There are times when you feel that you can review a game within the first twenty minutes of playing it. This was one of those times.
I made a terrible mistake before I’d even booted the game up, and usually I wouldn’t admit such stupidity – but it’ll outline my eventual point, so I’ll enlighten you. The last game I played on my PSP was Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, which I had fired up for a quick wireless match with a friend. I drudged through the menus and got into an exhibition match in my sleepy state, thinking I was on the pitch with the latest version. It was only when I got back to the menu after the match, that I realised my error. Feeling foolish, I fired up the new edition and proceeded to play through a match of what turned out to be essentially exactly the same game. What’s worse was that I had to play it for another few hours to make sure I was getting my facts straight.
If you think that story is ludicrous – just try it. Play the new version directly after the old version and see if I’m wrong. Sure, the shooting has been changed for the worse in the new edition – with the shot control being ridiculously sensitive, causing most shots to fly over the bar after the lightest of touches of the button. Aside from that, and the inclusion of the already flaky “Become A Legend” mode – which should be renamed to “I Truly Am Despised By My Team Mates Mode”, given the amount of attention that they actually pay to you and your repeated calls for a pass – you really and truly may as well be playing the same game. Even the much-ballyhooed (and quite respectable) “TeamVision” improvements from the home console edition don’t seem to have made their way in.
Loading times are still scandalous, and the developers still haven’t realised that the illusion isn’t helped by getting players to watch dull-as-ditchwater cutscenes as they make a substitution or get booked. Surely, a portable version of the game should flow as smoothly as possible – and damn the presentation – so that players can dip in and back out of playing the title as easily and as quickly as possible? Apparently not. Apparently, what everyone wants is an exact replica of the PS2 version, with dire loading times and embarrassingly bad punctuation-like commentary that only occurs after a goal is scored, and consists of a single sentence along the lines of “He’s done it!” or “There’s a goal!”
The trouble is that the idea is good. I’d absolutely love a version of Pro Evo that played as well as the full-sized versions and ran as smoothly. However, the technology isn’t there to make that happen, and Konami are apparently the only people who don’t understand that. My tips to the developer would be to get rid of everything other than the players on the pitch, the ball, and the pitch itself. Get rid of all the pointless cutscenes that occur before, during and after a match. Optimise the loading times. Stop copying the beautifully presented menu systems and introductory videos from the home console versions – create new ones that may not be as easy on the eye, but that will load quicker and allow us to get onto the pitch in less than ten minutes. In other words, stop trying to bring the casual gamers in for portable Pro Evo, and start rewarding those that have followed your series since its very inception. We WANT portable PES, but not like this. Thank you for taking the Champions League mode out of the PSP version though, for I fear I may have been drawing my pension before a ball had been kicked.
This is still Pro Evolution Soccer, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth spending money on blindly. If you’ve got last year’s version, the only reason to pick this up is to try your hand at the Become a Legend mode, which is so flawed that it’s hardly worth the effort. If you haven’t, then this is still the best football game available for the PSP and frankly, that means that anyone else who’s released a football game for the machine must have actually been attempting to fail.
