Review: Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (360)

As someone on the forum so brilliantly put it, Pro Evolution Soccer 6 is like seeing your dream house fall into a swamp. Remember when Microsoft were touting PES6 and Fifa 07 as being “next generation exclusives”? Well, they lied. There is absolutely nothing “next generation” about this PS2 port.

Perhaps we’re being too harsh - to the PS2 - because this is quite an embarrassment for the Xbox 360. For instance the PS2 version like all previous PES games gives you an edit function to change all the teams to their proper names, but not in the Xbox 360 version. Do you like saving the replays of your favourite goals? Well, get over it because you won’t be able to do it in PES6 on 360. Why we are given a streamlined version is beyond us because after Microsoft’s big announcement at X06 we were expecting everything and more for our next gen console.

The game doesn’t even look good with zombie-like characters and everything else just seeming like a high definition version of PES5. The only real improvement would be the character animations; taking out someone with a sliding tackle and watching them fall to the ground provides a nice (but guilty) feeling and you still feel like you have to control the ball rather than having it stick to your feet like in Fifa. You don’t need to worry about giving away fouls either because the referee appears to have been blinded. Unlike in PES5 where it appears that every slight tackle would be given as a foul PES6 has gone the other way and hardly penalises you at all even when a foul looks incredibly blatant. Constant fouls were a common complaint before, but now they’ve reversed it and made it even worse. Well done Konami.

The core gameplay is thankfully still there and for the most part intact. A more realistic game than before, control of the ball is far more difficult than previously, and more of a passing game is needed to finally break down your opponents defence so scoring is made more challenging. There is still nothing better than scoring a cracking goal in the top corner from outside the area; it’s a feeling that still remains despite the badness that surrounds it. When your opposing team is on the break regaining the ball is ruined by the terrible auto change. With this option on the computer automatically gives you control of the player closest to the ball or at least that’s what it should do. Often it doesn’t and you may have to run after the ball instead of it giving control of the player standing right next to it. Better yet try and swap to that player and after a second it switches it straight back again. It’s even more irritating when this fault with the game costs you a last minute goal.

Now onto the laughable online mode. If you thought the Burnout: Takedown saga was bad then witnessing this would probably make your jaw drop with disbelief. Mass reports of not being able to get into games soon spread across the internet and the mass rage from the fans was felt in every forum you visit. At the time of writing this major fault had yet to be corrected and even once it has Gamestyle's final score would still stand because releasing a game in this state is inexcusable. Out of about fifty tries we have only managed to get into three games, that’s how bad it is. When we did manage to get a game though it is still far better than playing against the computer despite the odd button lag. It's still no match for playing against friends in the same room as you, though.

What makes all this a shame is that underneath a layer of awfulness the classic Pro Evolution Soccer gameplay is there fighting to get out. But a broken mess of an online mode, unnecessary alterations and an absent edit mode make this hardly the next generation football classic we were expecting. If recent news (rumours?) are to be believed then maybe we should go easy on Konami and lay all our hatred onto Microsoft. The company apparently demanding that PES6 meets its street date no matter what state the game is in. While to the casual football observer it is still a good enough rendition of the sport, but to the hardcore PES follower it’s nothing short of a disaster. 

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver