Half-time substitution needed
In truth, the UEFA Champions League tournament, which sits proudly at the top of the main menu in PES 2009, could have been rustled up yourself with little effort in cup edit mode. The only real value of having it is to save you some time creating the tournament yourself and to enjoy the familiar intro music that precedes every champions league game, as it blares away against the backdrop of the huge UEFA logo.The authenticity of the tournament however is contradicted by the lack of some of the official team licenses. It appears, or perhaps it's my cynical nature, that the inclusion of the Champions league is nothing more than one big advertisement for UEFA.
If you want to create your own authentic cup, such as the FA Cup or the Johnstone's Paint Trophy, you can do so in PES 2009's comprehensive edit mode, which is as deep as ever, allowing you to change player names, cup names, stadiums, create your own original club, logos, emblems, import faces, kits, and even sound files for specific music and crowd chants for any team. A new Pixel Paint system has also been integrated, allowing players to create their own club crests and badges to add to their home-grown kits.
The edit mode has always been a fine feature in PES and once again it's rammed full of options so you can create an authentic and tailor-made experience.
For all the negativity that may come across in this review, PES still offers a brilliant game of football on the pitch. The new tweaks have improved the game with AI now moving more cleverly into space. Passing also feels smoother and using the right stick to manual pass actually feels like a very natural movement and since I've been playing PES 2009 I've been using it more and more.
There’s still a few annoyances which should have been ironed out by now, such as keepers parrying the ball a little too often, crude audio looping, refs who blow their whistle a little too often and strangely send players off for lame tackles. Not to mention hearing the cheap-sounding heavy thud of the ball every time you strike it.
Nevertheless, PES 2009 is a free-flowing football experience. It just still doesn't seem to have evolved as much as I'd hoped.
Still, it's an improvement on last year and PES fans will be overjoyed to see that there appears to be extremly smooth frame rates throughout. And so there bloody well should be!
Click for larger imageContinued overleaf...