The Feud: Konami’s Wallet vs. EA’s Buffoons

By: Sneakers O'Toole | June 3rd, 2009

First and foremost, I wish Dave Martinez and all of my predecessors the best. I’m grateful for this opportunity; may they live long and prosper.

It finally happened; EA made a solid soccer game. By some odd happenstance, the schmucks that get paid to create a soccer game served up a game that didn’t make me feel like I should have spent the time I spent driving to Game Stop burning a pile of twenty dollar bills (see: FIFA 03,04,07,08).

But it is still pretty clear that few, if any, employees on that staff actually play the beautiful game. Dribbling moves? Yeah, that’s what’s important. Juggling tricks? (I still can’t figure out how to work that, stupid YouTube tutorial) Of course, everyone wants to be able to do revolutions in the middle of the pitch against Wigan Athletic. EA has spent God knows how many editions of that game trying to perfect the newest, coolest freestyle or dribbling trick when they don’t have the simplest of the basics down. Passing, off-the-ball movement, and set pieces have consistently been rubbish, and the game in general has always been Oh So predictable.

Anyway, they finally put out a decent game, a game that could possibly be mistaken for a real game, but there I was, in the middle of January after getting FIFA 09 for Christmas, listing all of the reasons I was going to stare at goldfish swimming to and fro instead of playing FIFA. The customization is lame, the AI was programmed by an Orangutan (especially in ‘Be A Pro’ mode), manager mode has become repetitive and predictable…the list goes on, and maybe that is for another day, but I couldn’t help but eventually feel the same way I felt about every FIFA before that one.

The honeymoon was great, but once the initial excitement wears off and you get into the true quality of the game, it becomes mundane and repetitive.
“Oh look, honey, Luca Toni tucked another classy pass from Ribery into the net, as the goalie dove after the net reacted like a chain link fence to the impact.”
“After Zlatan scores on you from a ridiculous angle and distance while falling over, can you take little Timmy to Violin practice?”
The thought of it all makes me sleepy.

I didn’t even bother with buying this year’s edition of PES once I read numerous reviews saying that nothing had changed since the 2008 edition. I thought I might as well rot and play FIFA whenever Roma wins a game and I want to reenact this strange phenomena; it wouldn’t be enjoyable either way. However, boredom prevailed, and when the spring semester was over, I had time to kill. Expecting to have just wasted $35 on a used copy of PES 2009, I slipped the disc into my 360 and started playing. I was impressed, in a good way. The game play, the customization, the…everything I just complained about pertaining to FIFA, okay? It’s a solid game, and I will be playing it far more than I will FIFA. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and that’s what keeps bringing me back.

Don’t get me wrong, Pro Evo has its sleuth of problems, but most of them are money issues. Actually, all of them are licensing issues (well, neither of them has figured out how real people look), and I totally understand that it is hard to overlook the fact that Chelsea is London FC and Bayern Munich doesn’t exist (neither does Germany as a whole). I maintain that FIFA is all about the looks, and PES is all about being good at what FIFA sucks at and being horrendous at what FIFA is good at. I still don’t think it’s long until PES goes belly up because FIFA has always sold well. It’s only a matter of time before EA accidentally makes a quality game to go along with all of those licenses.

I’ll still buy both, why not? Where else would it go, a savings account?

So slide on the ~~brass knuckles~~ I mean ‘paper weights,’ get your big brother, wave your white flag, or do whatever you do because this is an argument that will continue for as long as I post here.