The best football game ever (Pro Evolution Soccer (PS2))

Member Name: doobster

Product:	Pro Evolution Soccer (PS2)
Date:	12/01/02 (633 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Realistic,, Great player likeness', Everything (just about)

Disadvantages: Commentary stinks

Pro Evolution soccer is the latest instalment of the long running and the best football game series ever, the ISS series. Although it was not the most successful the series was certainly the most realistic and most accurate representation of football that you could get. FIFA was always the best selling footy game, but now things in my eyes have changed. I used to be a huge FIFA fan, and actually I used to hate ISS games, I could never played them. But when I seen the first shots of Pro Evo Soccer, I was gob smacked. Loads of the players looked like their real counterparts, and when I read about the game well its became even better. ISS games have always had great physics and gameplay that fell like a real football match. Where as with the likes of FIFA it’s a case of run all the way up the pitch score and hammer the computer about 6-0 every game. ISS is never like that, you can’t just simply run past defenders you need to play the ball into space, play it over the top, and so on. It’s the nearest thing to a footy match than actually going out with your boots and playing a real match.

Graphics wise I feel that FIFA used to be always ahead of the game, but now that’s changed. The graphics of the current FIFA are awful, the players look small and stumpy and none of the players look anything like their real counterparts. Where as with Pro Evo Soccer, a lot of the players look amazing like their real counterparts. People like Anelka, Davids, Scoles, Viera, and many more all look extremely like the real thing. The animation on the players is very good, all of the players look very solid and well designed. The only bad part graphically is the crowd, they are 2D, some of them move, but if you play in a large stadium, the people at the very top don’t move at all. This is that bad and doesn’t effect the game but it would be nice to see a 3D crowd, okay so that would take a load of processing power. Infact who cares about the crowd,
it’s the game I am bothered about.

So the Game itself, well what can I say, if you have ever played an ISS game before you will fell right at home, with how the game is played and how the players handle. With the game being more like the real thing, the game builds up, like a real match, its quite amazing really. Players also have a wide range of statistics and skills to make them play like there real counterparts. For example Ronaldo can hit the net 95% of the time, Beckham has amazing long passing abilities and free kicks taking skills. The players really do play like their real things, if you play it on a high difficulty level or if they are on your team. It is quite amazing to see how much the players are like the real thing when you play the game. You can even create you own players and give them any number of skills and statistics that you want. You can also edit player names, which comes in handy, you see ISS games have never had a full license like FIFA game do. The majority of the players in Pro Evolution Soccer have their real names, but people like Giggs, Veron, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos are now called Gregs, Revon, Ranoldo and Roberto Lacros. The majority of the fake names are easy to tell who they are supposed to be because most of the times their names have just been jumbled up a bit. So you can change these name if you want to sit down and go through them but still its doesn’t make the game better or worse. Then there teams, now there aren’t as many teams to choose from as there are in FIFA games, and some of them don’t have their real names i.e. Arsenal are called London, Man UTD are just Manchester and so on. A lot of the teams have their real names but some don’t. This doesn’t effect the game at all just like the player names, it doesn’t spoil the game at all. There are a number of club teams, and international teams to choose from. Along with a World All Stars and a European All Stars team.
r>There are a number of different modes to choose from, there the unopposed training mode, one of match, multiplayer, cup tournaments and there is also the great Master League Mode, which is basically a player management mode. Where you start off in the second division with a team of prats who can’t score for beans and you must go up the league and gain points to buy new players for you team and then get promoted to the first division. This is a great mode to play in, at the end of the season you have to pay the wages, which can be bad if you have a team full of money hungry superstars, but you have no points. If this happens the players leave your team. But if you can keep enough points at the end of the season to pay the wages you will be laughing.

When actually playing the game, the controls are like other footy games, you have the pass buttons, the shooting buttons, the run buttons and so on. But there also a command set of buttons, which make you team play more offensively of defensively depending on how you want to play. You can also use command buttons which tell your team to do a certain play which you can edit to your liking. Although I hardly ever use these, except for the offensive/defensive ones. When you score a goal, your player celebrates in one of a number of ways, then you get the replay which you can control the speed of, the angle of and so on. You can also save you goals if you think they are great, and compare them to your friends.

Now the game MAJOR BAD POINT, the commentary stinks. FIFA has always had a great commentary done by the likes of Andy Gray and Martin Tyler (I think). But ISS has always had rubbish commentary. The common phrases are, ‘there it is’, ‘plays the short ball’, ‘he try’s to find space’. Oh its do annoying, I wish I could go inside the game and kill him, well there is two of them. One of which gives the worst one line analysis of a football match ever. The
rest of the games sound, i.e. crowd and the like is very good, its just the commentary that lets Pro Evo Soccer down really. And that’s about all I can say for this game, it is the best football game ever, you should buy it now, don’t buy FIFA 2002 because it’s a load of tripe, buy POR EVO SOCCER it’s the best. If only ISS had the commentary of FIFA then it would be the most ultimate football game ever. If you are a true footy fan and love the real game of football then this game is for you, if you like the up the score goal, kick off goal sort of play of FIFA, you know the games where the score line is always huge. By that I mean unrealistic footy then try it, you may not like it, but you may like it. I love it, GAME ON MY SON.