Be Excellent To Each Other

Well, after faffing about with the demo for a good few hours I decided to finally pay near enough full price for my first EA footie game since RTWC 98.

It's excellent. At least the 'Captain Your Country' mode is. After ten or so years of near-identical PES releases and not-quite-right FIFA games I'd gotten somewhat bored by footie games but playing this feels like the good old days of ISS Pro Evolution 2 on the PS1 but wholly different and fresh.

I've set myself up as an attacking midfielder in Steve McClaren's non-qualifying England side and have been rewriting history. He's been playing me out of position on the left but I've put in some sterling displays (including ten goals in the qualifying campaign) and have started Euro 2008 as England captain.

More importantly, I'm keeping Lampard out of the side. Sweet.

mm, sounds interesting, might download the demo afterall... not goinfg to buy it though, pes2008 wii surprised me enough to remain my modenr footy game of choice for the time being

yeah PES Wii does look good. The main thing is that footie games in general just needed to do something. anything. different.

Am tempted, but might just pick this up for a tenner in July.

I had a crack at this the other day. Playing as one player only is pretty fun, and means the constant failure of the team to do anything you tell them to isn't such a big deal, as it's out of your hands entirely, and all you can do is do your part and hope for the best. I like that, it's strangely relaxing, as even when your team's fucking up constantly, it's easier to accept as long as your bloke does alright. Makes me get into the career more, too.

Outside of that mode, however, I really fucking hate this game. The same terrible AI and unresponsive controls (I swear 70% of the difficulty in FIFA and PES is in 'not tearing the controller apart with your teeth when the game interprets your commands completely and utterly wrongly for the fiftieth time in six minutes'), the same boring and stale style... yaaaawn. It's at least less statto than PES, though.

i think a large part of that is that most of us are so used to the way PES does things, that it makes anything else seem alien.

previous Fifa games were terrible because the controls didn't have the finesse to let you take on a player but this game really has sorted all that out and in quite a nice, showboaty way (using LT+right stick).

I've just played through qualifying as Milan Baros (for an achievement) and I've scored some utterly audacious goals. Including putting four past Germany.

it does feel loose at first but I like that as it feels like you're having to keep the ball under control. Not had too many probs with the AI. they've mostly been on my wavelength during matches. certainly no worse than some examples of stupid AI that I've seen in PES.

I don't favour either, and in fact have played a lot more of the FIFA games than the PES ones. I see no significant difference between the current FIFA and the current PES. Aside from adverts in the FUCKING MENUS, which automatically reduces PES' score to -300% regardless of anything else.