Firstly, I realise a lot of our readers here at Planet Xbox 360 occupy territory on the other side of the Atlantic to myself, a Brit. Therefore it is likely we will stumble across a few clashes in terminology. To avoid any confusion then, I hereby clarify that when I say ‘football’ I mean true football, ‘the beautiful game’ or ‘soccer’ to some of you. I have certain principles and I refuse to compromise them by referring to the original football as ‘soccer’, dang nabbit!
Now that we’ve cleared things up, lets get down to business. EA have always ruled the sporting genre in video games, at least sales wise. They seem to have a game for just about every sport and receive little competition. However, football, the most popular sport of them all has not been so easy for EA. Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer has widely been regarded by critics and footy fans alike as the Daddy of football games, the true simulation experience. But with EA promising a PES beating Fifa revolution, the pressure was really on Konami this year to consolidate it’s position at the top of the Premiership. Fortunately, I can reveal that PES in indeed still taking the league by storm but instead of big money new signings who are happy just to just pick up their pay packets (Fifa’s off the ball control from a few years ago anyone?), Konami have just motivated and coached their current squad to get the most out of them. Things haven’t gone all smoothly though, with a couple of hiccups along the way.
The main negative with PES6, and the reason that it has not scored higher, is essentially the laziness of the developers in making this a true next gen title. While this has no direct affect on the core gameplay, it is somewhat frustrating and unforgivable. The Xbox 360’s power opened doors for Konami, they had the option to take advantage of a next generation console for the first time, and give PES fans a reason to own a 360. However, not only did they firmly shut the door offered to them, but they turned around, rummaged through their keys and went through a door taking them to a room behind the PS2 one. You’d expect at the very least that the 360 version would be on a par with the PS2 version with a graphical overhaul. No such luck. Konami actually chose to take features out for us 360 owners! Looking forward to extensive player editing? Best get yourself a PS2. Fancy taking your master league team online? The little black box awaits. Co-op matches online? You guessed it. Even little nice extras we must make do without, such as 8 stadiums rather than 32 and no ability to save videos of your goals, something present since the original PES!
Another issue is licensing. It’s always been a department PES has been lacking in, but in previous editions things have massively improved. However, the evolution seems to have stalled with 6. The English champions Chelsea, have been ‘un-licensed’, while the whole of the Bundesliga has been completely removed apart from Bayern Munich. Fortunately there have been some improvements in international licensing with the England side now fully authentic, though the fake names that formally plagued PES have not been completely eradicated with the Welsh side consisting of players such as ‘Sprea’ instead of Speed.
Forgive me for painting such a gloomy picture, but some these issues are just unnecessary and unexplainable. Here comes the good and most important news though. Pro Evolution Soccer 6 is brilliant. As annoying as the aforementioned irritations are, when you’re actually playing this dream of a game, such thoughts will be non-existent in your head. It’s very difficult to explain why the core gameplay is so good, it’s just as close to the beautiful game you can get with a TV screen and some buttons. Some may not like it of course, as lets be honest, the beautiful game often is not beautiful at all and PES6 almost perfectly replicates the sport with a reduction in pace. Like PES5, you really have to work for your goals. There’ll be no unrealistically high scores here, grinding out 0-0 draws away from home against quality opposition is what it’s often about.
The game may seem very similar to the previous edition initially, but there are fundamental differences which all affect the game and the way you play significantly, and also importantly add realism. Out the back door without so much as a whistle are the attention seeking refs of version 5 who did their very best to break the game up. This and the reduction in niggly fouls makes for a better flowing game. Also gone are easy to score free kicks, though unfortunately the linear passing from them remains accompanied by the cool but rarely affective ‘quick free kicks’. In PES5 it was very difficult to breakdown defences, but this meant that an unproportional amount of goals were scored from afar. That loop hole has now been tightened with defenders now rushing to close down shots. Thus you will now have to persist at working an opening instead of hitting and hoping from 30 yards. Like in real life too, players will have to be well balanced to pull off a shot as desired. Try and strike it too early on the turn and it’s likely some lucky child on the road outside the stadium will get to keep the match ball. Shooting certainly does take some getting used to. It took days before I could keep a shot down, but once mastered you realise any misses were your own, or the player’s fault.
