If you're looking for a football game with the gloss of a FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer, then it's fair to say that New Star Soccer 4 isn't it. The work primarily of one man, it is however as interesting and ambitious a take on the sport as you'll have seen in some time.

The idea is that you're one player in the world of football, starting off as a raw teenager on trial with a club of your choice. You can choose what kind of player you want to be, spending some role-playing attributes across key skills, and which position you want to play. Then it's over to you to prove yourself.

The work splits neatly into on-pitch and off-pitch. On the park, you control just your one player in a match and, thanks to a quite good match engine, it's not long before you're getting into the swing of making runs, calling for the ball, working on your positioning and generally being a strong member of the side. As you perform well, your attributes slowly get boosted too. You can also take on training exercises to improve your skills.

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Off the pitch, things are just as taxing. For to be a good player, you need to be a happy one and have decent relationships with your family, friends, the media, the boss, the sponsors and your team mates. You can add a girlfriend to the mix too as the game progresses.

You also have to manage your finances and choose where to spend your cash. It may sound a little daunting but it's not too tricky, and choosing how to spend your time and how to get the right mix is part of the game's challenge.

It doesn't take long for it all to become utterly engrossing. Do you spend your money on an energy drink to keep your fitness up? Do you consistently train to make sure you can keep up with games that keep passing you by? Should you gamble your money to buy new fitness equipment? What about the murky world of performance enhancing drugs? New Star Soccer 4 includes all of these, along with the consequences that go with them.

There are, inevitably, a few rough edges, and the main match itself doesn't flow quite as well as you'd hope. What's more, as you become a better player, your influence on matches does become more dramatic and it's worth banging in the transfer requests to better clubs just to keep the challenge going that bit longer. It won't take as long as you'd like to master things, but the learning curve is tremendous fun to navigate.

With a modest asking price and more ambition than you'd get from a dozen Pro Evos, though, New Star Soccer 4 is some achievement. Even if you only get a solid weekend out of it, it's hard to argue that you've had anything other than terrific value for money.

It has its problems, but this is a terrific football game and well worth getting to know. A refreshing blast of fresh air compared with the behemoths that dominate this market.