Hey guys,
I can't edit the 1st post in my previous thread but many of you guys only seem to read the first post - so I thought I'd be good to open up a new thread with the whole translation of the article:
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
King Soccer rules the PS3:
can Konami win the title again?
The virtual football season '09 is opened. After EA already gave the starting shot with Fifa 09, Konami invited us into their holy halls as well. Our mission: Exclusively laying hands on PES 2009 and report on it in our magazine. We didn't need to be asked twice and can now reveal to you how last year's champion starts into the new season.
New year, new luck
While EA is directing FIFA in the right direction year after year, Konami has already been on the right path for a long time: No other game simulates germany's no 1 sport as realistically as the PES franchise. But in the past year they tripped themselves up with PES 2008: Due to an immature presentation they gave the competitor the possibility to reduce the distance. But with PES 2009 the biggest japanese publisher apparently has learned its lesson: although we were playing a very early version, the events on the green grass proceeded as soft as butter and already left very good impressions. How does the Konami-kick play?
AI-cleverness
On the first look it seems as if not much has changed, but we looked closer: the players now react faster to your orders and have improved in controlling and handling the ball. In previous PES installations the players sometimes reacted delayed in time, so that for example a pass was performed only seconds later and hence went into touch. In PES 2009 the AI recognizes when you want to play a pass and either passes the ball directly or not at all. The AI seems to have trained a lot in the last months anyway. Positional play and aggressiveness on normal difficulty are already shockingly well developed. The CPU constricts you in your own half and closes up empty rooms so well that you have to find the gap in handball-manner. Only too well that you can use the new AI-cleverness for own benefit thanks to the new manual controls.
Human-Machine-System
In this new control variant you are the passing and receiving player
at the same time and have to work with the AI. When your team has the
ball the AI is controlling the ball until you push L1. Then you control
the player with the ball and play the intelligent pass to the CPU which
then only has to put the bullet into the net and you take the lead.
Alternatively you can let the AI serve you: run into free space and
wait for the throughpass of your AI controlled teammate. The manual control only sounds complicated in theory - on the grass
human and machine harmonize surprisingly well. Unfortunatelly the
traditional manual control was cancelled for this variant. Apart from that you only have the choice between automatic and half-automatic control.
Technically versed
As mentioned above, PES 2009 already cuts a fine figure. The game has also advanced graphically: players look slightly better than last year thanks to higher polygon count and also learned some new animations. They now demand the ball with wild gesticulations, stumble to the ground apart from the events and when it's raining they slide especially long on the grass. Rainy weather has a deep impact on your players anyway: even your star-players make unfamiliar misplays, shots race even more unpredictable towards the keeper and when passing you have to calculate on higher rubbing.
The known Master League and Cup modes are still in PES 2009. Unfortunately we can make no words about the the new star: a complete new mode which lets your saved data also play against your friends online. Curios soccer-fans should organize themselves some tickets for the Games Convention in Leipzig on the 20th of August and force open the Konami booth - with kind regards from the play3-team!
Opinion
PES 2009 hits Fifa on the break: Certainly the wheel isn't reinvented, but the gameplay has evolved with subtle improvements. Especially the controls aren't as ponderous as last year. Additionally the manual controls absolutely convinced me. The cooperation with the aggressive and clever acting AI is a lot of fun and simulates team-feeling even without other human players. Nevertheless I think it's a pity that the conventional manual controls have been cancelled from the game, at least in this early version we've played. Technically PES 2009 already makes all right and lets you quickly forget last year's immature debut on the PS3. I hope for a similar well working online-mode, cause playfully PES 2009 is already the measure of all things, that's for sure.
Rating tendency: 90%
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