I managed to catch Prince of Persia on the big screen a week ago. It was a pretty good movie, but it was a little weird to see Middle Eastern stereotypes speak with American and British accents. What caught my eye though wasn’t the movie but Nike’s full-length Write the Future advertisement featuring the likes of Wayne Rooney (England), Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast), Cannavaro (Italy), Frank Ribery (France), Ronaldinho (Brazil) and Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal).

Guess what? All of them no longer feature in the on-going World Cup in South Africa with Ronaldinho suffering the indignity of not being called up to the Brazilian squad. Hehe. At least the trailer is good for laughs. I liked the Rooney goes nuts part along with Homer Simpson opening the door to see Ronal-DOH!!

Talking about football, I’ve got three footie games from three different companies sitting in my iPhone. Earlier I purchased EA Sport’s FIFA World Cup 2010 and Gameloft’s Real Soccer 2010 for 99 cents each and the latest title which came in thanks to a promo code is Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2010.

FIFA World Cup 2010 is probably the most polished of the bunch, with great graphics, somewhat OK commentary and context-sensitive buttons (instead of the normal A and B buttons, you get buttons with titles such as slide, shoot, pass, etc). The game is not without flaws though, the character models for the fans in the stadium stands look really eerie. Gameloft and Konami’s offerings suffer from a lack of licensing. My favourite EPL team is known as London instead of Arsenal, and Manchester United and Manchester City are relegated to Man Red and Man Blue respectively. Fortunately both games retain the player names.

For a casual player like me, I much prefer EA’s title and unless it’s a sale, I find it hard to recommend the other two. While I’m sure the PES’ gameplay might be different (Pro Evolution Soccer boasts True Flow, whatever it is, and focuses on Champions League action), the game looks like it cribbed the graphics from it’s 3 or 4 year old Nintendo DS predecessor. That’s not satisfactory in my books.

So what about you? Which football game do you prefer and which country do you think will win the World Cup? My money is on Argentina.