairy gut bulging out underneath his replica shirt.

Pass and move

That's not to say that it doesn't know its stuff, or that it's not a lot of fun, but Fluid Football is very definitely a game for football fanatics - a point evidenced by its partnership with former Sky pundits Andy Grey and Richard Keys.

Essentially, the game is football as played on a whiteboard before the game. You're the manager, and you need to move your players around the field, positioning them to receive the ball before slotting in a goal with a flick of your finger.

Everything, apart from that final shot, is controlled by drawing lines. You run a finger from a player to a point on the field and he'll scurry off that way, pursued by a player from the opposition who's been assigned to mark him.

Long-press on a player with the ball and then draw a line and he'll boot the pigskin in that direction, where it'll hopefully be picked up by a member of your team. Each game is like a little puzzle, and you need to work out how to move your players into a shooting position without losing the ball or being caught offside.

Unfortunately, the opposition are often supernaturally talented when it comes to predicting your passes and cutting off your runs, so things can get a little frustrating, and the in-app purchases can get a little overpowering too.

You need to pay to unlock all the levels, then fork out again if you want the ads to disappear from the game. Retaking shots and getting tips from Grey cost coins too, and they can only be replenished by success or cold, hard, real-life cash.

Fluid Football doesn't have the magic touch that makes New Star Soccer so special, and a lot of the time you'll be cursing the opposition for being so much better than you.

But for armchair fans who like to think out their football rather than actually play it there's an awful lot here - once you've paid for everything, at least - to enjoy.