Urban Freestyle keeps it real: new shots

Developer Silicon Dreams is producing Acclaim's street-based football game, Urban Freestyle, and while we've yet to sample any early code, the screenshots thus released look more than respectable.

We're promised sixteen teams, each with their home "turf", as we believe it's called, as well as an upgrade system that will let your team evolve. Modes like Street Wars and Versus Mode are presumably league and two-player games, but you can also play Freestyle or Street Challenge, and we're promised a bunch of mini-games too.

Players have their own individual special moves, and there are various unlockable bonuses to earn. In essence then, there's plenty here to be getting on with.

Whether Street Soccer's earthy charms can quite match the mercurial, Cantona-esque genius of Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer is yet to be proved, but with the game slated to appear on 'Cube, PS2, Xbox and PC this October, Acclaim's title is at least a potentially interesting take on the genre.