To the cool kids in the playground, branding is everything; whether it be Nike or Reebok, Sony or Nintendo, Motorola or Nokia, the name on your Christmas presents means less a guarantee of a quality product and more a guarantee of an invite to all the best birthday parties. These cool kids, in order to maintain this highly coveted status, heed no thought to function but only to style, and how their new shiny possessions reflect on them, meaning that first impressions are everything and presentation is crucial.

And then there are the other kids, whose satisfaction breeds not upon which label is bestowed upon their purchases, but how well they actually perform the job they're supposed to do. Occasionally, for about one weekend in twenty years, they are accidentally fashionable, but they may not notice it because they are setting their digital watch to the exact time on Teletext. For them, function is everything, and they laugh just as much at the cool kids for their faddish nature as the cool kids poke fun at their Dunlop trainers.

This timeless divide is the fundamental reason that universal acclaim across the playground is so impossibly difficult for computer games to achieve, because they have to be immaculately well-presented and perfectly marketed to win over the cool kids, yet be truly deep and playable for the others. This is also why the history of console gaming is littered with rivalry, for instance, the oh-so-chic CD based Sony PlayStation versus the graphically superior Nintendo 64, the mind-numbingly addictive arcade thrills of Sega Rally versus the mud and guts simulation of Colin McRae Rally and, in the epic battle of the early Nineties, the uber-cool Sonic versus the life-threateningly playable Mario.

Examples of games that have successfully straddled the chasm of the schoolyard are notably few in number, and those select few never maintained their hallowed status for any duration of time. Gran Turismo probably achieved it for one weekend in 1997, Tetris for three minutes on July 24th 1995 and Super Mario Kart one afternoon in 1993, but these are most definitely the exceptions to the rule, and if the PSP version of FIFA 06 is anything to go by, they will continue to remain the only exceptions for the foreseeable future.

The main reason for this is not because FIFA 06 is appallingly bad - far from it. In fact, EA Sports truly deserve commending on how visually close the PSP port resembles its big-brother PS2 version. However, it's just so ruthlessly clinical in its aim at the cool kids that it plays like it was designed by a team of marketing executives to tie young impressionables to the all-singing, all-dancing brand of FIFA. This game isn't distressing because it isn't going to unite the playgrounds of the world and be all things to all kids, but because FIFA 06 doesn't even seem to want to.

The reason for this lack of ambition is singular, quite simply; it's called Pro Evolution Soccer 5 and it has an unassailable grasp upon the gritty realism of the game, meaning that the market of kids who have little interest in the brands of their gym shoes are all hooked. To combat this, EA clearly felt they had no option but to make FIFA 06 an all-out assault on the presentation junkies and discard any real attempt to make the gameplay feel like football, but instead make it appear to be at the very core of the super-commercial world of Premiership football.

Crucially, games can never be said to resemble proper football matches like they do on PES5; FIFA 06 simply can't compete with the way Konami's game ebbs and flows. In direct comparison, FIFA's gameplay can appear blocky and contrived, and could be cruelly labelled as PSOne-like. To begin with, it's far too slow and ponderous, with many short games ending in 0-0 in both scoreline and goal attempts, and the players only seem to run in four directions, as if it was made for an archaic SNES controller rather than the PSP's swish analogue stick. After prolonged use, which isn't maybe what FIFA 06 is be designed for, the game can become prone to slowdown in key areas; for instance, when too many players are on the pitch, one may flicker or disappear entirely, while cut scenes may curiously consist entirely of crowd noises and staring at a piece of pitch, causing much annoyance after the thirtieth match in a season.

The inevitable trade-off is that, in terms of presentation, FIFA 06 is highly impressive for a PS2 game, let alone a portable PSP game; it's literally brimming with leagues, cups and competitions, featuring tons of national licenses (though, curiously for a FIFA endorsed game, it lacks the rights to use correct names from Italy's Serie A), incredibly detailed player likenesses, true and correct kits for clubs in all kinds of remote parts of the world and music provided by a huge long list of artists from Oasis through Bloc Party and Nine Black Alps. The commentary, a feature absent in PES5, is provided on FIFA 06 by Clive Tyldesley and Andy Gray, who provide all the inane chatter they do on TV without too much repetition, backed up by a truly realistic sounding crowd. Graphically too, FIFA 06 really impresses and for 90% of the time it is nearly identical to the PS2 version. Collectively, it's clear where EA have spent their time and the results are, crucially, enough to impress even the coolest of presentation junkies.

Of course, the feature that will really sway the fashion-conscious is the local and Internet multiplayer connection, meaning that FIFA 06 can become a social event in itself, and those who choose cool over gameplay will be rewarded with the chance to play with the other trendy types and then probably discuss trainers afterwards. However, before they discuss the merits of the Nike Air Max sole, they will find that the local connections offer nearly no lag and that the gameplay is exactly as disappointing as it was before, and Internet play, which defies the point of buying FIFA 06 slightly, in that you don't need to know anyone else to enjoy multiplayer action, suffers just a little lag at times. Another show-off feature is that the player data can be updated via the Internet, so those crucial transfer window purchases needn't mean that FIFA 06 becomes outdated, which is a good feature for those who really value the realism of the game.

As an another attempt to disguise the gameplay, EA have also included an addictive sub-game where your chosen player performs keepy-ups via a dancing game style control of pressing the correct arrow at the correct time. It's a nice feature, but it boggles the mind as to why someone would spend any length of time playing a java-style game on a portable PlayStation. A Challenge mode is also present, a similar concept to the scenario feature that appeared in old ISS games, where the player takes over for the last couple of minutes with the chance of rewriting the history books, which offers a good distraction for those not interested in the repetitive nature of the season mode.

In fact, it's hard to find a reason why anyone would really spend a great length of time playing FIFA 06 at all, as the gameplay faults are a huge price to pay for the good looks and fancy music, rendering the game almost a hollow fashion accessory, or in other words, the ideal accompaniment for every PSP owned by a self-respecting cool kid, and probably exactly what EA Sports intended. Meanwhile, the other kids, with their super accurate Casio watches and Dunlop trainers, will take one look at the Wayne Rooney adorned menus and go straight back to Pro Evolution Soccer 5, smiling quietly, knowing that they, yet again, have the better game.

Reviewed by Daniel Morrison for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).