On the next-gen consoles Pro Evolution Soccer has recently lost ground in its perennial battle with the much-improved FIFA, but PES 2011 for the 3DS gives the impression that the less demanding process of developing for a handheld offered Konami some welcome respite. Not that PES 2011 3D resembles a handheld game – its 3D pops beautifully and, in the buildup to a match, the players even resemble their real-life counterparts. Incredibly, that continues onto the pitch: the game defaults to a close-in down-the-pitch view reminiscent, ironically, of FIFA's Be A Pro mode. It's more dynamic than Be A Pro, swinging round responsively when you lose the ball but, unfortunately it takes an awful lot of getting used to (if, indeed, you manage to do so at all) because it's such a tight view that your nearest player to the ball is too often out of shot. That's a shame, because it looks magnificent.

Once you switch to the more conventional Wide view, PES 2011 3D continues to impress. You still get an appreciable 3D effect, which makes it marginally easier to judge cross-field distances, and the analogue circle pad lets you access the full silkiness of PES's famed control system. The 3DS's four buttons, used for passing, are closer together than is ideal, but that will only worry those with the fattest fingers, and the control system can be customised extensively (deranged masochists can even opt for the +-pad rather than the circle-pad). Dribbling and passing lose nothing in terms of precision compared with the next-gen console versions.

Understandably, PES 2011 3D's general scope is much smaller than that of the full console versions: you can play a full Champions League campaign, or plunge into a Master League campaign, which involves a Europe-wide roster of clubs, and lets you play the transfer market. Only clubs involved in the Champions League are fully licensed, but you can still pick any other Premier League team as long as you can put up with a made-up club name and players who have become the victims of slight typos – which is not something that will worry long-term PES enthusiasts.

Setting up games against remote human opposition via Wi-Fi is easy enough, and the game will exchange data via Street Pass – games can be played automatically against teams discovered by Street Pass, giving you various benefits with having to do anything taxing.

So, in terms of the available game modes, PES 2011 3D does feel like a handheld game – and given that it has to fit on a cartridge, that was always going to be the case. However, its look and feel when you actually play a match is more akin to what you would expect to find on the Xbox 360 or PS3. Which is mightily impressive – the only compromises that PES makes in order to fit onto the 3DS affect the least important aspects of the game. For us, PES 2011 3D is probably the pick of the 3DS launch titles.