PES update

Having managed to spend a bit of time playing PES 2009 over the weekend, I'm impressed.

The Become a Legend mode is, potentially at least, brilliant and I even managed to get on the bench for my club Aston Villa (or West Midlands Village as it's known in PES) yesterday.

The game itself looks pretty good and the players bear a distinct resemblance to their real-life counterparts. It also plays very well and, leaving aside the Fifa vs PES debate for a moment, scoring a brilliant goal after putting together a flowing move is still hugely satisfying.

So is it as good as or better than Fifa? I don't know. All I know is that it's still a great game. My brother - who wants to be known as Baz or Barrald in any future references on this blog - has promised to visit in the near future with his copy of Fifa so we can compare the two games properly. For know though, PES is plenty good enough to keep me occupied.

Behaving like a geek

I don't consider myself a geek. I admit, I own a games console (recently upgraded from Playstation2 to Xbox360), and a PC which is used for internet and music, and very little else.

However, once a year, I behave like a complete geek - and all because of a football game. It's not something I'm proud of, but - try as I might - I can't do anything about.

The game concerned is Pro Evolution Soccer (or PES as its known to its followers). I've played every version of this game (were now on the 2009 edition) and its predecessor, International Superstar Soccer, since it was launched back in the days of the Playstation1.

I can, quite literally, lose hours playing this game, which still gives me a tremendous buzz when scoring or pulling off an unlikely victory.

This year has been problematic, though. PES' arch-rival, Fifa, has improved considerably over the years to the point where many gamers and critics are citing it as the best football game available.

I have never bought a Fifa game, preferring instead what I consider to be realism of PES. However, by all accounts, Fifa 09 is incredibly realistic - realistic enough to convert long-time PES fans, including my brother Barry.

He's been trying to convince me to buy Fifa this time round and, I admit, I was tempted. I've even searched the web for reviews comparing the two titles but, due to an embargo, there were hardly any reviews of PES 2009. All I could find were fan sites - and, quite frankly, they were scary. I thought I liked the game but I have nothing on these people; they obviously live and breathe the game.

Anyway, the upshot of my deliberations was that I found myself in Asda at 6.20am this morning, in the embarrassing position of having to ask one of the helpful assistants for a copy. I'm sure she gave me one of those 'sympathetic' looks most of us reserve for train spotters.
I haven't had chance to play the game yet. When I do, I'll let you know if it's any good.