Pro Evolution Soccer 2008

by Adam Byrne - 2007/11/19 2:59pm

Since the dawn of the PS2, Pro Evolution Soccer has been creeping up the charts, and surpassing even its main rival FIFA, and rightfully so. Its robust mix of ground-breaking game play, awesome modes, and realistic feel made it a firm favourite within everyone's PS2's. However, for this time around, its first iteration on the PS3, something's went awfully wrong. A thought that often comes to our mind's here at PSB is how a company can play their finished product and honestly feel as though they've done a good job, especially for a series as important as Pro Evo.

Having played a couple of matches, we immediately started to wonder if this is, in fact, the finished code. For the PS3 version at least, there's a quite inane amount of frame rate issues and blatant slow-down, which is evident more so in the multiplayer experience. While the core game play is as solid as always, the problems previously mentioned somewhat spoil part of the experience, whenever there’s a slight tussle or jostle for the ball, the game feels as though it can’t cope, exposing this through a range of ridiculous AI movements and brainless commentary remarks, which by the way are as moronic as always.

However, it’s not all bad; the presentation is exceptional, the menus crisp, clear and concise, and the teams formation menu as accessible as the previous games, as far as licences go, on the English side of things, we’re stuck with Tottenham and Newcastle, not exactly what everyone was hoping for, but still, the likeness’ are surprisingly well done, and the jerseys are bearable. A nice little feature is the ability to map an official jersey and place it onto the said team using the PlayStation eye, all you need is the eye itself and a decent picture of the jersey, and voila! You’ve got a presentable version of the official jersey on the team of your choice.



The tweaks within the game play have made a moderate difference, Konami’s inclusion of the new ‘Teamvision’ system has made the experience overall that little bit more realistic, with players on the opposition adapting to your style of play, and coming up with ways to counter whatever formation or tactic you’re using. The system does indeed work well, the clumsy defence problems which plagued the previous games has been wiped out. All in favour of a faster paced experience, which overall is great, until the frame-rate issues kick in.

Another new feature is ability to dive, which assumingly cropped up from ‘’This Is Football’’

(a deplorable attempt at a football sim) all that has to be done is a quick tap of L1+L2+R2 to send your player hurdling to the ground, in a vein attempt to grab a vital free kick or penalty as it may be - the fundamental flaw within this ‘master plan’ is that the Referee never falls for it, showing this by continuing play and ignoring the fact that you’re rolling on the ground in agony, much to the commentators dismay - why such a broken novelty is there is anyone’s guess.

The overall feel of play is immense, with pin point accuracy of passes and shooting, so fine, at times, you’d think you’re playing the best football sim ever to grace a console. A swift through ball from Juninho to Fred is met with a great sense of satisfaction. One of the main gripes however, is how bad the keepers actually are - and amazingly enough, they’re the worst in the entire series, which can work both ways, it truly is brilliant to build a play so perfect and beautifully, line up a shot, take a moderate one and some how still manage to get it in the back of the net… of course, on the other hand it’s absolutely infuriating when you’re on the receiving end of one of those feeble shots, which can be met with immense anger, and a controller firmly planted in your new HDTV.



The sound has taken a turn for the better, with Mark Lawrenson and Jon Champion providing the commentary and analysis, replacing the arduous Peter Brackley and Trevor Brooking, which is, in fact, a rare, but welcome addition. The crowd chants overall are acceptable, besides, with the game play being noticeably faster than the past iterations you’ll hardly notice the crowds at all. The in-game music has improved significantly, with the Kaiser Chiefs sporting a song for the dismal introduction video. While admittedly, the soundtrack does get a little tedious, it doesn’t really matter, since the menus are so well crafted you won’t have to hang around them long enough for the music to get unbearable.

The graphics are substantial in making this a worth while package, and even though they’ve left room for improvement, they are indeed better than the port the 360 received of 06, but not by too much, especially the player models, who, quite frankly look like they were made of plastic - with their shiny, metallic look. The stadiums look decent, and the pitches themselves, while oddly enough not matching Fifa’s ability to map grass, are still pretty well done.

One of two major problems which is even the most diehard of Pro Evo fan’s can’t forgive is the tampering of the Edit mode, one of the most important features. No longer can you edit sponsorship or create club logos. All that you’re really left with is the ability to edit player and team names, and the appearances, why Konami even bothered is anybody’s guess.

The other problem is the online mode, if you thought we exemplified the slowdown in the single player modes, wait till you get to play the online, which is just, at times… unacceptable. Seriously, a patch better be in the works, because this problem practically destroys an important aspect of what makes Pro Evo great. You’ll be dancing around the room after scoring a Rooney signature, only to notice that the slowdown of 3 or 4 seconds has given your opponent valuable time to charge down the pitch in a gallant effort to get that equalizer. And shockingly enough, they sometimes even manage it. Which again could cause you to fling your controller at your new HDTV that you bought to replace the one you destroyed because of your keepers utter incompetence.



Surprisingly enough, the fantastic thing is, this game is still, some how, great. With the seemingly minimal effort Konami put in, it really is fascinating to think that if a lot of time into next year’s addition how amazing it could be. Overall, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 feels like a teaser to something truly incredible, and we’re going to have to wait till next year to see what it is. Start counting down the days.