A reminder to those of you looking to buy football related books, DVDs, and games… visit our shop, hosted by Amazon. Click here to do so: http://astore.amazon.co.uk/football0a9-21

We’ve found an excellent list of the best online football based games – http://myfootballgames.co.uk. We’ll get round to playing and reviewing all of these eventually, but read on for our first; Roberto Baggio’s Magical Kicks (click here to access it).

The best way to do this is probably for me to recount a story from my University days, when I first stumbled across this gem. With abundant time and a fascination for football games, I made it my immediate ambition to top the all time leaderboard. No mean feat, as the leader had several thousand successful ‘kicks’ at the time. It’s addictiveness and longevity is proven by my assault, which lasted several days (an hour or two per evening, often after getting in from a night out), then weeks – after about six weeks, without turning off my laptop, I had crept up to about sixth, with several hundred kicks to my name.

At this juncture I should mention there is no ‘save’ function, so your score is dynamic, and when you navigate away or close the window, that’s your final total. So imagine my distress when, upon coming back from a rare venture to a lecture, I opened the door to my room, firstly to be met with the sweet smell of cleanliness that marked a visit by the cleaner, then the gut wrenching feeling of panic as I saw the plug from my laptop lying loose on the floor.

No, no… it couldn’t be. After all my weeks of hard work propelling myself up the leaderboard, the cleaner had replaced my laptop plug with that of the hoover! Without any save function, I was doomed. My stomach tightened. I was short of breath. Suddenly it occured to me; what if it had gone to standby in battery mode?! There was still hope! I dropped everything on the floor, swept up my little Dell laptop, and with a deep breath, pressed the power button. Nothing. I pressed and held it a little longer. Nothing. I sat, demoralised and inconsolable. All my work out of the window. Gone, like that, in one fell swoop.

My one hope was that my score had somehow been saved, cached, registered, anything. I plugged it in. I turned it on. Nothing on Baggio’s Magical Kicks. No record of my hard work, dedication, and persistence. I was a broken man. I took one to console myself. I scored. I took another. I got comfortable. This wasn’t over yet…

Figures released this week reveal that 250,000 have signed up for the online multiplayer role playing game Football Superstars.

Here is the blurb from their website about what it does:

Football Superstars is the world’s first Virtual Football World. An entire online football game designed by football fans exclusively for football fans, where you can enjoy a FREE to play massively multiplayer experience on your PC.

You take control of a footballer not only in games, but also training, shopping, dating, and so on. Kind of like Second Life meets Pro Evo (or FIFA if the gameplay is good…)

We’ve not played it yet – scared it will take over our lives – but whereas Second Life seems to appeal to losers who have messed up their first one, this gives you a chance to be (or at least pretend to be) something most of us probably couldn’t – a professional footballer.

Have you played Football Superstars? Give us a shout on contact@footballsup.com with your thoughts – or leave a comment below…

I’ve played Pro Evo since its first incarnation on the SNES – the first 16 bit console game to have full commentary. Then under the moniker ‘International Superstar Soccer’ (or as some die-hards still refer to it, ISS), it was a quantum leap in football sims, bringing realism, speed and authenticity where before you had Super Kick Off and Sensible Soccer (great games in their own right, don’t get me wrong, but not realistic football sims).

Then I was loyal through the Pro Evos, latterly on the PS1, PS2, then PS3 – when it all started to go downhill. Laggy and slow, it was a regression by Konami. They should never have released it, it was that flawed. Turning the crowd, commentary, pitch effects and pretty much everything else off improved the lag, but it was still nigh on unplayable.

So it was with great anticipation I played Pro Evo 2009. A great improvement – but still far from perfect. Players feel like they are running on rails (the 9 point sprint is infuriating), it’s still too easy to get behind the full back on the flanks, and the cut back is still mightily effective. Plus when players turbo off the pitch in a straight line it’s just laughable.

So it was with heavy heart, as if betraying a long term partner when the spark has gone from your relationship, that I purchased FIFA 09 for my Xbox360.

And what a revelation! I’d not played FIFA since Road to World Cup 1998 (a great game), and had found intermediate editions far too slow – players felt like they were walking. But FIFA 09 is in another realm – player movement is incredibly realistic, the games are fast paced and natural, deflections, challenges, mishits, tricks, headers – all feel and look brilliant, all are superior to Pro Evo. The overall realism is just fantastic – it feels like you are controlling a footballer, not a computer game sprite.

I’m not one for online play, so I can’t comment on that, but EA do offer live updates, where real-life form is uploaded onto your console and reflected on the game. A nice touch.

Verdict:

FIFA 09 is the most realistic football game I have ever played. If you’re a FIFA fan, get FIFA 09. Now. And if you’re a Pro Evo fan, get FIFA 09. Now.

From being a Pro Evo fanboy, my only remaining loyalty to Konami is the changing of the control configuration on FIFA. I just can’t get used to ‘cross’ being ‘shot’…

This will be a regular feature, where we find the best football related games from across the web, and bring them here for your pleasure.

Be it youtube, excel, flash, free downloads or iphone apps, we’ll find the best ones and review them for you.

First up – this nice little youtube game, based around identifying Premiership grounds. You have a paltry 7 to beat…