PC PC GAMES

We said it before and I like to say it again. If your game wants to sell, give us a DEMO. Konami seemed to be on the right track with the release of Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) 2011 and the PC demo even hit a day before the console versions.

PES has been trying to take a bite out of EA’s FIFA franchise for a long time and with the release of the 2011 version of the series is trying it’s hardest to fight against the king of licened sport. One of the hurdles PES has to overcome is that for someone that likes soccer you like to play with people you know and watch play. EA of course knows this and owns just about any franchise license name there is, be it Football, Baseball, Hockey or Soccer. It seems Konami made some headway into the license deal showing a complete Barcelona or Bayern Munich team roster in the demo, complete with players such as Messi, Mueller or Lahm.

But it needs more than franchised player names to make a good sports game! That is why this demo is so important, especially on the PC PES has a great chance to be real competition to FIFA. EA has not focused on the PC and made many mistakes with the past releases of it’s soccer game on the PC.

So as a PC loving soccer fan I downloaded the 1GB demo with much anticipation. Install was quick and painless and starting the game was no issue. But once the game runs… that is where things go horribly wrong at least what this demo is concerned.
Nothing, but absolutely nothing was learned by the mistakes of the past and the mistakes that FIFA made on the PC. It’s not worth making many sentences about it, so let’s just go down the list shall we:

1. Only one game mode and 4 teams in two different divisions in total (for a demo almost expected)
2. No access to the options menu
3. No ability to change screen resolution
4. No ability to change details settings
5. No ability to look at the controller configuration
6. No ability to change controller settings or button mapping
7. No training option (kick the ball around with your own team)
8. Default button placement for pass, shoot and such very different from the norm (at least for me, which is a issue, see point 5,6 &7)
9. Default settings are on Pro Mode (I found out you have access to a game menu once you setup a game) which, while showing you other options only lets you change the difficult settings
10. No commentator of the game

(*Since this review has been written I learned that you can change settings if you track down a settings.exe in the game directory. So you can change certain things, such as resolution and controller configuration. But come on… you couldn’t run this on first start up? Maybe make a note of it somewhere or link it from within the game?)

Nothing here says that Konami takes the PC serious as a platform. This smells of unpolished console port and does not look promising. To make my mouth water let me set my resolution, let me see the players, the stadium and the crowd in high detail. Why are you afraid to show me the game in high resolution?

Once in game things got a little better. Aside from the fact that the default difficulty was set to max, I struggled to learn what the buttons do and I was a goal down mere seconds into game-play even if I lost the ball deep in the opposing half. You can see how Bayern Munich (the team I choose since I am German) got hammered and outplayed at the video as a part of this review. I considered re-recording a game once I found the match options menu (which only gives you access to the difficult settings of the current match) and was more in tune with the controls. But you should see how one struggles to get a handle on things when the developers don’t want you to know anything, configure anything and generally don’t seem to care how a demo is experienced by their potential customers. Here I was thinking that a demo should do the best to show the cool and good about your product… silly me!

On the positive side of things is the fact that while I was not able to choose resolution (which according to my capture is 640×360) it still locked surprisingly good. Although you can’t really make out player faces and barley their names. Game-play was smooth and once you get a hang of the controls it feels like sprints, quick turns and passes are great and give you good control of your players.

I wished I could say more but since the training option was not present and the teams to play with where limited I did not have the chance to get really deep into it. Especially because (and forgive me for slipping one more time into the negative) some person at Konami thought it a good idea that when the game you played is over they show you a video of all the extra features the full version will include. A whole 5 minutes and 40 seconds worth of features, such as carrier mode, player transfers, be a pro and such… but here is the kicker, you can’t skip it! No pressing of any keyboard buttons short of CTRL+ALT+DEL or the controller will let you bypass FIVE MINUTES FORTY SECONDS. Are you kidding me Konami?! I figured it must be a one time thing… but no, after the second match here we where again. At least it gave me a chance to time it and yes try again every possible button to see if I am not missing something.
At least I learned in that video that I can create my own team and even a club emblem. I can make my players wear funny heads or hats, kick a keg (yes a small beer keg), a trash ball or a super sized candy around the field. Last but not least even design a stadium that you can make look like Mario lost his Princess yet again. Ohhhh brother!?!

The last part of the video has this tag-line “Engineered for freedom”. The demo didn’t show it, the video you are forced to watch makes it more look like they tried to throw everything anyone ever mentioned in a brainstorming session into the game, regardless of how silly the idea was.
So I am coming away from this demo of PES 2011 very sceptical if the team behind this game is serious about soccer and the PC as a valid platform. I guess we will have to wait for the full version and let other people do a review on that, because I will not “risk” my money on what I saw or experienced in this demo.

…. a keg of beer… are you serious….