PS3 GAMES
Pro Evolution Soccer 2010
While the tweaks to this year's gameplay are minimal, the result is a better game overall. The speed has been reduced to make the game feel more like a simulation, and the goalkeepers have become much more efficient, which lowers the overall scorelines. These two changes address some of the major criticism from fans, but many of the old problems remain. Player animation looks incredibly stilted thanks to simple repeated running animations, while the transitions between moves are sharp and generally unpolished. The headline gameplay feature is 360-degree player control, which should make players more natural to control, but there's little noticeable difference in terms of the way these players move over last year.
What Pro Evo 2010 does offer is an incredible amount of player detail, with facial likenesses that are among the best in the sports genre. Famous players, such as Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard, look uncannily realistic, with incredibly lifelike faces, hair, and limbs. The likenesses can be hit or miss--Lionel Messi looks much better than Michael Owen, for example, and the likenesses are much more accurate in the upper leagues than in lesser known teams. There's a much better sense of physicality to the players than there was in last year's game, with head-on clashes resulting in the weaker player hitting the floor and some much more involved tussles for the ball.
Off the pitch, the game boasts two new features this year: team style and playing style cards. When you opt to adjust your team style you can customise settings in eight categories, such as attacking style, defensive line, and support range using a 100-point scale. Your changes are represented via an onscreen animation, so you can immediately see how the rest of your team will react to the player on the ball if, for example, you change the support range bar. However, these changes result in very little difference on the pitch, and unless you're the sort of player who likes to finely adjust all of your tactics, you can happily live with the default settings.
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