Fifa 11

Over the years, the rivalry between the two leading football games, EA Sports' Fifa and Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer, has become every bit as intense as that between any pairing of local teams in the real-life Football League – that is, positively tribal in nature. Last year's Fifa 10 saw EA Sports' franchise, after years in the doldrums, roar back to form, although it wasn't perfect. And this year, Pro Evolution Soccer will have to do something truly special to regain its crown: the new Fifa is the best in living memory.

As ever with a yearly update, there are a few odd structural alterations, new features and tweaks, but the most important improvement to Fifa 11 could not be more fundamental: its underlying passing engine has been rewritten, providing much more accuracy and eliminating the "ping-pong passing" which, unrealistically, would let you play one-touch sequences that would make Cesc Fabregas green with envy. This, of course, will expose your talent and passing vision (or lack of it); PES fans would argue, with some justification, that this brings Fifa to where their beloved game has been for some time. But it's a welcome improvement, especially given that AI-controlled player movement has been vastly improved, too.

Central defenders no longer rush kamikaze-style towards the centre circle when faced with a breaking attacker, and full-backs are now much more likely to overlap. You can grapple realistically (always running the risk of conceding a free kick), fancy back-heels and the like are far less likely to come off, and you can now, for example, chest the ball down in your chosen direction. Midfielders are much keener to burst into the box when crosses come in. Ricochets and deflections, too, seem much more life-like. Plus, you can no longer bamboozle advancing goalkeepers as a matter of course by the simple device of employing a chip-shot.

EA Sports also prioritised the task of making AI-controlled players take on the attributes of their real-life counterparts. Its success in this is less obvious although, playing as Tottenham, it was noticeable that Aaron Lennon could outrun pretty much any left back, and Roman Pavlyuchenko constantly strayed offside, which is accurate enough.

The main aspect of Fifa 10 which was completely broken, Manager Mode, also appears to have been fixed, in that it has been devolved as an entity and subsumed into Career Mode, along with Be A Pro – you can now opt to control either your chosen player or the whole team at the start of each match, and fiddle around with transfers between matches. Career Mode operates over a meaty 15 seasons, and for the first time, you can play through it as a goalkeeper. You can play through pretty much any cup in Europe, or design your own competition.

Which may sound gimmicky, but it means that Fifa 11 is the first football game that lets 11 people play against 11 others online. Fifa 11's multiplayer side is impeccable, with something to suit everyone – you can dive into a quick head-to-head, play as part of a team, set up a league with your friends or hit the lobbies for some random opposition. Whenever you play online in a tournament deemed worthy of a ranking, you'll also be earning bragging rights for your country – Fifa keeps tabs on the quality of online players in ranking tournaments around the world.

The game's level of customisation is enormous – you can strip your own face onto a player and customise him to your heart's content by designing your own strip and so on (although having custom players in a team will rule it out of ranking competitions) . Audio files, such as chants, can be imported and assigned to specific in-game occurrences.

It goes without saying that Fifa 11 looks absolutely lush, and all the little details which go towards providing the football-watching appearance to which we have become accustomed are more pronounced than ever (and the game contains a heavy link-up with Sky Sports, including a click-through to its website). Whether or not you choose Fifa 11 over Pro Evolution Soccer is more likely to be a matter of taste and tribal loyalty, but Fifa fans will be even more delighted with this year's offering than they were with Fifa 10.