The very first time I tried to load a game the console locked up on me. After a reboot, the the match loaded OK, but only after a startlingly long wait.

Finally getting into an actual match, moments of surprising and quite nasty stutter blighted it at regular intervals, as the graphics engine seemed to struggle whenever there was a fast clearance or more players on screen at once than usual.

When I then went to play my second game - in the Asian cup, if you're interested - the console completely locked again as the players came out, requiring a hard reset.

This is truly diabolical - two crashes in two games make PES2008 in its ‘from-the-box’ condition by far the least stable game I've ever seen on either next-gen console, and Konami should be ashamed of itself for releasing the game in such a bug-ridden state.

HOWEVER!!! A 130MB patch for the game launched at the end of November 2007 thankfully seems to improve the game immeasurably.

As in the stuttering during one player games seems greatly reduced, and I've experienced hardly any crashes since the patch went live. In other words, the game has gone from being more or less crud to being more or less fun in one fell downloadable swoop.

Obviously, though, it would have been far, far better if we hadn't had to wait for a patch to fix Pro Evo 2008's problems and that the game had been working well at launch. Seriously, why should we have to own a game for weeks before it works anything like properly, and only at the extra cost of 130MB of our available hard disk space?

And what about those people who don't have their PS3 connected to a broadband internet service? How will they get the game-rescuing patch?

Basically the buggy horrors experienced on my unpatched PS3 should have been fixed before the game was released, and that's all there is to say.

Moving on, now that I've got the patch applied, PES2008 really plays a wonderful game of football - better than last year's version in fact, with less frustrating midfield 'grind' to irritate you.

It's nice, too, to see the game supporting the PS3 camera, allowing you to scan in stuff to use as a shirt logo, or else the faces of you and your mates to use in Master League teams.

Also the PS3’s joystick controls feel more comfortable than I'd expected considering that I don't always get on with the PS3 shoulder buttons. In fact, it frequently felt more comfortable than with the Xbox, except perhaps for the L2 button. But then my relatively limited PES2008 abilities mean I didn't find myself needing this mostly tactical button much anyway.

General graphical presentation is remarkably bland too. The opening video isn't bad, but it's actually hard to think how Konami could have made the in-game and main menus any more drab.

Elsewhere, as well as being choppy during matches prior to the November 2007 patch, as we saw in the Gameplay section, the pre-rendered pre-match and award sequences also stutter and judder alarmingly, even ‘post’ downloadable patch.

This wouldn't be so bad if the graphics appeared to be really stretching the console, but they're clearly not. So instead you can only put all the initial glitching and twitching down to poor work from Konami, and form the suspicion that this is a half-arsed port of the Xbox 360 version rather than something built from the ground up to work on the PS3.

As we indicated in the Gameplay section, the November 2007 patch more or less fixes the graphics stuttering that initially plagued you when trying to play a game, which is a major relief. What it does not do, though, is anything to make the onscreen menus look any less drab, or the main graphics look any more 'next-gen'.

Otherwise you just get nothing more than the usual general crowd 'hubbub', with a depressing lack of any details or audio features, or much of a sense of surround precision.

The musical mix for this latest PES is better than that of previous versions by some margin, with nearly 50 songs on board. What’s more, some of these songs are actually half decent, and all are mixed into Dolby Digital.

That said, pre-recorded songs do not add up to a great gaming sound experience.

Even worse, you have to actually go to Konami's website, complete with clumsy navigation via the PS3 controller, and input your disc registration that way.

Once you've gone through all that crap, your reward (at the time of writing in November 2007) is a message popping up to say that Konami 'has uncovered issues which can affect the online gameplay quality of PES 2008 on PS3'. Great. Would have been nice if they'd uncovered these issues before actually launching the game, right?

Anyway, gritting my teeth and expecting the worst, during my first couple of weeks with the game ‘the worst’ is exactly what I got. The ball rubber-banded around so much you couldn't see it for most of the time, and the screen was constantly suddenly scrolling along at crazy speed to try and catch back up with the ball.

Needless to say I didn't persevere with this for more than a handful of games - it was just too frustrating. I can take losing 4-0 if I'm beaten fair and square, but losing like that when one second the ball is near the centre spot only for it to appear a split second later nestled in the back of your goal is as much fun as, well, the game’s stupid online registration process.

Happily, however, the end-November 2007 patch radically improves the online experience. I now found game lobbies with much more impressive speed, and suffered way less lag when playing. The lag situation is still far from being perfect, or even good, but it's better to the extent that online games are now just about pleasurable. Provided I win.

Now that I'm feeling in a slightly better mood, it's nice to note, too, that the game lets you have two people logged onto one PS3 playing online against one or two other players, so you can have four-player games. Plus there's an online ranking system based around football league tables, and you can chat to other players over a headset.

However, that dedication will be tested to the limit by the game’s glitches, online problems and drab presentation - especially if you can't go online and get that all-important patch I keep banging on about. So although PES2008 is a total blast to play when it's working right, a showcase for next-gen gaming it most definitely is not.