Neutral LFC
Senior Squad
Well, I'll be leaving again for a while as the second quarter starts up again, so here's something to read while I'm gone. Talk to you lot soon, and have fun gaming.
IN SHORT:
Good:
+ Improved ball physics, tackling, passing & shooting
+ Improved graphics & animations
+ Better than PES 1 and WE6
+ Many more features than PES 1
Bad:
- Ratings for the top tier players and teams are too high
- Really out of date rosters
- Requires extensive editing otherwise too easy for long-time WE/PE veterans
- Not as good as J-League Winning Eleven 6
- Commentary is laughably bad
IN DETAIL:
First off, before I start my review proper, I guess I should discuss (in length…..is there any other way for me?) four issues that seem to be the main talking points amongst the hardcore PES/WE gaming crowd; where this game fits in the WE/PES series, the rosters, game speed, & comparisons between WE/PES series.
While Pro Evolution Soccer 2 is officially the European sequel to Pro Evolution Soccer, since the release of PES 1, KCET have released 3 game engine revisions/improvements over PES 1. The first was Winning Eleven 5: Final Evolution which was a tweaked version of PES 1 which was released in Japan at the end of 2001. This was followed this April by Winning Eleven 6 which was a massive improvement over WE5:FE. Finally, in September KCET released J-League Winning Eleven 6 which is an improved version of WE6 featuring new gameplay enhancements as well as J-League teams and stadia. PES 2 then is then basically the JLWE6 game engine, but handed over to Konami Europe to put in the International sides, club teams and features that were present in WE6. Got it?
As you’ve probably heard the rosters and team names in PES2 are absolutely butchered – licenses are present for most of the teams in Europe (and a few teams outside Europe) and those teams that don’t have official licenses have the classic Konami pseudo-names we’ve all come to love (or hate). Unfortunately, such pseudo-names aren’t present at all for the Dutch national team nor for any Dutch players on club teams – instead they’re all named “Oranjesxx” – xx being a numerical notation. Now I know that getting a license from the Dutch football association is a pain but the least Konami Europe could have done is make some pseudo-names so editing wouldn’t be such a hassle. Worse than the names though are the state of the rosters – they are practically the same as in WE6 (I’ll talk about the validity of the comparison between the two series’ in a sec), in other words they’re a few months old – Rivaldo is still it Barcelona, Ronaldo still at Inter, as a Liverpool fan I am peeved to see Anelka, Barmby & McAllister still in the lineup with no sight of Cheyrou, Diao & Diouf. This really is laziness on the part of Konami Europe, I can only speculate as to when KCET would have given KCEE the modified JL-WE6 code, but updating rosters really should be a no brainer. To rub salt in the wounds the “Player Transfer” feature that’s present in JL-WE6 isn’t present in PES2 so transferring players and making the rosters more up to date is a complete pain in the ass. To be honest though, the rosters aren’t so much a pain for me (personally) since I only play with club teams in the Master League and after a few seasons the teams’ rosters change as players move frequently, however if you’re using the club teams to make a mock Champions League or something this would be absolutely infuriating.
Finally, (yes there’s more), the team names have also been butchered – Liverpool are called “Europort”, United are “Aragon” and a whole host of other retarded names. You can edit the names, and by winning the Konami Cup you can edit the call names for the teams but again – this is an utter pain in the arse. And on a side note – why the hell are Aston Villa & Fiorentina in the game? Villa have problems half filling Villa Park and Fiorentina have been relegated to the Italian lower divisions, will we see Acrington Stanley in the next version?
The second concern is the game speed. This concern would be nullified if KCET or KCEE just included the gamespeed slider that was present before but for some stupid reason they haven’t. The problem with measuring the game speed depends upon what kind of PS2 and AV equipment you have. I’ve been playing the game unpatched in it’s native PAL format on a multi-system TV, and while the game is slightly faster than WE6 (in NTSC, if you patched WE6 to PAL then WE6 would seem even slower – see how it gets complicated!) it is not mindnumbingly, unplayably fast. If you do patch the game from PAL to NTSC you’ll (as an artefact of the TV format conversion) experience a game speed/frame rate that is approximately 8% faster than in PAL which might hinder the playability. JL WE6 has, in my opinion, the most realistic pace and game speed of any football game in existence, but PES2’s game speed itself doesn’t hurt the gameplay experience one iota – you still have time to set up the play, survey the field, use the analogs for long passes etc. – it just makes the game less realistic but still fun to play. I’ll discuss the gamespeed a bit more in the gameplay section of the review.
The third issue regards comparisions between the PES & WE series. Compared to Winning Eleven 6, PES 2 has a far superior game engine, however the features such as the team names, rosters, ML system, stadia and so on are about the same. This is a cause for complaint for many WE diehards and while it’s fair to compare the two series’ (I’ll be doing it a lot in this review) you have to understand the context of the situation– the vast majority of people in Europe don’t have access to the Winning Eleven series (which is made for the Japanese audience), and when you compare PES 2 to PES 1 it is a bloody massive improvement! Even comparing JLWE6 & PES2 and blaming KCET is unfair since it’s KCEE who do the localization and were sitting on their asses too counting their money from last year’s PES sales to update the rosters. Another thing that makes the whole rosters debacle seem worse is that, for most import gamers, WE6 had practically ‘perfect’ rosters – proper player & team names– but what most people forget is that this was because of Rhapsody’s incredible Japanese to English patch which not only changed the language but also fixed the pseudo-names. Now if WE6: Final Evolution has the exact same features & rosters as WE6 then we can all have a good bitch since it is the next game in KCET’s series. Finally, if you’re still livid at the whole thing, you have to remember that if you’re an import gamer by the end of the year you’ll have got to play four incarnations of the best soccer series on the planet – WE6, JL WE6, PES2 & WE6:FE. Compare that to all the other major sports franchises who get one (maybe two – for Fifa in a World Cup year) titles per series/franchise a year and that should put some perspective on the whole thing. Madden gamers only get Madden 2003 this year, they do not get Madden 2003, AFC Madden 2003, NFC Madden 2003 & Madden 2003: Final Evolution in a single calendar year.
Anyway, on to the review…..
GRAPHICS
PES 2 has excellent player models that are slightly more polished and more ‘stretched out’ than those in WE6, and a massive improvement over PES 1. The player likenesses are spot on, however Beckham still has his pre-WC mowhawk. The kits are more or less the same as in WE6 and can be fully edited using the kid editor (which was present in WE6 but absent in PES).
The animations are, as you’d expect, jaw-dropping. If you’re a PES gamer who’s never played WE6 you will be absolutely blown away by the variety of new animations, if you have played WE6 there are still a whole host of new animations - the most notable of these are new mo caps for;
a)Ball control – the new/improved ball physics (which I’ll talk about later) have resulted in new animations for controlling and especially mis-controlling the ball, not only on the deck but when taking the ball down off a player’s chest, thigh etc. The control animations when you’re on the move are also noticeably smoother than in WE6.
b)Player jockeying – the improved player interactions mean improved animations for players jostling for loose balls, shoulder barges, players leaning into each other, loosing balance etc. At times the range of animations that result from a collision between two players is astounding.
c)Shooting – in PES 2, top tier players occasionally shoot with their stronger foot even if the ball is slightly closer to their weaker side. In previous games this was done by the player shooting the ball with the outside of their stronger foot, this still occurs in PES 2, however on occasion a top-tier player will quickly lean to his weaker side & bring his stronger foot across the ball and strike it at an acute angle. It’s not a very common occurrence but when it does happen it looks awesome. Volleying animations have also been improved and there are new animations for volleys the are performed off-balance and when a player volleys the ball down into the ground.
The shimmy animation has also been changed and the few player specific animations that were present in WE6 (but not in PES 1) are here too.
The stadiums are the same as in WE6 but this means there are almost double the number that were present in PES 1, and all are stunningly beautiful. (Hopefully, WE6:FE has virtual Anfield – it’s present in Fifa 2003!). The TV-style presentation is the same as in WE6 (again, massively improved over PES 1), and the game seems smoother when you use the camera swing/rotation options – I use the Intermediate Long angle and a Swing Angle of 9 and it looks like you’re watching an EPL match on TV.
IN SHORT:
Good:
+ Improved ball physics, tackling, passing & shooting
+ Improved graphics & animations
+ Better than PES 1 and WE6
+ Many more features than PES 1
Bad:
- Ratings for the top tier players and teams are too high
- Really out of date rosters
- Requires extensive editing otherwise too easy for long-time WE/PE veterans
- Not as good as J-League Winning Eleven 6
- Commentary is laughably bad
IN DETAIL:
First off, before I start my review proper, I guess I should discuss (in length…..is there any other way for me?) four issues that seem to be the main talking points amongst the hardcore PES/WE gaming crowd; where this game fits in the WE/PES series, the rosters, game speed, & comparisons between WE/PES series.
While Pro Evolution Soccer 2 is officially the European sequel to Pro Evolution Soccer, since the release of PES 1, KCET have released 3 game engine revisions/improvements over PES 1. The first was Winning Eleven 5: Final Evolution which was a tweaked version of PES 1 which was released in Japan at the end of 2001. This was followed this April by Winning Eleven 6 which was a massive improvement over WE5:FE. Finally, in September KCET released J-League Winning Eleven 6 which is an improved version of WE6 featuring new gameplay enhancements as well as J-League teams and stadia. PES 2 then is then basically the JLWE6 game engine, but handed over to Konami Europe to put in the International sides, club teams and features that were present in WE6. Got it?
As you’ve probably heard the rosters and team names in PES2 are absolutely butchered – licenses are present for most of the teams in Europe (and a few teams outside Europe) and those teams that don’t have official licenses have the classic Konami pseudo-names we’ve all come to love (or hate). Unfortunately, such pseudo-names aren’t present at all for the Dutch national team nor for any Dutch players on club teams – instead they’re all named “Oranjesxx” – xx being a numerical notation. Now I know that getting a license from the Dutch football association is a pain but the least Konami Europe could have done is make some pseudo-names so editing wouldn’t be such a hassle. Worse than the names though are the state of the rosters – they are practically the same as in WE6 (I’ll talk about the validity of the comparison between the two series’ in a sec), in other words they’re a few months old – Rivaldo is still it Barcelona, Ronaldo still at Inter, as a Liverpool fan I am peeved to see Anelka, Barmby & McAllister still in the lineup with no sight of Cheyrou, Diao & Diouf. This really is laziness on the part of Konami Europe, I can only speculate as to when KCET would have given KCEE the modified JL-WE6 code, but updating rosters really should be a no brainer. To rub salt in the wounds the “Player Transfer” feature that’s present in JL-WE6 isn’t present in PES2 so transferring players and making the rosters more up to date is a complete pain in the ass. To be honest though, the rosters aren’t so much a pain for me (personally) since I only play with club teams in the Master League and after a few seasons the teams’ rosters change as players move frequently, however if you’re using the club teams to make a mock Champions League or something this would be absolutely infuriating.
Finally, (yes there’s more), the team names have also been butchered – Liverpool are called “Europort”, United are “Aragon” and a whole host of other retarded names. You can edit the names, and by winning the Konami Cup you can edit the call names for the teams but again – this is an utter pain in the arse. And on a side note – why the hell are Aston Villa & Fiorentina in the game? Villa have problems half filling Villa Park and Fiorentina have been relegated to the Italian lower divisions, will we see Acrington Stanley in the next version?
The second concern is the game speed. This concern would be nullified if KCET or KCEE just included the gamespeed slider that was present before but for some stupid reason they haven’t. The problem with measuring the game speed depends upon what kind of PS2 and AV equipment you have. I’ve been playing the game unpatched in it’s native PAL format on a multi-system TV, and while the game is slightly faster than WE6 (in NTSC, if you patched WE6 to PAL then WE6 would seem even slower – see how it gets complicated!) it is not mindnumbingly, unplayably fast. If you do patch the game from PAL to NTSC you’ll (as an artefact of the TV format conversion) experience a game speed/frame rate that is approximately 8% faster than in PAL which might hinder the playability. JL WE6 has, in my opinion, the most realistic pace and game speed of any football game in existence, but PES2’s game speed itself doesn’t hurt the gameplay experience one iota – you still have time to set up the play, survey the field, use the analogs for long passes etc. – it just makes the game less realistic but still fun to play. I’ll discuss the gamespeed a bit more in the gameplay section of the review.
The third issue regards comparisions between the PES & WE series. Compared to Winning Eleven 6, PES 2 has a far superior game engine, however the features such as the team names, rosters, ML system, stadia and so on are about the same. This is a cause for complaint for many WE diehards and while it’s fair to compare the two series’ (I’ll be doing it a lot in this review) you have to understand the context of the situation– the vast majority of people in Europe don’t have access to the Winning Eleven series (which is made for the Japanese audience), and when you compare PES 2 to PES 1 it is a bloody massive improvement! Even comparing JLWE6 & PES2 and blaming KCET is unfair since it’s KCEE who do the localization and were sitting on their asses too counting their money from last year’s PES sales to update the rosters. Another thing that makes the whole rosters debacle seem worse is that, for most import gamers, WE6 had practically ‘perfect’ rosters – proper player & team names– but what most people forget is that this was because of Rhapsody’s incredible Japanese to English patch which not only changed the language but also fixed the pseudo-names. Now if WE6: Final Evolution has the exact same features & rosters as WE6 then we can all have a good bitch since it is the next game in KCET’s series. Finally, if you’re still livid at the whole thing, you have to remember that if you’re an import gamer by the end of the year you’ll have got to play four incarnations of the best soccer series on the planet – WE6, JL WE6, PES2 & WE6:FE. Compare that to all the other major sports franchises who get one (maybe two – for Fifa in a World Cup year) titles per series/franchise a year and that should put some perspective on the whole thing. Madden gamers only get Madden 2003 this year, they do not get Madden 2003, AFC Madden 2003, NFC Madden 2003 & Madden 2003: Final Evolution in a single calendar year.
Anyway, on to the review…..
GRAPHICS
PES 2 has excellent player models that are slightly more polished and more ‘stretched out’ than those in WE6, and a massive improvement over PES 1. The player likenesses are spot on, however Beckham still has his pre-WC mowhawk. The kits are more or less the same as in WE6 and can be fully edited using the kid editor (which was present in WE6 but absent in PES).
The animations are, as you’d expect, jaw-dropping. If you’re a PES gamer who’s never played WE6 you will be absolutely blown away by the variety of new animations, if you have played WE6 there are still a whole host of new animations - the most notable of these are new mo caps for;
a)Ball control – the new/improved ball physics (which I’ll talk about later) have resulted in new animations for controlling and especially mis-controlling the ball, not only on the deck but when taking the ball down off a player’s chest, thigh etc. The control animations when you’re on the move are also noticeably smoother than in WE6.
b)Player jockeying – the improved player interactions mean improved animations for players jostling for loose balls, shoulder barges, players leaning into each other, loosing balance etc. At times the range of animations that result from a collision between two players is astounding.
c)Shooting – in PES 2, top tier players occasionally shoot with their stronger foot even if the ball is slightly closer to their weaker side. In previous games this was done by the player shooting the ball with the outside of their stronger foot, this still occurs in PES 2, however on occasion a top-tier player will quickly lean to his weaker side & bring his stronger foot across the ball and strike it at an acute angle. It’s not a very common occurrence but when it does happen it looks awesome. Volleying animations have also been improved and there are new animations for volleys the are performed off-balance and when a player volleys the ball down into the ground.
The shimmy animation has also been changed and the few player specific animations that were present in WE6 (but not in PES 1) are here too.
The stadiums are the same as in WE6 but this means there are almost double the number that were present in PES 1, and all are stunningly beautiful. (Hopefully, WE6:FE has virtual Anfield – it’s present in Fifa 2003!). The TV-style presentation is the same as in WE6 (again, massively improved over PES 1), and the game seems smoother when you use the camera swing/rotation options – I use the Intermediate Long angle and a Swing Angle of 9 and it looks like you’re watching an EPL match on TV.
