For the last 6 years or so, only two football games have existed. FIFA and Pro Evo dominate the market like Pepsi and Coke, and despite efforts such as This Is Football (did anyone else play that? ouch…), wikipedia refuses to acknowledge anything else other than Pro Evo or FIFA for any next gen/previous gen console (ignoring EA’s multiple money spin offs – no, I don’t want to pay £40 for a game I’ve already got that only has European International teams in it…)

And every year, October is the month where it happens (incidently, Pro Evo’s release always coincides with my birthday, and a well trained younger sibling knows exactly what to buy me every year). And the first battle field: the demos.

Last year, Konami went forfeit and didn’t even play game on the PS3, an early indication of last year’s horror effort from Seabass and co. This year, both games have demos bright and early and although I’m very keen to point out I already have the full version of FIFA – oh yes – I’ll leave main reviewing duties to Dave.

I’ve read video game reviews for over a decade now and I can’t stand the assumption that a game can be divided up into graphics, gameplay, sound, longetivity etc. With a football game, it’s about so much more than that – is it football? Can I smell the turf when I play the game? When I beat my housemate for the fifth time in a row, exactly how happy does that make me feel?! So I’m going to take a far more liberal approach and just jump straight in.

FIFA’s been making vast improvements over the last two years, and the demo makes a point of showing the full range of options, before restricting us to a 5 minute game. Fair enough. The atmosphere created by the visuals – especially the stunning representation of the stadia – bring me right in, although immediately I realise it’s actually quite difficult to realise which of my players has the ball at any one time. It’s hard to tell even Drogba from Lampard, but then player graphics always get a final tweak before release.

I can’t get enough of the skills in FIFA. The system is incredibly intuitive, and there’s not much as satisfying as shipping the ball out to Joe Cole, and shimmying inside off the left wing before unleashing a shot that’s going to knock a hot dog out of someone’s hands back in row Z. I’ll have to work on the timing then.

As I come to the end of my FIFA playing, I realise that it’s not really representative of my experience of football. I’m from the English terraces through and through, and I’ve spent many a Saturday afternoon on a grass bank watching lower league football. But the players in FIFA seem more interested in rolling about on the floor than anything else, and as soon as there’s a suggestion of contact between two players, the defender wins the ball. Possession changes far too frequently for my liking, shots feel like I’m dispatching a ping pong ball into the stands, and my football playing style is quickly annihalated by FIFA’s AI and my now silly looking decision to admit to a professional level of experience in video games. It’s got a massive amount of promise: I’m just going to take a while to adapt.

Pro Evo is next on my PS3, and it throws me straight into a game. Having just played FIFA I am hugely dissapointed that Konami continue to refuse to acknowledge football players’ abilities to run in more than 8 directions. It’s called an analog stick, and it’s been around for quite some time. Use it Konami! I also quickly realise that I can’t really do any skills other than a flic-flac and a step over. The same ping pong shooting also seems to be there. I haven’t played outfield for quite a while – maybe this is what balls actually do when you take a shot these days!

FIFA’s complete lack of commentary is however surpassed here, and I only hear the same expression 7 or 8 times in my first game. This is something of a record and I may even wait a whole day before turning off Pro Evo’s commentary this year. But where Pro Evo’s demo comes into its own is in attention to detail in the gameplay. Yes, you can still score in all the same ways as you’ve always been able to in the game – but this is exactly what happens in real life! As Rooney and Ronaldo forge a 1-2 which leads to a fantastic Shrek finish, I can’t help but remember the highlights from the weekend when the duo did the exact same thing against Blackburn. This is football as I know it.

So I guess the conclusion so far is I prefer Pro Evo, but I think FIFA may well be the better game. What is clear is that it’s going to be a very close and subjective year, and I’m looking forward to hearing what you guys and girls think of the games so far in the comments.

7 years. 2 consoles. Many failed exams. And 7 versions of Pro Evo… thousands of PES fans around the world, like me, have followed this game over the years, giving it a cult like status among video games. Dave was looking for bloggers to cover wider topics so I volunteered to share my extensive knowledge of Pro Evo, PS3, and any other awful football games I happen to be unwise enough to buy.

Last year Konami disappointed big time with a re-release of PES6 on PS2 and next-gen versions failing dismally to even run without stuttering. This year they’ve come up with the standard promises of better AI, physics and graphics – very standard improvements and nothing out of the ordinary.

Where it gets exciting is the deal Konami has sorted for the Champions League license which spares us of playing as the Merseyside Reds for the next four years. The CL mode also allows gamers to play through a whole season of the competition, and along with the “Become a Legend” mode (cf: UEFA 2008’s “Be a Pro”) it looks like the aged Master League mode is finally dying its overdue death.

The edit mode – which was absolutely inexplicably cut back last year – faces an overhaul with the locker room visible in the background as you place that giant ginger afro on Wes Brown (if you’re anything like me, it’s just irresistable).

The demo’s out this Thursday – a day before the full release of FIFA, so expect plenty more posts from me about both those events towards the end of the week.

Finally, if you’re screenshot hunting, here’s some links:
http://www.videogameszone.de/aid,661677/Bildergalerie/VideogamesZone/PES_2009_-_Ueber_70_Screenshots_des_Become_a_Legend-Modus_aus_Pro_Evo_2009/
http://kotaku.com/5018726/pro-evo-2009-announced