Right, impressions.
First the good stuff:
This plays pretty well, and is much, much better than the demo. I also think it plays a better game of football than FIFA does now. Found myself stringing some fairly sexy stuff together. I think £14 was a decent price to pay, especially when you consider...
The bad stuff:
The UI. strawberry float me. It's like everything has been badly translated from Japanese and all the buttons rearranged like a scrambled jigsaw. It's as illogical as they come. Konami - seriously - give me some money and I'll come and give you some honest feedback and guidance about user experience. It'll make everything better.
It took me 25 minutes of downloading updates, and flicking through almost endless notifications, before I even got to the title screen.
The graphics, mainly on replays, sometimes go really lo-res. i can't imagine what causes this but it looks strawberry floating terrible
Luckily I'm usually trying to skip the replays anyway. I haven't managed to locate an option to turn them off altogether, but I'm hoing there is one.
Some other little things:
Let me press X to skip replays - start is clumsy and gets in the way.
Shoot. Shoot. SHOOT. STOP TAKING TOUCHES AND strawberry floating SHOOT. Honestly, playing with England last night, got the by-line with Walcott, pulled back for Rooney, only the keeper to beat, tap square... he takes a touch, waits for a second, and the keeper calmly collects at his feet.
Again, for £14, not bad, and I'm looking forward to the Master League. And maybe I'll figure out the UI. But so many non-gameplay aspects seem to have regressed since the last version of this I bought (on the PS2, admittedly.)