Pro Evo, Pro Evolution Soccer, PES - call it what you will, footy fans all know the only true football simulation game worth playing is the popular franchise from Konami. It's history stretches all the way back to 1996, when it was released for the first time.
What is it about Pro Evo that has maintained this popularity with the fans despite several different incarnations across the consoles and with FIFA in constant competition?
In more recent times FIFA has stolen a march over Konami and pushed PES into second place, something which FIFA itself struggled with during the early years in the last decade. So why despite playing second fiddle to another footy game do PES fans stay loyal and shell out their hard earned cash every year?
Playability - the big trump card PES has always maintained over FIFA. Konami have varied the learning curves over the past few years, sometimes you could pick up and play PES immediately, other times you might find yourself drawing the first 5 or 6 games and not even scoring until you learned the new nuances.
PES has never pandered to your whims like FIFA, it has never made it easy to score or create chances. The ethos behind the PES games is to make you work hard, learn and practice each new version, so that you can truly appreciate the beauty of the game. None more so than when you win a game on the hardest difficulty for the first time with an injury time rocket into the top corner.
PES seems to generate a kind of finger memory in your playing, that means you instinctively know how to play each new version, but that this behaviour is subconscious and the developers are going to tease this out of you over the first few weeks of you playing the new version.
Realism - PES generally comes out on top when it comes to the visage of players faces and movements of the football. FIFA constructs can't be called pretty and the ball seems to have been filled with helium in some versions. The football in PES moves and floats like a real ball and the players look like their real life counterparts.
Real life football is recreated more accurately in Pro Evo and the players move as though they have an actual body weight, which when coupled with accurate football flight, makes the game look like a real game of football. Even the goalkeepers are fallible and make mistakes that give away goals.
Player likenesses always feature much better in the PES games. You'd think that after all these years, both games would be able to get it right. But before launch date, video game magazines often run comparison charts between the two games, with identical players from both sides pitted against each other. There have been some ugly Rooney mugs in the FIFA series.
Speed - Konami seem to tweak this mechanic every year, usually slowing it down in recent times in a bid to recapture some perceived loss of realism in the gameplay. At the moment PES 2013 is the slowest recent iteration, with Konami focusing on player movement and touch, which is obviously helped by slower movements.
In the latest game Konami have included a speed setting which allows you to control the game speed. You have five settings to choose from, so if you still fancy bombing down the wings like PES games of yesteryear you can.
Licenses - or in the case of Pro Evo, a distinct lack of them, explains why PES has always struggled and in fact failed to match the licensing rights of FIFA, but in a strange way, this has helped PES become stronger.
With the FIFA domination of the licenses, PES fans have had to work for themselves and using in-game editors, plus computer editing software, every year they come up with option files which take PES from fake names to real. So the millions spent on these licenses seem somewhat pointless.
Unfortunately, as I'm not a FIFA fan, I can't compare their edit functions, but if they can rival the PES edit modes, which allow realistic faces and bodies, football strips and stadia, I'd be surprised. You can now edit almost every part of the Pro Evo setup.
Innovation - both PES and FIFA introduce new buzz words every year, which describe the new features they're putting in their games. PES usually updates the artificial intelligence and for PES 2013 is bringing in Player ID and Full Control which are supposed to work together to allow players to mimic the real mannerisms of actual players. So you should see Ronaldo and Messi run, dribble, pass and shoot like they do in real games.
Two Player - this for me has always been the strength of Pro Evo, sure the game is fun to play against the computer, but the real joy, screaming, swearing and tantrums begin when you play against another human.
Everybody who has ever played against a mate will know the joy of a strike into his top corner and the despair of him chipping the ball over your onrushing goalkeeper and into your empty goal. Friendships have been put on hold for the duration of these games before.
For me it's the two player skirmishes and online activities that increase and maintain the lifespan of all Pro Evo games and I don't see the latest version being any different in this respect.
What is it about Pro Evo that has maintained this popularity with the fans despite several different incarnations across the consoles and with FIFA in constant competition?
In more recent times FIFA has stolen a march over Konami and pushed PES into second place, something which FIFA itself struggled with during the early years in the last decade. So why despite playing second fiddle to another footy game do PES fans stay loyal and shell out their hard earned cash every year?
Playability - the big trump card PES has always maintained over FIFA. Konami have varied the learning curves over the past few years, sometimes you could pick up and play PES immediately, other times you might find yourself drawing the first 5 or 6 games and not even scoring until you learned the new nuances.
PES has never pandered to your whims like FIFA, it has never made it easy to score or create chances. The ethos behind the PES games is to make you work hard, learn and practice each new version, so that you can truly appreciate the beauty of the game. None more so than when you win a game on the hardest difficulty for the first time with an injury time rocket into the top corner.
PES seems to generate a kind of finger memory in your playing, that means you instinctively know how to play each new version, but that this behaviour is subconscious and the developers are going to tease this out of you over the first few weeks of you playing the new version.
Realism - PES generally comes out on top when it comes to the visage of players faces and movements of the football. FIFA constructs can't be called pretty and the ball seems to have been filled with helium in some versions. The football in PES moves and floats like a real ball and the players look like their real life counterparts.
Real life football is recreated more accurately in Pro Evo and the players move as though they have an actual body weight, which when coupled with accurate football flight, makes the game look like a real game of football. Even the goalkeepers are fallible and make mistakes that give away goals.
Player likenesses always feature much better in the PES games. You'd think that after all these years, both games would be able to get it right. But before launch date, video game magazines often run comparison charts between the two games, with identical players from both sides pitted against each other. There have been some ugly Rooney mugs in the FIFA series.
Speed - Konami seem to tweak this mechanic every year, usually slowing it down in recent times in a bid to recapture some perceived loss of realism in the gameplay. At the moment PES 2013 is the slowest recent iteration, with Konami focusing on player movement and touch, which is obviously helped by slower movements.
In the latest game Konami have included a speed setting which allows you to control the game speed. You have five settings to choose from, so if you still fancy bombing down the wings like PES games of yesteryear you can.
Licenses - or in the case of Pro Evo, a distinct lack of them, explains why PES has always struggled and in fact failed to match the licensing rights of FIFA, but in a strange way, this has helped PES become stronger.
With the FIFA domination of the licenses, PES fans have had to work for themselves and using in-game editors, plus computer editing software, every year they come up with option files which take PES from fake names to real. So the millions spent on these licenses seem somewhat pointless.
Unfortunately, as I'm not a FIFA fan, I can't compare their edit functions, but if they can rival the PES edit modes, which allow realistic faces and bodies, football strips and stadia, I'd be surprised. You can now edit almost every part of the Pro Evo setup.
Innovation - both PES and FIFA introduce new buzz words every year, which describe the new features they're putting in their games. PES usually updates the artificial intelligence and for PES 2013 is bringing in Player ID and Full Control which are supposed to work together to allow players to mimic the real mannerisms of actual players. So you should see Ronaldo and Messi run, dribble, pass and shoot like they do in real games.
Two Player - this for me has always been the strength of Pro Evo, sure the game is fun to play against the computer, but the real joy, screaming, swearing and tantrums begin when you play against another human.
Everybody who has ever played against a mate will know the joy of a strike into his top corner and the despair of him chipping the ball over your onrushing goalkeeper and into your empty goal. Friendships have been put on hold for the duration of these games before.
For me it's the two player skirmishes and online activities that increase and maintain the lifespan of all Pro Evo games and I don't see the latest version being any different in this respect.
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