PES 2008
Ever been watching the footy and jumped out of your seat to point where the players should be going instead of where they end up before missing a chance or some gormless defending? We know that you have because everyone does it. Believe this or not, it’s how you’ll be enjoying PES 2008 for Nintendo Wii.
Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) series grows from strength to strength year on year, with PES 2008 for PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and PSP constantly in the UK Top 10. To bring this market leading game of football to Wii the creative team has thought of something radically different. Don’t worry, it’s all good.
Until now, the most successful approach for console football has been solely about controlling the player on the ball, relying on artificially intelligent (AI) players to give support. With Nintendo Wii, Konami has found a way to direct movement off the ball too, for the first time allowing attacking players to run into space at your command and for defenders to either man-mark players or control zones. Passing is also more accurate too – no longer with an element of hit and hope after pressing the button.
The versatile Wii remote it as the heart of all this, in conjunction with the nunchuck attachment you’ll be familiar with too. If you can point, you can play, simple as that. If you understand how football works you’ll have greater enjoyment, but everybody can have fun taking part in the spirit of the game.
Schoolboy stuff first…
While on the ball, pointing to a team mate and pressing the pass button sends the ball straight to him. If you’d rather pass into space and have the nearest player run onto the ball, point and pass to there instead. Because you’re choosing exactly where to aim, you can pass between two players close by and reach a player across the pitch. Because you can pass to the side while running, this makes for some thrilling counter attacking football. Ye-hey!
When you’re defending, pointing at an attacking player and pressing the appropriate button (A) brings your nearest defender to pressure him off the ball. Alternatively you can man-mark all attacking players, and from here you can attempt to intercept their passes. Finally, if you don’t want to apply direct pressure or lose your men to tracking individual players, there’s the option of zone marking.
Although this stuff seems obvious you may be surprised to know that it isn’t possible in PES or even FIFA until now. It means that you can create the kind of simple one-twos and combination plays that you’ll see in real football and have learned to admire. You can direct a winger on the ball to make a run down the left or right channel while instructing two of your strikers to make runs into the box. You don’t hope that they will, you’ve told them to do it. So when the cross goes in they’ll have a chance of getting on the end of it and to score a brilliant goal. Or, you might change your mind and decide to enter the 18 yard box yourself and just pass directly to the midfielder just arrived. The organic flow of football has never been so cleverly and sensibly realised than in PES 2008 in terms of open play.
Shots on goal could be the only contention as far as we can see. You take a shot by shaking the nunchuck when the ball is nearest to the desired player. You don’t have control over the power of the shot, which removes the visceral reward of hitting a button hard or soft to blast or slip the ball into the net. However you can choose to modify your shot and try to chip the keeper from range. The effect Konami is going for here is when fans stand up and shout, “Shoot!”, while punching the air.
When you first see PES 2008 in action on Wii, it looks like a coach’s chalkboard being scribbled on and rubbed out at 100mph. It looks like you won’t stand a chance of understanding what the hell is going on, ever in a million years. But start with basics and allow your confidence to grow over time, in the end it all feels very straightforward. A little bit like patting your head and rubbing your stomach to begin with, but once you get used to pointing at other players running one way while your man on the ball could be going the other, it really does make simple sense.
We think PES 2008 on Wii has the potential to become the ‘everyman’ game of football that football fans have been waiting for – as opposed to seasoned videogamers who happen to enjoy football too. This is console football reinvented in a way that is only possible on Nintendo Wii. Since everyone that owns a Wii seems to be sporting mad these days, Konami looks to have a new champion.
