First up, as any fourteen year old Games Master reader knows, teh grafix are everything. In this regard both games should taste the shame. FIFA's players bear the uncanniest resemblance to the House of the Dead zombies since the childhood trauma that was the terrifying approximation of Tim Henman in Virtua Tennis. An intro sequence depicting a John Terry with cardboard legs and eyeballs rolling into the back of his skull does little to further the FIFA cause. In fairness though, close-cam replays and some nice cutaways of players getting bitchy are impressive. Meanwhile, over in PES-land, Seabass and co are attempting to disprove the evidence of every sane persons eyesight by presenting us with a black Christiano Ronaldo. Er, what? Not satisfied with this, the bods at Konami have also transported all Pro Evo matches to Tatooine, two suns surely being the only reasonable explanation for the unearthly shadows and bizarre lighting effects on display. If you want to imagine what Pro Evo looks like, think of a budget PC game from 1998 with all the visual settings turned down to very low.
Away from graphics and, again, neither game is exactly mind melting in its awesomeness. The menus on display in FIFA are dark, endless and cluttered. Cutaways to a cardboard crowd so 2D it would shame Sega Worldwide Soccer are also inadvisable. This, however, is nothing compared to the sheer levels of ineptitude on display in Pro Evo. Last years version, of course, had two of the most retarded design decisions ever to sully the name of video games. Firstly, Konami decided a pleasant, normal view for penalties, where everyone could see clearly what was going on, was not acceptable. Oh no, obviously it would be preferable to place the camera in the bottom right hand corner of the goal net. Oh, sweet Jesus. Thanks to this 'sensational' innovation neither the penalty taker nor goalkeeper could see more than half the goal. Furthermore, if the ball was saved, or hit the post, the game would take a few moments to switch back to the normal view, meaning the ball would be effectively sitting in the goalmouth, with no-one able to do anything. Head-implodingly moronic. Oh, and they also made it so that the players form icons were the same colour as the menu. To approximately no-one's amazement this made them unreadable. I know, who'd a-thought it? Brilliant. Actually brilliant. Anyways, the big presentation innovations of PES this year are to remove these features. That's right, they are roughly right back where they were two years ago. Really pushing the football genre forward there guys.
Back in terms of gameplay, FIFA owns PES so brutally hard it hurts. PES has actually reached the point where it can't even scrape mediocrity any more, it is simply just shit in its purest form. Let's check list the PES 'features' that STILL haven't been fixed. Inexplicable imposition of an invisible wall around throw-ins? Check. Only eight possible directions despite analogue being invented last millenium? Check. Goalkeepers who like to fumble the ball more often than a 49 year old Neville Southall? Check. Team mates standing stock still when you're practically on your knees begging them to fucking just make a run? Check. Angles from which you always score? Check. Players that look like they're having an epileptic fit when sprinting? Check. Commentary so shit you want to weep? Check. Pitches on which you can't see the ball? Check. The computer passing around its back four for half an hour only to then score from a corner? Check. The 'football' having all the physics of a balloon? Check. The game just being so utterly and completely broken that it makes you question your own sanity? Check.
FIFA, on the other hand, has none of these problems. It feels like some kind of approximation of real football at least, unlike PES which frankly could be simulating the underwater hermaphrodite long-jump for all its realism. FIFA also has Carlisle United, enabling everyone to live the five straight defeats dream.
Basically, FIFA is actually pretty good. It's fun to play, reasonably reminiscent of actual football, and has a lot of features. Tonnes of lower league teams, everything fully licensed and excellent online support (such as the ability to play 11v11). PES, on the other hand, has only a handful of licensed teams, so look out for such titans of the English game as 'Lake District United' striding out at the feared cauldron that is 'Trad Brick Stadium'. And, if its anything like every Pro Evo ever, it will be borderline unplayable online, with lag, broken game modes and ten year old Man Utd fans quitting every match they start losing.
