Konami’s PES 2013 launches on PS3, XBOX 360, Wii and PC this fall and will give FIFA 12 a run for its money this year if online rumors are to be believed. The PES franchise has been around for 16 years and progressed through many iterations in both title and gameplay, so what makes Pro Evolution Soccer so popular?
If you live in North America, chances are, unless you are a die-hard ‘football’ fan, this event will just pass you by, but if you live in the rest of the world, more specifically Europe, then as Every PES fans know that soccer season starts in August, but you can only play your own soccer fantasies in October, when the latest and greatest version of PES hits video game store shelves.
It all started in the days of video games, actually in 1996, when Goal Storm was released for the PlayStation. Since then PES has gone through several naming conventions and the latest update will be called PES 2013. It will take on as it has for the last 16 years with Electronic Arts (EA) and their masterpiece – FIFA (12). It’s actually only these two games that compete for players’ cash every year, and if anything, that makes the competition even fiercer.
You see, the two games have struggled year after year and this year PES has a chance to return to the top of the list. It’s been languishing for the last 5 or 6 years, partly due to complacency, but also due to the resurgence and sheer brilliance of FIFA.
The facts of the case are this your honor;
FIFA (which stands for Federation Internationale de Football Association), as the name suggests, is an officially endorsed soccer game, which means that the game comes packed with all the real player names, team names, soccer kits, names of competitions and stadiums. PES has never had these rights and has had to rely on an editing mode and the ingenuity of players who buy the game to recreate all of the aforementioned details, liveries and stadiums. This has fostered a powerful online community based solely on publishing interests, but when combined with the obvious gameplay advantages of PES, you begin to see why the game’s popularity remains so high.
So what are these game advantages?
Well, the tradeoff in the licensing situation has always been outweighed by the sheer beauty of playing PES: it’s a game for football fans. The real game has always more closely reflected the real game, while FIFA has traditionally suffered in this area. Playing PES in the early years was always pure fun, the games were high rated but varied, FIFA always felt like a stage and the ball never seemed to behave like a real soccer ball, it just felt too buoyant. By comparison, PES soccer balls have always had a weight to them and the challenges between players have felt meaty.
An analogy between the two games is to think of FIFA as a Premier League or Champions League setup, it looks polished and has backs sticking out of your ears, but it’s not actually real football, it’s a pre-packaged version of the game designed to catch on. to the glory-seeking soccer fans, the ones who scream about how great their team is despite knowing nothing about their own teams’ history.
Pro Evo, on the other hand, are jumpers for the goal posts, dirty knees and eating soggy Cornish pies on a cold wet Tuesday night in Barnsley! The analogy may be lost on many and that to some extent proves a point, football isn’t always brilliant, multiple steps and pink Nike boots, it’s about the teams outside of the Premier League who still have fans who flock to every home. and away from home, despite not having seen his team win anything for years. That’s real football and that’s what Konami has tried to encapsulate, despite being based in Japan.
They’ve largely been successful, but the line between the two games has blurred in recent years. FIFA has now moved very close to matching the whole spirit of PES some say their game is actually better I still don’t agree with that statement but certainly with the online patches now available to PES players they can circumvent the licensing issue and creating photorealistic players, teams and kits, which means the two games are on a collision course to meet in the middle.
Konami has pumped up its fans in previous years by securing licensing rights for the England national team, two Premier League teams, and various other leagues and players across Europe and the world. This has certainly helped, but give me a fake called Man Red (Manchester United) and some quality play any day on FIFA’s version of football. At the end of the day I buy soccer computer games because I like to play games that recreate the beautiful game, FIFA now does it well but PES does it better and I just hope the next installment of PES 2013 will deliver again. To me that option to lead the mighty Derby County to European glory!