Pro Evolution Soccer 6

Story – N/A

It is football. The only real story is taking a team to the pinnacle of winning their respective domestic league – no Europe just the league and cup. There is also their own Pro Evolution Soccer league and cup competition but it’s so fictional, you can really draw any comparison to real life football.

Picture 7/10

It would be harsh to judge the first Pro Evolution by the modern standards and there is only so much to it you can look at. I think the likenesses are very good and accurate which is what I believe most people would use to rate the game in terms of graphics.

Sound 2/10

Pro Evolution is made by Konami which is a Japanese developer. As such, the theme music consists of the most annoying noises you can ever listen to. You don’t want to be hanging around in the menus when the ‘music’ is playing and this is made even more frustrating as the options you have to set up your team can take a few minutes to customise, which pushed my brain all the more closer to suicide.

The commentary is the best and worst thing about the game. It is brilliant for about the first five games however, from game six onwards the commentators run out of new things to say and then it becomes just as soul destroying as the music. ‘Header too!’

Gameplay 7/10

This is where the majority of football games pick up their points as you would expect. The obvious comparison to make here is to FIFA and, in my opinion, the football is a lot more fluid is Pro Evolution.

Also from time to time, when the players actually do what you want them to, you can play some pretty good football. The only trouble is that Pro Evolution seems to insinuate that the majority of professional football players make seven out of ten bad passes and, when through on goal, one on one with the goal keeper, will shot high or wide without any pressure.

There are also issues with how the other players you are passing to react to the ball. When your pass isn’t quite good enough, the player you are passing to will occasionally make absolutely no effort to get the ball and lose it to the opposition. If a ball is going out of play and you try to keep it in, your player will do one of two things; casually run after it and let it go out anyway, or chase it down only to get there and direct it out of play!

The other area when the game lets itself down is with the game modes. There is no European Football in the standard league and their own Master League is so unofficial it really took away the enjoyment for me.

However, it is one of the best games to play socially with friends and this is where it wins the points. There is nothing more satisfying that watching a friend scream, ‘COMON PASS!’ at the top of their lungs and it is even more satisfying when controllers suffer horrible deaths.

While local multiplayer is fun, the online element shits all over itself, but I can hardly blame the game for other people’s issues. I didn’t play the game online until recently and only to collect the online achievements. I met one person playing the game who was actually decent (in a sportsmanship kind of way).

I faced one guy who beat me once and then kept sending me messages saying he wasn’t going to play me again after his one win in a game where the conditions of match play can differ greatly from one game to the next. A couple of other people sent abusive messages after losing narrow games and others quit out after they started losing by a wide margin. The last one I don’t have a problem with, but there was one twat who took it to the next level. If you score an own goal you get to control the replay which doesn’t time out if you don’t do anything... so he scored an own goal and then walked away from his computer leaving me with two choices – out wait the guy or quit out. Massively frustrating and a hole in the online play – there should be a time limit on replays or better yet; stop players from watching them during the game altogether!

I decided the boost the last 50 wins as I couldn’t be bothered to wade through another 50 games (minimum) of shitty people. And for my trouble, I got another shitty message calling me a twat!

Achievements – 1,000 points – 23 Achievements

Online achievements are pointless - This is something you will see repeated across many of my reviews. If people want to show each other how good they are at a game (or how bigger twats they can be) they can do it in their own time in their own online environment. The online achievements for Pro Evolutions Soccer 6 were pretty straight forward though so it wasn’t too bad.

It does win further points over FIFA though by actually letting me get the online achievements – many FIFA games have closed servers making 100% achievement now impossible.

In terms of the offline achievements all you have to do is win all the leagues which is nothing short of time consuming and not that enjoyable.

Downloadable Content – Not Applicable

In terms of getting achievements I would list it as a definite no for purchase. It’s too time consuming, not enjoyable and if you like football games, one of the more recent instalments is much more value for enjoyment. I consider anything I have to boost as not worth it, but my OCD got me through this one.