I think it’s fair to say that the PES series has had it relatively easy up until recently. Its main competitor, FIFA, has often focused on a new gimmick each year, but has been left with a lack of depth in the core game. As you may have seen of our FIFA 09 review, that is no more, and as a result, PES 2009 has a lot to live up to.
The first thing that’s very obvious when you get into a game is that the performance problems in PES 2008 are gone, and PES 2009 is as smooth as a KY Jelly covered salmon. There are also some nice new animations – goal keeper saves look a lot more realistic, and you’ll see players wheel away in celebration after scoring before it cuts away to the replay. Overall, the game looks very nice, but it doesn’t have all the club team licenses. I wouldn’t normally be too worried about this as the game does have a download available to bring all the players up to date as of 31st August, as well as an editor that allows you to edit everything else (including bringing in photos from the Live Vision camera to use as club crests and shirt sponsors), but it does seem a little odd that the game has an official UEFA Champions League license, but only 25 officially licensed teams from the actual competition.
There’s no doubt that PES still plays a great game of football... but I’m a little stumped as to whether it’s really moved forward in the last couple of iterations. Perhaps it’s because the game is really quite fast, but sometimes it seems like the players aren’t quite as responsive as they should be. Also, the default setting for the cursor assist that automatically switches players for you seems a little too eager to help. In any case, going back and playing PES 2008 it’s difficult to put into words the differences in the way the game plays, except to say that they’re not oceans apart... which does mean that it’s still a very good football game.
PES 2009 does distinguish itself with the new ‘Become a Legend’ mode. You create a player, and then try and climb the leagues to becoming a top pro, playing just as that player. It’s quite absorbing, but I think it needs a bit more work – for example, you don’t get much feedback as to how you are doing in the game, which is frustrating when you keep on getting left in the reserves. Still, there’s nothing quite like scoring the winning goal for your team, or putting through a player to score with a pinpoint pass.
Online play seems to have improved over last year’s disappointing effort. You still get quite a few instances of your opposition’s players popping about the screen, or moon-walking, which can be annoying, but for the most part I’ve had a lot of very enjoyable games with a bunch of random people online. Against a friend with a good connection and a following wind, online can be near perfect.
There’s a few other things I could gripe about, but I’m not sure it’s worth it, because ultimately, PES 2009 is better than PES 2008, it’s just difficult to say whether it’s worth the stumping up the full retail price for the improvements, especially with so many other quality games around at the moment. If you really want a new football game, dare I say it, but it might be worth taking a break for a year and spending your money on buying FIFA instead.
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