Almost a decade ago, Sensible World of Soccer was dominating this reviewer's time. To the detriment of many personal relationships, hour after hour was invested in taking my virtual team to the top, while hunting down the crucial players who could make the difference in my quest. Now I keep SWOS on my machine as my Solitaire, happily filling in the time gaps when nobody else is looking.

The point to this ramble is that SWOS still holds up all these years later, and it's a delight that PC power has allowed it to sit on a machine and run with blatant ease. Pro Evolution Soccer 4 will undoubtedly fall into the same camp, although the thought of it being the Solitaire replacement of choice in a decade's time points to a future in which very little work is done.

Enough of that. It's the second time that Pro Evolution Soccer - aka the world's finest football action game - has made it to the PC, and even the most generous of the game's supporters would have to admit it was a clumsy start. The original conversion was pretty much a photocopy of the PlayStation 2 version, replete with the same controller icons and console-focused interface. Fortunately, it hangs together a lot better this time round, with the interface far more intuitive for the PC user.

Not that you'll be bothered. Frankly, once you've played the game itself for a good hour, then you'd be happy to tolerate an interface in Norwegian. Pro Evolution Soccer 4 is, cutting to the chase, the best sports game on the PC. Honestly. And what's more, it's great for lots of reasons, of which here are a selection.

First, it's a football game that actively rewards tactical thinking. While kick and rush will sometimes work - assuming you have the tall players up front to make the difference - you'll get better chances by learning how to pass well and when to make the vital through ball. Yet if you're up against superior opposition, then changing your tactics to counter them will actually work (assuming you execute your plans effectively). Thus you can pack the midfield and play the lone striker, or even put five across the back to try to stifle their attack.

Second, it plays like a dream. Heading back to Cliché Corner for a second, it's easy to get to grips with, yet could feasibly take months to master. Chances are you'll make the effort, though. And then there's the fact that you'll never really stop learning it. There are umpteen moves you can learn, very much on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, meaning you can stick with pass/tackle/shoot if that's your preference. Ultimately though, it feels like football. You can have dreary 1-1 draws, pulsating nil-nil efforts, scrappy goals, spectacular goals, wonderful saves, excellent defending - in fact, pretty much everything you see on a football pitch on a Saturday afternoon.

Backing up all this gameplay is the excellent Master League option. While it desperately needs proper team names (to go with the proper player names - although we suspect an Internet patch will soon sort that out), this is the option of choice for the single player. Your mission, very much like SWOS in fact, is to build your team up to win silverware. Preferably lots of it. In doing this, you need to wheel and deal, work on your tactics and even bring through your youth players. It's dangerously addictive stuff.

Sadly, what lets the side down a bit, and this is the biggest criticism of the game, are the online functions. That there are some is a big advance on last time around, but we'd still prefer to see the highly organised setup of online FIFA transferred to Konami's masterpiece.

And yet on the criticism side, that really is it. Which just leaves us to say that Pro Evolution Soccer 4 is the outright daddy of football action games, and you really shouldn't accept anything less.

A flat-out tremendous football game that's made generous inroads since the last PC version. Essential.