DP Challenge Part 2/100: Pro Evolution Soccer 2008

Game: Pro Evolution Soccer 2008

Ranking: 38/100

Average Score: 83.26%

It’s footy, what more can one say? Play matches across the world, manage a team through the (not) Championship League and even lead the England team to victory! So, nothing like real life. There isn’t even an option for the more dickish fans to take it outside after too many beers and throw patio furniture at each other; but does the gameplay make me forget about this glaring omission?

Nowadays Rooney is more likely to protect the other head.

Intro

The manual was informative and gives you a reference list of moves you would use during a match, which are very useful.

Sadly, that's where my praise of the intro ends. It opens with an irritating promo of hipster kids with thick-rimmed glasses playing on their Wii to the repetitive mantra of 'You love it, you live it'- I'll decide on that, thanks. You have to press a 'create data' button on your first game when surely it should just do it automatically, and the manual itself is pretty dry.

An opening that actually had something to do with football might be nice; some clips of in-game footage or the sweeping stadium shots, some pictures of the players the game clearly has a licence for- just something that makes me excited about playing football rather than making me think I'm watching a cola advert. The manual could do with more white space and a bit of fun injected into it.

Getting Going

The tutorials are done in the style of a coaching session, which is pretty cool and puts you in mind of an actual match. They don't get into overly complicated moves too early on and give you enough to grasp and play a match with. You can choose some recognisable teams to play as, which helps make the whole experience feel a bit more real.

The problem is, the tutorials also have an achingly slow pace- they don't have to provide much text information but it all gets animated as though being typed out and you only get one line in the text box before you have to click to proceed. They are also rather constricted- the practice sessions don't actually allow you to practise! You just press the appropriate buttons when you are told to which doesn’t really help. The actual practice sessions are really the certification tests; the practice session itself is pretty superfluous. Also the lack of licencing rights means you can only play as two legitimate Premier league teams, which is pretty disappointing for something called 'Pro-Evolution Soccer' (unless, of course, we've just evolved past the teams of today). The controls are also a little difficult at first, even with the tutorials. It took me a few games to start getting the hang of it.

I can appreciate the licencing issues preventing a complete list of genuine teams, but a simple option to allow you to choose a generic emblem and kit where you can change the colours accordingly would be enough to get around this, and it would complement the option to change team name and players' names. Also, adding more text in each text box during the tutorials and just letting the player read it without animating it being typed out would make the tutorials more pleasing.

Just... let... me... do... something!

Fun

The gameplay is varied depending on what you want to do- you can play a simple one-off match or play a complex Champions League where you have to buy and sell players and choose your teams and formations. There is also a league option which sits somewhere in between. This choice between straightforward short matches and a more involved strategy-type game is really good. The touches such as commentary that is as inane and daft as the real thing pull you into the game. The fact you can play a match without needing to memorise the more complicated controls is a definite plus.

The menu controls can be a bit of a faff; they take a while to get through even if you're just playing a single match. The controls take a while to get used to; once you get the hang of it they're fairly simple and intuitive, but the period before this epiphany involves a frustrating amount of button mashing and waving remotes at the screen.

The lack of decent customisation for teams is a missed trick; if you could choose specific colours for emblems and kit as well as renaming your teams and players it would definitely add to the fun in a game where there are precious few real teams available.

Visuals

The in-game playing graphics are nice; reminiscent of 'Sensible Soccer' but more detailed with realistic player movement and highlighting arrows that make it clear who you're controlling and where your players are headed.

In contrast, the cut-scene graphics are awful; they’re inferior to 'Metroid Prime III' which came out before this. There is an attempt to make the players look realistic, but they move jerkily and one of the goal celebrations looked more like late-night drunken dancing at a club. I don't think the intention of the game makers was for me to laugh uncontrollably when either my team or the opponent scores; although in some celebrations the players appear to be scoring in a completely different way...

If the graphics can't be made to look and move more realistically, another way to improve the look of the game would be to do all the cut-scene footage in the style of the game-play footage; small characters can do goal celebrations and sing their national anthem and it would have the added advantage of not breaking up the match to go to a cut-scene.

Intelligence

The opposing teams behave fairly sensibly; when you tackle and gain possession, they try to take it back. They won't shoot goals willy-nilly, instead they pass to each other. The matches end up being challenging without seeming insurmountable.

I didn't notice much difference in the skill of the teams, be they a random European team or a massive Premier League side. This made the whole team selection feel fairly cosmetic. All of this could be down to the fact that I pretty much sucked at this game and so I was going to be challenged by any team, but I would expect to be absolutely caned by some teams and grimly hold on to a no score draw with others. This simply was not the case.

A noticeable difference in skill and ability of the computer played teams would be nice. It would add to the immersion feeling and allow you to choose your difficulty level when playing a single match.

Who do I choose? They won't all fit on my dashboard...

Immersion

The cut-scenes of players singing their national anthem and doing goal celebrations, the running commentary and the cheering or booing crowds really add to the atmosphere of the game, yet can be easily skipped if they drive you nuts. The level of choice you get in not just a team, but the players and their positions on the field also help to make it feel like one might imagine the real thing to be.

There were features that pulled me out of the game, however; such as having to press the A button every time a line of text appeared on the screen during practice sessions, and the tragic cut-scene graphics which can't even be blamed on the time the game was released.

Making the practice sessions a little more free would be good; the way they are currently set up means the player only gets to press a button to move the action along, which doesn't really help you to grasp the controls and just pulls you out of the experience. Tutorial matches would be a good half-way point between giving the player somewhere to hone their skills (or figure out the controls) but without holding their hand to the point that they aren't allowed to aim the Wii remote as well as press A.

Cameras

The camera is fairly accurate; it follows the ball smoothly and given that you control the players nearest the ball, this works well.

One slight niggle with this system is that when the goalie has to kick the ball back out it's difficult to see which players you can aim towards off-screen as the camera doesn’t tend to let you pan across.

A simple panning option would be useful when doing free kicks, corners, goalkeeper moves and so on just so you can kick the ball far across the pitch and know whether you've sent it in the genera area of your own team.

Controls

Once you get the hang of the controls, they're really simple and make the gameplay feel pretty organic. You don't need to learn many moves to play matches, but the more advanced stuff, such as multiple passes and feints, add to the complexity of the game play and increase the ability to play tactically.

Sadly, the controls are nigh-on nonsensical when you first play; even simple things like kick off can prove elusive.

Any way of speeding up the acclimatisation process would do wonders for the controls, especially given how well they work once it all clicks. Perhaps having tutorial matches in the practice sessions might be helpful.

The World Cup... In HD! That goal is about to get ruined by an ad break any second.

Ideas

The league and champion road options are fantastic in that they allow you to employ tactical aspects to the gameplay such as picking teams, formations, buying and selling players. However, you can still play a straight forward match which means you have the option of a long game that can keep you absorbed for days or a quick kick-around for half an hour. The tutorials as coaching sessions are also inspired.

Unfortunately, the lack of known teams and customisation options has quite an impact on the long-term games such as champions road, spoiling any hopes you may have of fashioning a team in the image of your favourite club who have just been relegated in real life and leading them to victory in a vision of wish-fulfilment.

There's not really much one can do to increase the novelty of a game like this except to buy licenses for real teams and players, or perhaps even have the option to play a  'dream team' of historically legendary players.

Memories

It's fun once you've grasped the controls, which may take a bit of patience. There's scope to play simple matches or complicated managerial roles through an entire season. The touches such as the running commentary and the tutorials done as coaching sessions are fun and help to make it feel like you have a real football team.

The lack of known teams is a shame, as is the fact they have the most embarrassing England line-up known to man (although that's more a product of the time rather than the game itself). The cut-scene graphics are also laughably bad, although I enjoyed the unintentional hilarity I got from two Spurs players dry-humping during a match.

Most improvements that cross my mind when playing this are tweaks rather than complete overhauls; such as the ability to change strip colours when customising teams, not attempting real-life style cut-scenes when the animation is unconvincing.

Overall, I can forgive the dodgy graphics for all the other nice atmospheric touches and especially for the way the game plays (if you have the patience to get used to the controls, it’s really worth it). Props must also be given for its big selling point of allowing all England fans to fix the horrific events of South Africa 2010. I can’t quite forgive the poor customisation options, but I’m sure Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 will have ironed out all these little gripes, right?

Right?