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In an era where big budget sports games and exclusive deals are stifling competition and innovation, seeing an upstart try to make an impact is admirable. This is really where Pro Evolution Soccer 2012, or PES 2012 for short, comes in, because it's going up against a soccer brand in EA's FIFA that has been in the lead for a long time now. Can PES 2012 close that gap at all? You might be inclined to think not after your first glimpse of the game. Unlike FIFA, which aims to show off plenty of polish on every single detail, down to the menu layouts and the fonts they use, PES 2012 comes off as a lot more basic and simplistic. This has its pros and cons, of course, because too much flash isn't always necessary. But even from the opening sequences - the stadiums, players walking onto the field and the fans - they look good, albeit with a missing layer of polish. This is somewhat remedied by the extensive and detailed way PES 2012 does replays. Score a goal and you get a few different viewpoints of the strike, plus the chance to do the replay on your own. On its own, this isn't that noteworthy, but for whatever reason, the level of detail here is at a different level than that of the opening sequences. Close-ups of players aren't bad, and are comparable to FIFA, except there isn't the kind of interaction you see in the latter. FIFA depicts referees admonishing players and handing out yellow cards for infractions, but PES 2012 shows very little of that. Licensing continues to plague PES, what with just two teams (Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur) licensed from the English Premier League, and the entire German Bundesliga missing altogether. Uniforms, stadiums, and even leagues have different looks or the same look under a different moniker. In continuing on the presentation side of things, the commentator duo of Jon Champion and Jim Beglin perform well enough, but it becomes clear after a few games that they have a pretty shallow depth of dialogue to work with. In one particular case, I was passing a lot to create a scoring chance, and all Champion could do was recite the names of the players receiving the ball. There wasn't enough anticipation in the dialogue to fit what could happen on the pitch, which was a bit disappointing. As for how the game looks, generally, you're probably not going to really complain that much. FIFA may look like it has sharper tones, but they don't differ that much on the gameplay side of things. FIFA made good strides in AI defending this year, which is something Konami threw into PES 2012 as well. The only slight here is that you notice this feature far more in the highest difficulty settings. Otherwise, passes are a little too easy to complete in high traffic areas, and entering the box is like child's play in some cases. That takes the realism away a little, not to mention any creativity in forging an offensive attack. One of the bugaboos of years past was the unbelievable - and unrealistic - propensity AI players had for catching up to a ball carrier on the run. That's been scaled back a fair bit here, so if you're gunning it down the field, you won't always have an opponent breathing down your neck. Ball and player physics have been tweaked too, thanks to precision passing, accurate bounces and deflections and smooth goaltender animations. Then there's the Off the Ball controls, whereby you can move a teammate where you want him to go while you have the ball with your current player. It's a slick feature, especially since it also works in set pieces (where it's arguably more effective), but takes time to figure out because you don't always have much time to pull it off. If Konami were able to have the AI do this on its own, and force the player to recognize the move, that could take some of the complexity out of this feature. That said, the sheer number of controls available, particularly for more seasoned players, is nothing short of extensive. Taking some time to learn these in the Training portion of PES 2012 is worth it. Playing online is a pretty good experience, but again, there's the lack of flash and polish that FIFA offers online. Competitions is a mode where you can compete in a number of different games or tournaments, but it requires you to stick to the real-life schedule meted out to players. Master League Online is easily the deepest of them all, while Legends is a way for you to team up with three other gamers as your created player or a real-life one. This is another year where PES hasn't overtaken FIFA, but it's not a stretch to say that at least the gap has closed a bit more now, given how Konami has put together a very respectable soccer title on a budget that's probably half the size (not that I can actually confirm that). The good news is that PES has a strong following, which keeps the online world populated and lively, so replay value online and offline is nothing to worry about here.   Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 Format: Xbox 360 Publisher: Konami Developer: Winning Eleven Productions ESRB Rating: Everyone Official Site: http://www.konami.com/games/pes2012/ Rating: 7.5 / 10

 

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