FIFA Football

PlayStation Vita launch title Uncharted: Golden Abyss has claimed top spot in the new UK all-format charts.

In 1966, Alf Ramsey invented the 4-4-2 formation and his England team conquered the world, but just four years later he saw his defending champions dumped out in the quarter finals - the "wingless wonders" that claimed the World Cup defeated by a West Germany side masterminded by Franz Beckenbauer. There wasn't much wrong with Ramsey's original approach - save perhaps its reliance on a Russian linesman at one point - but in hindsight his critics felt he didn't adapt. The lesson was simple: football doesn't let you stand still.

The same is true in football video games. While there are some who pine for various older vintages of Pro Evolution Soccer (PES5! WE7 International!), it's rare to find someone who has settled down with the current version of PES, or EA's FIFA series, and feels like picking up last year's instalment again instead. If you're playing FIFA 12 every day, the idea of unlearning the tactical defending system or living without the Impact Engine would be unthinkable. And yet here we are. For whatever reason, FIFA Football on Vita is based on FIFA 11.

This puts us in a strange situation. On the one hand, nobody has ever been able to devote this much processing power and sophistication in control to a football simulation on a handheld device before, and this is a very good conversion. The thinking going on beneath the surface of the average FIFA simulation is more complex than most people appreciate, and previous handheld FIFA titles have often been lobotomised to cope, resulting in dull goalfests with little of the drama and variety evident in the home versions. So the fact that this is exceptional in that regard - delivering an experience that stands up very strongly to its source material - is not to be understated.

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How does EA's latest footy effort fit Sony's portable?

Sony has defended the cost of Vita, its games - both digital and boxed - and revealed plans to bring larger memory cards to the UK.

Picking up a PlayStation Vita tonight? Already checked for the cheapest Vita retailer? You'll probably want some Vita games then.

UK boxed video game sales weren't as bad last year as some had expected, an annual UKIE and GfK Chart-Track report has discovered.

The best-selling UK video game during the last week of 2011 was FIFA 12.

Point and shoot.

How does it look?

FIFA Football on Vita properly bridges the gap between handheld and console sports sims for the first time, so says the game's associate producer.

EA's Matthew Prior told Eurogamer that the forthcoming Vita take on the best-selling footie franchise is an almost perfect reproduction of the home console version.

"It's built entirely on the next gen engine," he revealed at an EA showcase last week.

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EA's extended its all-encompassing licence deal with the football world's governing body FIFA.