Pro Evolution Soccer 2008

7 Comments 4 Votes 901 Views 24/10/2009 Back to Reviews PES 2008

PES 2008 - 6 / 10

Football, the largest sport in the world, by the amount of people playing it every day. Naturally, many consumers have tried to feed off the sport’s success, but many of the games, especially the earlier ones, were unenjoyable, blocky, and offered incomplete gameplay. Does this one fair any better?
Pro Evolution Soccer, and FIFA Soccer are the two main game series continuously being re-released with new, updated and apparently better games. There are also a couple of other, smaller franchises, such as Real Football, which interpret almost the same gameplay, yet are still stuck in the dark.

The original PES was released on the Playstation, and Playstation 2 in 2001 whilst the popular and competitive FIFA series, was first developed in 1993, and was notable for having licensed players.

Many hardcore gamers prefer to stick away from the sports games, understandably, and I can account this to two reasons:
A) The games offer terrible gameplay, compared to, for example a Zelda game, in which the player is deeply immersed into a fantasy world named Hyrule.
B) Many hardcore gamers don’t fully understand the rules, or aren’t interested in sports.

PES 2008 was released across many consoles, including Nintendo DS, which is the one I’ll be reviewing.

As a football player myself, I thought I would enjoy this game, having at a younger age, previously enjoyed playing Penalty Shootout on the original game, on PS1 with my older brother. This game is in a completely different mould though, and it get’s worse the further you get in.

The main problem I have with this game is the difficulty level, Easy is impossibly easy, and you’ll find yourself 10-0 up within 2 minutes, medium is good, but you soon find it just as simple as easy, and hard is just beserk!

I am always finding myself frustrated at the game, because as a football player, and qualified referee, I find it extremely irritating when the opposition team is awarded a foul for no reason, or if I am running down the wing, the opposition’s defender trips me, and even though my center forward has the ball, it is called back for a free kick. I want to play the damn advantage!

Another problem I have with this game is that it constantly lags whenever there is a free kick, even on the DSi, with more processing power. It’s like the game is saying “Yeah, well I’m too kickass for the DS, so suck it!”

Immediately as you start up the game and press A to bring up the main menu, you will see many options, such as World Tour where you take control of a team of nobodies and take them on the path to defeating the world’s best teams. Even Brazil, or Italy, will stand no chance in your path to dominance.

Then you will have match where you can select a quick play option, a normal match where you can select teams etc. a tournament called Konami Cup (sort of like a mini world cup) or a penalty shoot-out.

Network is the option where you can play wi-fi, however I have never once found anyone to play against. You are also able to play download play from that screen, but the options are limited.

Training just lets you practice with a full team against just a goalkeeper. And My Data and Options just shows you your record, and all the things you can customize.

In the options menu you can customize all things from game length to ball colour or “cursor change”. You can choose to clear the game data, which I’ve accidently done twice whilst tweaking with the options and change the controls.

At the World Tour mode, the main gameplay option, you can choose to play, which is all I bother with, customize your team (change the jersey colours etc.). There’s also an option called the Gacha-Get, at least that’s what I think it’s called, with the font you can’t really tell. If you go into that option you are given an instruction, use the touch pen from here. You click one of the two options, which both look like weird, deformed pokies, and from there you go on to play the “mini-game”. The first one, you choose how many coins to bet, and then play it as a poker machine, choosing the country, position and number of the play. The only players you are able to get from this are ones from the teams you have beaten, but I don’t bother, because it takes too long and they’re generally no better. In game, before the actual match, you can also play mini-game challenges that the game throws at you, such as score a goal in a time limit.

The second one is weird, it’s kinda like one of those old Kinder Surprise machines, you enter a coin, spin around the spinner and eventually, out pops an egg, which somehow contains a player (Pokemon eh?)

When playing the game, there are groups A-K, you start trying to knock off all the teams in group K and then work your way up to beating all the teams in Group A.

The graphics are really not up to scratch, it’s really just like someone got a random Kindergarten’s drawing and slapped it on the game as a sprite.

Difficulty:
The game’s difficulty is way, way out of proportion…Who’s going to be playing this, a casual gamer, a 9 year old looking for a cheap bit of quick fun? Not a damn world gaming champion. 4/10
Gameplay:
The gameplay is the same as all the other football games on the market for the DS. Pretty much a senseless button masher. At first, the controls are hard to get used to, but then they get easier, but it’s still a bit warped. 6/10
Graphics:
The NES could have harvested this game, I reckon for the quality of these graphics! 5/10
Sound:
Why even bother having a sound section here? The sound doesn’t exist, except the occasional sound of the crowd cheering, the whistle of the referee, and if you have it on full, the sound of players boots on leather. 2/10
Value:
I picked up this game from GAME for $19.95 Aus. I’d traded in my rarely used Nintendogs for it, and paid 8 bucks, so for me, it was good value. However, this is the only redeeming factor of this game. 9/10.

Review by: Psycho42 9716Kudos 24/10/2009