Pro Evolution Soccer 3 review

Pro Evolution Soccer 3 has arrived on the PC. To be honest, there hasn’t been that much fanfare in the preceding months. No flash TV advertising, no billboards, this is not how Konami works, it prefers to let word of mouth do the job. And if you know anyone who has a Playstation2, or if you own one yourself, then as a footy fan this is about as excited as you have been for a long, long time.

The game itself comes on just one CD and at just over 600MB is quite a small install, roughly half the size of FIFA 2004. I was already beginning to wonder what had been left out. Booting up the game, anyone who had not already played Pro Evo on the Playstation2 would be horrified. The title menus are simplistic and the effort put into the music verges on criminal negligence. At first glance, EA Sports must have nearly fallen off its throne with laughter.

Things get worst with the controller setup. No effort has been made to alter the basic image of the Playstation2 controller and you have to guess which buttons on your own joypad correspond to which buttons on the Playstation2 controller before you can even think about reassigning them. This was a long and painful process, which required paper and a pencil and my patience was beginning to wear thin. If Pro Evo really was going to steal FIFA’s crown it couldn’t have started off any worse.

But fast tracking my way through to the first match my mood started to change. The pre-match options were vast. Not only could I manipulate team formations but give them specific orders both as a team and individually. This was more like it.

When the teams ran out, I was astonished. The basic graphics may not be up to the standard of FIFA but the animation of the players is in a different league. Kicking off you instantly realise the game is a completely different animal to the chaotic FIFA series. You can stroke the ball around quickly and efficiently, the pass responding to the controller so precisely that you can choose to play the ball behind the player, to his feet, or just in front. To send people clear an automatic through ball button judges the pass to perfection. Within minutes, I found myself moving up the pitch, probing down the wings, and looking to create that clear cut shooting chance. This really does feel like the beautiful game.

Shots are also very well handled, whether you go high or low, thump it hard or place it towards the far corner, even flick it with the outside of your foot or round the goalkeeper, everything is possible.