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[REVIEWED] Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 – The best PES since the PS2 glory days

Back in the PlayStation 2 days, Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) was the leader in football gaming and for a few years nobody could touch them. But the tide turned in recent years; Lionel Messi, the player that used to appear on the cover of Pro Evo jumped ship to join FIFA… and so have many other fans of football gaming.

Fortunately, it appears the tide may be turning once again in PES’s favour. Konami, the publisher behind PES, decided against releasing a Pro Evolution Soccer game in the first year of the new generation of consoles (Xbox One and PlayStation 4) because they wanted enough time to develop the best-ever football simulator.

Have they succeeded?

Well, that depends on what the end user wants from the game. If they want FIFA 2014’s slick presentation and a million licensed real-world teams, they won’t find those here. But if they’re looking for a really nuanced soccer game that mostly gets the mechanics of kicking a virtual football around a virtual pitch right and that challenges their manual dexterity and tactical mind, PES 2015 has them covered.

On the visual side, PES puts in a good – if not great – effort. The camera angles are pleasing, stadium views look beautiful and player faces have been improved upon for the most part, but unfortunately a few players across world class teams still don’t look quite right.

I’m looking at you, David Luis from PSG, Ronaldo from Real Madrid and Nemanja Vidic of Inter. Sies.

PES- Rinaldo... right
Ro… Ronaldo? Is that you? What happened to your face, dude?!?

Where Pro Evolution wins or loses potential fans is definitely its gameplay. Konami has always described their game as a “football simulator”, but sadly I don’t think they are quite there yet, despite a marked improvement over last year’s game. Firstly, ball possession doesn’t mean much because passing is so sloppy that opponents easily intercept the ball and secondly, passing is limited to just eight directions (similar to a compass). The difficulty in executing dribbles also doesn’t do the game any favours.

On the other hand, pretending to be injured is pretty accurate.

Defensively PES 2015 is more solid: the defenders maintain formations quite well and keepers are easily protected. Long range shots go in the direction of the keepers the bulk of the time, and while they won’t necessarily get you goals every time they can provide valuable rebounds for athletic players like Ronaldo, Walcott and Bale to take advantage of.

Artificial soccer intelligence

I found the AI to be incredibly smart and efficient, though there appeared to be a few mental lapses on their part at times. But even on the lower difficulties, I had to really buckle down and concentrate, as PES 2015 is a much more realistic soccer game than previous PES games, something that has made me a better overall player.

Pitch Perfect

For newcomers, though, PES 2015 does little to welcome you. It’s a game that has seemingly been designed with veteran players in mind, and as such it isn’t quite as easy to pick up and play as previous titles.

Unwelcoming welcome screen

Right off the bat you’re thrown into a welcome screen filled with boxes that will simply overwhelm new players, and there’s precious little clarification or explanation for anything. A tutorial would be nice, but I get the sense the developers are relying on most soccer game fans being familiar with the intricacies of the game already.

Licensing is always a talking point with Pro Evolution, especially in the perennial PES vs. FIFA conflict. The only official team from the English Premier League is Manchester United and Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen and Shalke are the three from the Bundesliga. The rest of the roster is made up of little-known teams from Europe and other places, or they are fictional teams that mimic the characteristics of real-world clubs.

Yay a licensed team!
Man U is one of the few big-name licensed teams in PES.

That used to get on my nerves a lot in the past, but as I grow older – and hopefully wiser – I’m able to look beyond it. It still hurts to see only 14 stadiums and a handful of well-known teams in PES compared to FIFA which has 20 Barclays Premier League stadiums and dozens of official teams, though.

At least they’re consistent

User interface, player menus, and the overall gameplay presentation have always been a problem for the series and they remain clunky in PES 2015. It’s a jumbled mess of grey boxes and black text that do little to get you excited to play the game. While the graphics are the best they’ve ever been, especially on the PS4 (my review platform), it doesn’t take long for Jon Champion and Jim Beglin’s commentary to get stale. This doesn’t hurt the actual in-game play – and can also be turned off in the game’s settings – so it’s not a huge problem, but I had hoped for something better. At least it’s consistent – commentary in previous PES games has never been a strong point.

Rooney
Commentary gets repetitive after a while.

Beyond these minor issues, the game really does grow on a person and I found myself playing for hours on end and having a good time in the process. PES 2015 proved especially fun played with a friend and a second controller.

A Pro Evo review is never complete without answering the age-old question: “Is it better than FIFA?” For me, personally, not yet… but this is a huge jump in the right direction for the series. If PES can match FIFA’s presentation while improving on its technical and realistic brand of soccer, Pro Evo will surely rise to the top again, similar to how they were kings during the PS2 era.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC and sells for a recommended retail price of R399 on PC, R499 for previous-gen and R699 for current-gen consoles.

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