Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (PC)

If your buying this game Im betting theres a fair chance you like football. This game is much closer to real football than its wealthier cousin FIFA. For a lot of people this will annoy them, you will lose matches sometimes, you will be punished for mistakes. The kind of people who like putting fifa on the easiest setting and beating Wycombe with Barcelona 15-0 will hate this game.The close player control has been improved over the last game, dribbling is back and the game has more of the feel of pro evo 4 (In my opinion the best of the series. Defending is harder and making a good tackle or block requires timing and good positioning (like real football).For the most part, and this isnt true 100% of the time, they have the attacking balance down pretty well, Ronaldo's and Messi's can change a game on their own, Pacy Lennon's and Wallcott's will tear up defences all day, Alonso's and Schole's will rip defences apart with through balls. Frustrating when they are agaisnt you and some people wont like this.This isnt to say it all works perfectly, sometimes you still get pro evo's random passes, annoying when your striker was onside in acres of space and your player passes back to a fall back for no apparent reason and sometimes you can do everything right in defence and still the player gets through. Keepers are much improved though and you rarely see the ridiculous slow trickled goals with the keeper diving in the opposite direction as you did in the last two games.Graphics are no great leap but are competent. Player likenesses are good. I have occasionally had line of distortion across the screen despite having updated graphic drivers and have read that there are some bugs relating to certain graphics cards.In terms of licensed teams the game comes with two premiership teams, spanish, italian and french leagues plus two leagues filled with other major european and south american teams plus some licensed International kits. There is a huge community of online modders who have made kits, badges and option files for all different leagues. I have got the full premiership teams in perfect detail and have swapped the french league for the English Championship.Performance is good, runs seamlessly on my mid range core 2 duo system.Overall, it will frustrate you at times but in master league mode you will have some fantastic highs and lows, last minute winners, open games, hard fought draws and the lows, going out of cup to a defensive team, missing promotion by a few points, but for a lot of people, this is what makes football the best sport in the world.Final tip: get a ps2 usb controller adapter or an xbox360 controller for windows, will improve the game play no end.

After playing Pro Evo 2008 for a bit, I took a look at some reviews here and really scratched my head with confusion at what was being said about it. However, now that I've been playing Pro Evo 2009 I can see where the faults were with Pro Evo 2008.Still, having read a few reviews here concerning Pro Evo 2009 I am again left feeling rather bemused. I have to say that for me the graphics are excellent, as are the sound effects, and the gameplay is wonderful. The only minutest piece of criticism is that the commentary can be a bit repetitive after a while - Mark Lawrenson's(SP?) "Well, he's been taken off. He can't really complain, etc etc," is seriously annoying after a while, especally, for instance, in "Become a Legend" after you've had a good game... Grrrrrr!Anyhow, speaking of that, my absolute favourite part of this game is the "Become a Legend" Ay Yi! Yi! I don't normally get addicted to games, I play them for a bit and get bored after a while, but the "Become a Legend" is, for me, completely and utterly addictive. I keep telling myself "One more game" LOL!All in all I certainly recommend this - Five stars all round. In my opinion, Pro Evo 2009 is far more life-like than Pro Evo 2008, and "Become a Legend" adds a whole new dimension to Pro Evo 2009.

This game couldnt be worse. Poor graphics and gameplay. Played it once and returned it. Awful.

After the train wreck that was Pro Evo 2008, I was really hoping to see a return to form from Konami and the Seabass team, I made the mistake of spending £50.00 on the PS3 version on its 1st day of release. What I got was arguably one of the worst games Ive ever bought (its up there with ET on Atari 2600 & Race Drivin on SNES) and without a doubt the most dreadful football game I've ever played. This time around I economised and purchased the PC version. Here are my thoughts."For PES 2009, Konami is already planning a raft of extensive new additions that will further bridge the gap between PES and the real thing. The new game has undergone a stunning graphical update to ensure its players look and move even more like their real-life counterparts"Having read this you would think they would have learnt from last years shocker. To be fair lets start with the positives, the slowdown which occured every time you got near the box has gone and playing online apparently doesnt seem to result in players teleporting to keep up with the lag.However what Konami hasnt done is change the gameplay. The control mechanics are just so stale, there still seems to be no way of passing with any conviction and the through ball is a complete lottery. Free kicks seems to end up in 1 of 2 situations, you blast the ball way too high or the ball goes into the wall. I also dont understand why it's so difficult to take on the computer, attempting to dribble around the players is a waste of time. Passing seems to be the only option but not for the computer. Also why is it more or less imposssible to put any ammount of spin on a shot? Why do your players run away from dead ball situations and why does the computer seem to win more or less every 50-50 tackle, why do your players never seem to get in the box when you attack down the wings and put a ball into the box, believe me I could carry on but I think that you get the point.Another thing that I have to bring up is the animation, it seems to be getting worse since Pro Evo 6, players run like Quasimodo! Also why are the benches not animated? I mean they have kind of made the crowd semi realistic but the managers and subs are motionless?I just dont understand why Konami go to the trouble of getting 2 premier teams each year and then add terrible chant effects, listen to the Liverpool ones, honestly it sounds like they got a bunch of Japanese students in a recording studio for 5 minutes........ its utterly hopeless.Well there are my thoughts, if I were you I would give this a miss and either save your money or buy Fifa 09. More or less every review I've read has come to the opinion that Fifa plays a superior game of footie. My my, how times have changed..........