Anyone else picking up ProEvo08?

For the record, I'm loving this game.  It took me a few days to adjust from FIFA and to the differences, including game speed, from last year's Konami game, but now I am absolutely loving it.

It isn't perfect by any stretch, and there are plenty of oddities within.  It is, however, strikingly more responsive and controllable than FIFA.  I still really enjoy FIFA in its online team play form, but going back and forth now is making FIFA's flaws that much more frustrating than before I had PES.  The weird things in PES are things I can adjust to happily, whereas the strange stuff in FIFA seems to me to be representative of core problems with the basic engine.

I still feel like WE/PES is first and foremost a 'ball to player interaction simulator,' and after that a soccer game.  The veritably infinite variety of interactions between ball and player is very striking to me, and refreshing.

Among the things I notice so far in comparison to last year's game is that they have massively improved the player to player interaction and thus the fouling system.  The little 'in the flow' improvements for foul calls and especially bookings, even ejections, seem like something very minor, but really these kinds of adjustments have a large effect on the overall experience.  The expansion of the 2nd division in the ML is pretty small in relation to the improvements we'd all like to see, and right now with the default stiffs I hate that change, but I think in the end it will be a good thing for me.

It's the gameplay, stupid!  And this one, while maybe not the theoretically perfect simulation of real football, but it is a very solid system at its core, and the experience of messing around in it and discovering the wide array of differences among players and teams is tons of fun, for me.  Too bad we aren't all Japan, so that we could all benefit from the best attention and effort from Konami.  But hey, this thing is unique among sports games in my experience, and right now I'm loving it.

I'm very , very interested in checking this out for the Wii, based on the cool way you controll your whole team with the Wii controllers.  I may grab it today, actually.

Originally posted by Ted_L Note to all game developers:  You need to place a priority on network coding from this day forward.  Your game may be great, but if it is unplayable online it is going to slide way down in the review scores.

Here's the thing, though: if you want Konami to hear you, you have to post this in Japanese.  Also, it would help to be in Japan at the time, and actually, if you could make online console gaming relevant in Japan beforehand, that would probably help your case.

Fact is, online console gaming just doesn't seem to matter in Asia, and I think there are very real cultural barriers to Japanese developers understanding why online console gaming matters in the West.  Also, sales of this game in North America are as far down the totem pole for Konami as you could get.  Apparently the J-League version of the game is outstanding, with a killer ML mode that mimics the real J- and K-Leagues, and a 'be a pro' style career mode.  They also seem to release about four or five tweaked up versions of the game every year over there.

We are an afterthought for them.  I don't disagree that it sucks that they don't get it when it comes to online gaming, or the lack of licensing, or the minimal changes to the unrealistic ML, etc. etc.  But I do think it's like talking to a wall to hope that Konami will listen to our complaints.   Just the fact that they make NA wait until March to get the exact same game they release in Europe in October, and with the exact same August rosters (no January transfers), and no regionalization whatsoever (OK, last year they shoe-horned in some Fox Soccer Channel ad boards) indicates how far out of touch they are, and how little they care that they are.

Google this Seabass

オンライン演劇とのそんなにやめられた吸引。


Zeppo

The flaw in your logic is Europe DOES matter to them and they are getting the same piss poor online play, which only forces people to sticking with their competition for online.