So here's the quandary.  This is a bad game, a thoroughly disappointing and fundamentally broken release that brutally murders a fabulous concept.  Ordinarily, I'd find it difficult to recommend to anyone - but here's the thing.  It's free.  Free to download, free to play.  Football Superstars is funded almost entirely by advertising, meaning there's not a single penny to spill unless you fancy trying your hand at the game's managerial facet.

So, despite myself, I feel somewhat compelled to suggest you try this, despite the big red number at the bottom of the page.  Ultimately, what's the worst that could happen?

The idea is marvellous, and so obvious it's a wonder no one's done it before.  It's a massively-multiplayer game, where the primary activity is something that, when you think about it, actually functions very much like an RPG.  In football, you develop specific skills, which are honed through practice and experience.  Applied to this genre, it should just work: everything should slot into place to provide an intuitive and enjoyable experience.

But it simply doesn't work in any useful way, its core mechanics so hopelessly broken that it's practically unplayable at times.  This is not the sexy football we hoped for.  It's the struggling non-league side, falling ever further into insignificance.

The basics, then - something Football Superstars spectacularly fails to grasp.  It's an MMORPG combining the lifestyle simulation of Second Life with the sports genre, dropping it nicely into the context of our never-ending obsession with fame.  Each section of the game functions largely independently of the other, though playing matches earns you the money and notoriety you require to crawl up towards the media spotlight.  As a result, you 'level up' in two different ways: you climb the ranks of celebrity, allowing you access to new areas and activities; and your footballing skills increase, earning you more money and granting you permission to work with more established coaches.

Right.  That's all fine.  Except neither aspect of the game feels remotely finished.  Undoubtedly, as is the case with all MMOs, there will be updates that solve certain problems.  But releasing a game in this state is simply never acceptable.  While the developers are still fixing a final few issues, we're assured the final product will differ very little from the build we played.  I can't comprehend how this can be the case.

Firstly, the match engine is so horrifically bad that Football Superstars rarely feels like football at all.  The ball physics are all wrong, the player animations unconvincing, the controls unresponsive and collision detection completely wayward.  And, although it becomes easier with practice, there's still this nagging feeling in the back of my head that the perspective just isn't right.  With a camera right out of a straightforward third-person action game, getting a good scope on the pitch is practically impossible, and it's often easier to just watch yourself from above on the radar.

Essentially, Football Superstars never comes close to feeling anything like football.  It probably doesn't help that this is a game in which you need three yellow cards before you're sent off.  Let me scan the credits for Graham Poll's name...

If anything, things only get worse in the life-sim area of the game.  The world map is commendably enormous, but the servers simply aren't big enough to adequately populate it.  I've logged in when the population is supposedly 'high', and still not found another player for hours.  It's also awfully laid-out, and traversing the map is painfully slow, to the point where I regularly just gave up half-way to my destination.  There's very little to do, and embarrassingly few people to do it with.  It's, quite frankly, utterly dull.

But perhaps the most significant problem is that the balancing is so hideously inept that, especially early on, Football Superstars limits its opportunities in a frustratingly unfriendly way.  After playing for a good couple of weeks, I've only just got to the point where journalists will talk to me.  Since such media encounters are the sole way of increasing your fame, trying to pour any early time into the lifestyle area of the game leads only to disappointment.  Football Superstars tries to prod you in the direction of regular club match participation, but this relies on actually finding an opposition side to play against; this in itself can mean an hour's wait.  It's excruciatingly paced.

Financially, it's fucked.  If you thought you could skirt your way around the long, uneventful walks by heading to the nearest underground station, you'd better have saved up weeks for a ticket.  Players are given no starting money, which would be fine if there was a way of immediately earning.  But level 1 players make, incredibly, $2 per game.  I went to buy a tracksuit, and it tried to charge me two grand.

Yet higher-level players are earning thousands upon thousands of dollars each time they make an appearance, and subsequently getting richer, more talented, and dominating the game.  Such is life in a capitalist society; but, frankly, this is the sort of nonsense I play games to escape from.