Well, I support United, but I can’t help having a soft spot for Stuart Pearce’s Beanie” – an odd sentence, and one you’ll stand about as much chance of hearing as “Pro Evo’s great and all, but I’ve already pre-ordered the next FIFA” from the mouth of almost anyone. For every yearly allegation of sluggishness from one camp comes accusations of scripting uttered as if football begins at the point a striker is clean through. Whilst Konami’s epic series has its fair share of standing issues, most of these are due to the relative impossibility of simulating an 11-participant sport using the direct control of only one man. Anyone willing to work within the game’s unspoken set of rules will find its strengths – the necessity for cultured defensive movement, sweeping attacks and edge-of-theseat dribbling – freshened and ready to make you leap up and hurl abuse at the opposition all over again. Good times.

So what’s new? Well, at first glance it’s much more of a passing game than number five, and even its PS2 counterpart. Even though players float rather uncharacteristically above the turf, in a manner not too dissimilar from the fly-by-night International Superstar Soccer titles of a couple of years past, only the very brightest stars will find themselves clean through with any regularity. The series’ usual brand of intelligent, patient passing and movement comes to the fore in addressing this fact, though the tendency for lofted through-balls to drop into the line of your nearest team-mate rather than your most attacking one, goes some way to keeping the majority of play in the centre third.

To stop matches becoming staid and/or torrid affairs, certain tweaks have been made to the effects of tackles (changes that have also put paid to the majority of frustrating ‘where’s my advantage?’ moments). Unless you’re clearly attempting surgery on your victim, desperate lunges will cause only mere stumbles, pretty much removing the need for intervention of any kind. What’s more, last-man challenges seem to receive the red card they deserve with impressive regularity, even if the offence occurs barely beyond the halfway line. Slightly less encouraging, though, are the less-than-safe hands patrolling each pair of sticks. Tactical use of the goalkeeper has combined well with the still-present necessity to skilfully nudge players off the ball (a mechanic FIFA has only this very year caught up with) to make defending the art form it is in real life. Now, not only are too many goals scored as a result of goalies palming diagonal shots limply across their own areas, but bringing your number one out for aerial balls can result in such devastating butterfingered messes that you eventually start to think twice.

Therein lies the crux really: Pro Evolution Soccer is very much a football fans’ game rather than a game for football fans. There are many variables within the game that, like the above, are designed with creating a realistic-looking match in mind rather than rewarding individual acts of skill. Open-goal shots from spilled balls shot high into the back of the stands; players that run the ball out without passing because (presumably) there hasn’t been the regulation amount of throw-ins; pass selection that offers hospital balls when there’s a free man right next to your intended target – all continuing offenders that show little sign of shuffling off to the great dugout in the sky. That’s before you take into account such perennial AI issues such as players being slow to return from an offside position, forwards moving along the defensive line rather than making runs and weird and unhelpful defensive movements against wingers that have beaten your right or left-back. At least the de facto defensive wall that forms whenever you shoot from distance causes a few embarrassing deflected goals now.

In a way, it’s quite bizarre that none of the above jibes seem to matter in the heat of competition. Yes, there are moments when both players jump in exasperation at some decision or moment of buffoonery, but how different is that from the goings-on at hundreds of stadia up and down the country each weekend? At the end of the day, the whole argument boils down to a choice between being irritated by a little behind-thescenes direction here and there or the outcome of events being totally random. The persistent suggested AI amendments, such as not allowing the ball to be passed to a marked man or making shot control more standard, would remove so much of what makes each iteration of Pro Evolution Soccer truly believable (probably making each player nearinvincible in the process). To do so would be a true crime, as it’d rob us of the closest scrape with sporting excellence yet, without actually breaking into a sweat.

Dave Shaw