Ah, the life of a professional footballer - when not having football boots propelled with precision at you, causing the tiniest of cuts above your eye, it must be a cushy life. Training for a couple of hours a week, followed by much posing and posturing in public and then the actual matches themselves, the raison d'etre of the footballer: 90 minutes of running about, kicking a ball, propelling said ball into the net to the delight of 50,000 fans if you're lucky enough to be that good. All to the tune of £25,000+ a week, easily. Not bad if you can get it.

Like everything though, what it reduces to is a set of choices - do you pass to your team-mate, or do you be a greedy bastard and run the length of the pitch, inevitably falling on your arse at the last hurdle? Do you go for the straight shot or for the screamer in the top left corner when it's a penalty? Do you dive like a dickhead whenever you happen to be the subject of slight physical contest, looking for a free-kick and for a good kicking later on, or give as good as you get? Find out for yourself; get yourself a football and have a kick-about with your friends, find out how many of them you still call your "friend" afterwards. Failing that (should you have no friends to begin with, or are of a slothful disposition), live the dream! Be... A professional footballer! How? With this, of course!

A frank and compelling investigation into the lives of real professional footballers is what you want in a game that simulates such lives, and on that level, Professional Footballer seems to succeed - that is, if all professional footballers do is decide to miss training every now and again. However, should you choose to steer yourself through training, you'll eventually pull yourself up to 1st Team standards, where wits will be pitted against the likes of Tranmere and Stockport in arbitrary-decision making gameplay fun. Undoubtedly, your avatar of football will score, but you'll come to realise the heart-wrenching feeling of the worst kind of defeat; cheating and unscrupulous defeat at the hands of a twisted and inhumane God. Yes, the game cheats. It cheats like hell, for example, you'll score 4 goals - the other team will score 5, one coming bang-on the ninety minute mark.

Yet the game kept you coming back for more. Goodness knows how it did, but it did - perhaps it would be the fact that you paid a hard-earned £1.99 on the bugger, so you HAD to keep on playing to get your money's worth. Still, a redoubtable classic.