You lucky, lucky people! World Cup year means we're all treated to two FIFAs in the space of six months. First comes the pre-Christmas annual sequel, with all the extra management stuff that's been dumped for this streamlined, international-teams-only World Cup edition. Here it's just the football-playing parts and new multiplayer options, backed by all the official World Cup logos, teams, presentation and grand match openings to make it feel like a special event.

England made it, which means we're actually interested in what's happening. Also in this package are the full range of 127 World Cup teams, complete with ready-made World Cup group stages, options for up to eight players to compete in homebrew tournaments and pretty much everything you need to recreate the World Cup in your front room. You just have to provide your own amazingly attractive dancing female Brazilian fans.

The branding is everywhere. The Germany 2006 logo spins into view before and after replays, pre-match build-ups have been enhanced to feature World Cup levels of confetti and everything's been tweaked to incorporate automatic group stages, so you've got a ready-made World Cup simulation in Your Xbox.

Better still, Xbox Live lets you do all this online. After clicking through the endless EA terms and conditions screens, you're greeted by the chance to set up fully organised tournaments. Finally, an Xbox game that does this without us having to organise it ourselves. Four or eight players can start an organised World Cup tourney, with winners staying on and losers and quitters getting dumped out. If you're still waiting for a reason to dip your toe into Xbox Live, this could be it.

The standard Optimatch option lets you set a maximum DNF percentage level when playing matches online, so you can filter out players who are in the habit of disconnecting in the middle of a game. There's even a nice little text message window for seeing which swearwords it filters out while you're waiting for other players to arrive. FIFA World Cup still uses the EA server system rather than the preferable Xbox Live setup, but once you're in it's straightforward.

Offline, there's The Lounge for all your organised World Cup mirror events. The Lounge is like a mini Xbox Live that operates entirely in your own home. Here you set up your personal tournaments, and there's an absolute ton of stuff to do. Up to eight players can create their own profiles, select teams and play tournaments, organised winner-stays-on bouts and loads of pad-passing alternate events. It's a pretty incredible feature. Everything you do is ranked, recorded and analysed, with vast numbers of statistics available to keep track of precisely who out of all your mates is best.

You're also able to recreate a few famous match situations from World Cup history, taking control of the games at crucial periods and trying to turn things around. You might want to have a go at altering the outcome of the Scotland vs Holland game from 1978, or controlling England and Germany during the 1990 semi-final catastrophe. Nice features though they may be, they're all played using today's team rotas. So what's the point in recreating that 1990 semi without Lineker and Gazza and the other old boys?

These sections do highlight how much effort has been put into the game's commentary, though. Specific clips have been recorded especially for these retro matches, so should you play as England versus Germany you get and you hear poor old Clive Tyldesley urging England on to score. He's joined by Andy Townshend. Andy isn't as good as Clive. Clive sounds like his heart's in it, whereas Andy just sort of mumbles.

Elsewhere you have a Store, with a few boots to buy, where the points you earn for beating certain in-game criteria can be spent. Points are earnd by stuff like winning by three goals, hat-tricks, playing each team and so on, all your usual brand of EA motivational point-issuing. These can be spent on pretty meaningless stuff like new boots, plus you can also buy classic players from yester-teams to sub into today's line-ups. There aren't enough retro players to populate an entire match, but there's Eric Cantona, Dennis Bergkamp, and 20-odd other legends of various standing to make your teams a little more exciting.

While playing with whoever you deem good enough to represent your chosen country, FIFA World Cup gives you a few strategic options to alter play on the fly. Four directions on whichever left-hand stick/pad you're not using to control your man correspond to tactics, with counter-attacking formations, wide play and throw-everyone-up options pickable on the fly. They're all a bit American, with names like Wing Play and Flood the Box, but they do have an effect on your team's formation without having to wade through the option menus.

In-game, there's even more tinkering to do from the Pause menu, so you can really annoy your opponent by insisting on making lengthy tactical changes during matches. And if you're playing the Xbox in a friendly or one-off match you can even swap sides mid game. Pointless, but we're just reporting the facts here.

The controls are pretty standard, as ever giving you the choice between the normal FIFA system, digital pad options, and the one that totally copies the control system of Pro Evolution Soccer. EA puts that in there to stop people like us moaning. There's not much else to moan about at all this year, with FIFA World Cup offering a further speeding-up and response-boosted football experience.

What FIFA does well is give you time in possession. Play a through ball and get yourself in the opponent's penalty area and you're allowed to control it. Other football games makes the Xbox-controlled players pile in on you in a millisecond, strip the ball away and hoof it away to safety. Not FIFA. It gives you a bit longer on the ball to think, formulate an attack plan and fire off your shot.

It's an easy game to play. The learning curve a curve, it's a straight line right along the Easy axis. On your first game you will score, there's no doubt about it. The controls are also a damn sight more responsive this time around. Press the button to select your man and the spongy, vague delay has gone - whatever bit of the Xbox is responsible for choosing who to auto-select is now doing a much better job than before.

This makes it even easier to play, as does the way your players hardly ever stray offside. Winning the World Cup seems to be pretty much entirely about getting the ball over the halfway line, waiting for a runner to go flying up the wing, then hitting a through ball. Do this and you more often than not find yourself past the last defender and hammering towards the goalie.

The difficulty leaves a lot to be desired. Even playing on the hardest setting you'll spring the offside trap and score three times in a match, with the only noticeable effect of jacking up hardness being the speed of the opponent's passing increasing a little. For single players not wanting to bother with the pass-the-pad group matches or Xbox Live play, there's not exactly a lot of challenging stuff to do here.

The enemy teams just aren't smart enough when the Xbox is controlling the action. Even the mighty Brazilians fiddle about in defence, passing the ball around in their own half for ages and not really doing very much in the way of clever attacking play. FIFA is all about you. You chase the ball down, you do the passing, you score the goals - the Xbox-controlled team is really just the footballing equivalent of a punchbag for you to score goals against.

Still, it's really nice having the official teams, World Cup logos, a decent tournament structure and the ability to play all this on Xbox Live. FIFA gets better as the years pass, with each new evolution making it slicker, smoother and more enjoyable to play. FIFA World Cup still isn't quite the best footy game on Xbox, but if you want to recreate England's inevitable brave quarter-final defeat in your own home, this is more than enough to keep you busy for months.

1. Totally official - all the logs, teams, branding and showbiz presentation of the actual World Cup.
2. Faster, more responsive controls than before make selecting the right player at the right time much easier.
3. The Lounge section lets up to eight players compete in loads of fully organised tournaments without needing Xbox Live.
4. If you have Live, the eight-player Tournament option is all you need to organise your own World Cup every single day.

1. It's way too easy to score goals, which removes quite a bit of the single-player challenge.

Crazy arcade football that does all the hard work for you so you can whack in the goals. A simple, brainless goal-fest.