I need to start this review with a bit of a confession, I haven't played Pro Evo for something like 7 years, so I'm going into this game as a complete newbie.
After launching the game you're presented with a message board with the latest info regarding updates, and issues with the game. I like this feature and think it should be implemented in more games. Far too many times I've had a game update and not noticed anything different, I usually end up trawling the web to find some release notes for the update. It's great to be informed of any issues as soon as the developers know about them.
So, nerdy stuff aside, let's get into the game. There's a huge amount of game modes and competitions that can be played. These include everything from an exhibition match, online matches, and leagues. There's also the master league mode where you need to act as the manager as well as play the match. There's also the Become a Legend mode where you play as a single player on the pitch and the idea is to play well to increase your ability, which will then provide you with more chances to play for better teams.
Now I'm rubbish a geography and have no idea when it comes to counties/areas of England, so the fact that most of the teams have really spurious names (I'm assuming it's a licensing issue) makes it quite difficult to know who they actually are. An example of this is Arsenal, I'm an Arsenal fan so naturally I looked for them in my first game... they're called North London. Now that's not too bad because the player names gave me a good idea that it was Arsenal... but who on Earth are East Dorsetshire???? I was left feeling like the kid off the old advert with Accrington Stanley, “Who are they???” I'm sure there's a way you would be able to change these but I haven't got time to be doing that... I've got footy to play!
The first game I jumped into was an exhibition match against the COM. The game options on this are pretty vast. You can change pretty much anything about the game from the ball colour, to whether players emotions will affect their play! I won the first game with 2-1 and really enjoyed it... time to play against a real opponent, lets take it online. This was where I got very naggy and the remote almost flew across the room. The game has only just started, I'm running down the wing, I press B to cross the ball into the box, but they nicked the ball a split second before I pressed B. Now B becomes “Slide Tackle” when you haven't got the ball, so instead of crossing the ball I lost the ball and pressed B which resulted in an accidental slide tackle and a red card. Oh my days... not fair! I highly recommend changing the controls before playing, and another note is that the auto-save is defaulted to off. I lost an entire nights gaming on master league because I didn't manually save the game. That's a bit old school for me.
Game play is smooth and challenging but fun. The passes do tend to go in the wrong direction quite often which can get you a bit agitated, but that tends to happen to me in real life too so it's realistic for me. There is a function online to be matched against opponents with a team strength around about the same as yours, but that's not working at the moment but there is a notice to say that should be fixed soon. The graphics are pretty good and the crowd acoustics provide a great atmosphere, even if the crowd does look like an army of clones. You are constantly provided with the option to save replays after goals so you never miss the chance to save that awesome goal you've just scored.
I get a feeling that once I've mastered the skills of playing this I could spend a long time on it. The small tournaments can be whizzed through pretty quickly but the real investment of time will be in the master league and Become a Legend modes. Developing a player or team from poor to perfect is a great challenge and will be great fun in the process. I can see myself spending a while playing a mixture between online matches and Become a Legend mode and won't get bored for a long time.
Big thanks to Xbox for the opportunity to review this game.
