You win 3-2 playing and you still have to replay the match cause you didn't pass the "requirements". Obviously, in World Tour Soccer 06, winning isn't everything – you have to win with "style" too.

Bringing some much needed ingenuity to stock sports simulators, World Tour Soccer 06 boasts 11 new modes of play for otherwise standard soccer gaming, like "All rounder," where you have to pass the ball to every member on the pitch (called the "field" by North American commoners) before you are awarded points for scoring a goal. Other self-explanatory modes – though by no means less fun or interesting – include "Player Tag," "Totally Outnumbered," and the sure-to-be-a-favorite "Shot Clock" mode.

Moving your players around with the PSP's d-pad is a total nuisance, mind you; you'll want to invest some time with the "nub," otherwise known as the analog slider/stick/thingy. Once you get a handle on it, control of your players and the ball increases exponentially and the games flows with much more fluidity because of it - though it won't guarantee "bulging the ol' onion bag" as often as it should, darn it.

Not everyone will enjoy these prominently featured new modes - the typical soccer hooligan, err, fanatic, would probably be better off sticking with more realistic soccer provided by EA's FIFA and Konami's Winning Eleven series. It's not so much a fault with World Tour Soccer 06's gameplay as its overall lack of depth; there is no World Cup or franchise mode, for example, plus it restricts you to the national teams (no clubs like the English Premier league, Italy's Serie A or Germany's Bundesliga).

However, straying from conventional isn't a bad thing, either. World Tour Soccer 06 manages to bring a unique twist to the "beautiful game," where winning is good, but introducing modes such as "checkpoint challenge," "totally outnumbered" and "shot clock" (especially the "shot clock," in fact, as it'll make you wish they used one in real soccer games), adds fresh variation to the stale sim standard that currently dominates the market.