After last season’s dismal outing of Pro Evolution Soccer, many fans started to question how much further the game could progress and if the developers were really in-touch with their fan base outside of Japan. As soon as the game was released, interviews from Seabass himself began to circulate where he was almost apologetic with the game that had just been put out. Added to the justified criticism aimed towards PES 2008, the FIFA series had kicked itself up the backside and last year released a game many thought was the turning point in the PES vs FIFA argument which keeps rumbling on.
With a now tainted reputation, PES slunk quietly back into its cave knowing it had to do better next time around. Nearly a year has passed since the release of PES 2008 and the developers have been hard at work in Japan desperate to make up for the shortcomings of their previous game.
TheBoss was invited by Konami down to their offices last week for an exclusive playtest of the new Pro Evolution Soccer game. He had the chance to play a 70% complete build on the PS3 (the development process is much further on than 70%).
THE STUFF OF LEGENDS
The major new addition to PES 2009 is the Become a Legend mode, which has existed in the Japanese J-League games for the last couple of years under the name ‘Fantasista’. Thankfully, Konami have decided to rename the mode for the world market and improve upon their original design. You create your potential legend when you first enter the mode and then it’s off to a trial match where, based on your performance, a scout will pick you out and offer you a deal at a club. Once at a club, it’s your job to work your way up through the ranks through good performances before making the jump into the first team. Impress enough and you could earn yourself a move to a major club, but if you do badly you’ll find yourself relegated back to the bench and maybe even a move to smaller club!
Your player’s stats are generated after the trial game and will be calculated according to your performance in the match, as well as what your main strengths or weaknesses were. During the season, the more your player plays, the quicker he will develop and by focusing on your passing for example and executing several key passes, your passing stats will increase quicker. The same applies to other characteristics of your player, so in theory will mirror your own playing style. Sitting on the bench for long periods of time will doing nothing to develop your Legend (and won’t alleviate your boredom either, although thankfully you can increase the speed of the game during these times until you get substituted on) and you may find yourself better off transferring to a smaller club to hone your skills in the first team before making the step back up.
As this has the potential to be a deep mode, all the options couldn’t be explored in the playtest but the first impressions of it are very positive. The new vertical player cam, which was partly on show during the PES 2009 trailer, works very well. During the season, you can check out your own personal playing stats as well as your team stats as you could in Master League mode. One slight limitation of the mode is the fact you can’t play as a goalkeeper or a defender through this mode. The lack of a goalkeeper option is clearly understandable as it would need a new range of controls specifically for the keeper, but slightly disappointed you can’t be a defender. Possibly the programmers thought it wouldn’t be as exciting to be a defender, or more likely it would have required the developers to work extensively on your team mates defensive AI possibly delaying the game. If you’re desperate to play as a defender, then you could pick WB as your position and try to sign for a team which uses wing backs who will subsequently give you some defensive responsibility.
If you get bored of just taking your superstar through the offline game mode, then you should be delighted with another major new addition in ‘Legends’, the online version of Become a Legend where you take your player online and play with others against the computer.
The Master League mode hasn’t received much attention with only slight tweaks being made to the negotiations and player loyalty which has already been touched upon in the most recent press release from Konami.
It’s certainly a disappointment that so little has been done in a mode which was once regarded as one of the best single player modes in any sports game, where even small additions could breathe new life into Master League.
EDITING BACK WITH A BANG
One section of the game which has received much needed attention is the edit mode. Back on the PS2, the edit modes were expansive allowing you to edit pretty much everything to do with a team and players but when the game was debuted on a next-gen system, the edit mode was almost non-existent. PES 2008 improved on this by allowing you to edit more than just player names but it still lacked many of the features that still existed on the PS2 version of the game. In its defence, it did bring a couple of new features to the table in the ability to take photos and use them on kits, as well as comprehensive face editing.
PES 2009 improves on this again with the return of emblem editing, which will make the team selection screen much easier for me! You can either use the Pixel Paint method unveiled in the press release, or you can import a jpg file off the hard drive for the badge. The kit editing has also been improved upon with new template designs, as well as the ability to import jpg files off the hard drive for sponsor and manufacturer logos with enough room for 40 team’s images to be saved. There’s enough room on the shirts for one badge and one ‘logo’ design to be displayed at once so the people in the editing section should be able to make some top notch designs! Boot editing misses out again but with a plethora of designs and colours to choose from, PES players with a boot fetish should be satisfied with the amount on offer. The standard player editing options still exist, as do the team options. One added extra is the ability to import your own crowd chants, so all the scousers can finally replicate famous European nights with ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ being belted out by the home fans in the dying minutes of a game.
All these new additions to the game will ultimately amount to nothing if the gameplay doesn’t stand up to previous instalments of the game, and more importantly, what the competition has brought to the party.
One major alteration to the core gameplay is the implementation of true manual control. In the past, once a player had passed the ball to a team-mate, the cursor would then automatically switch to the player receiving the pass. However, in PES 20009 the cursor will not switch unless you select him. This new control system seems like a step forward as it allows you to pass the ball to a computer controlled player whilst you run into space with the passer, before switching control to the ball carrier and playing a through ball to the man you ran into space with. This new control system may take a bit of time to get the hang of, even for a PES veteran, and expect to find yourself in many keystone cop defending situations as you lose track of who you’re controlling!
One of my main gripes with PES 2008 was the erratic and often hopeless goalkeepers who would consistently parry shots back into play for an easy tap in by the opposition striker. Thankfully, during the playtest the keepers seemed much more alive to their surroundings, rarely spilling easy shots and reacting far quicker after diving to save a shot. Another regular complaint across the PES community was the invincibility of dribblers who were able to run the entire length of the pitch brushing off all defenders before unleashing a shot from a narrow angle which would end up in the back of the net. Again, Konami have listened to the complaints and have improved the tackling making it much harder to beat a player meaning we shouldn’t be seeing as many sixty yard dribbles in the future.
Shooting is also harder, with strikers no longer able to score from tight angles as often as they were able to in PES 2008. Body positioning and the striker’s stats play a bigger part in determining how accurate the shot will be, meaning you will have to create clearer chances for your front men for them to have a good chance of beating the ‘keeper.
The player animations have also received a slight revamp, with the ‘ice skating’ animations less obvious. The player models appear better than ever, with faces looking even more realistic than before. The lighting effects make the players look more like people and less like wax work models from Madame Tussauds. Beckham even had his neck tattoos!
The long balls and crosses now seem ‘floaty’, with crosses proving quite effective against the computer with crosses aimed at the back post leading to some easy goals. Against human opposition this didn’t seem as effective so perhaps it’s just a small AI niggle which hadn’t been fixed yet.
Some small niggles still remain in the game, such as the invisible wall around the throw in taker and the odd controversial decision from the referee. The number of stadiums has been increased from the rather paltry offering of PES 08 to a healthier sounding 24, with some stadiums returning from the PS2 versions like the Rasunda in Sweden and the Amsterdam Arena, joining some new officially licensed stadiums such as Wembley. Some new teams will be joining the roster but with licenses not 100% confirmed at this point, a complete team list can’t be given at this time.
AND THE WIND IS SHOOTING THROUGH THE STADIUM!
Audio wise, the commentary team of Jon Champion and Mark Lawrenson return with a few new lines of input to entertain you during your games, but apart from the odd new comment very little has changed from the previous game. One of PES’ many charms for me was the quirky J-Pop tunes that greeted you when you navigated through the menus. Still without any mainstream music, there are over sixty rock songs to choose from on the playlist, with the added ability to import custom mp3 files to play on the menus.
The one Achilles heel of PES has always been the online side of the game. When it was introduced back in PES 5 it suffered from some serious lag. Fast forward to today and the game still has its laggy moments which, truth be told, is unacceptable. PES 2008 had some of the popular features removed, such as the ability to play 2vs2 and even one of the more essential features in the lobby. PES 2009 tries to rectify this by bringing back the lobby to find your opponents, and 2vs2 returns as well. With the addition of ‘Legend’ mode Konami have increased the number of online options, but if the game doesn’t run smoothly then it will fall flat on its face.
So there you have it, a very positive opinion of PES 2009, which is shaping up to be a cracker when it's released in October.
With the Leipzig Games Convention now underway, expect a barrage of news and videos over the next few days!
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