Posted on October 24th, 2008 by William
Filed under: Competition, News | 3 Comments »

The first entry in our Pro Evo 2009 Review Competion is Craig, and below is his review. Please feel free to post you opinions on his review:

First of all I’d like to point out that I’ve been a Pro Evolution Soccer fan all my life. I’ve followed Konami’s efforts ever since ISS and ISS deluxe on the SNES and I’ve never been disappointed with any of my purchases (although I felt a bit robbed with PES 6 for the 360, but come on… who didn’t?!) I’m fortunate enough to have a Mother who works for Tesco, so I got my copy of PES 2009 for £31.50 with her 10% discount so I’m more than pleased with my purchase!

Read more…

Posted on October 24th, 2008 by William
Filed under: Competition, Reviews | No Comments »

The Master League transfer process has changed since PES 2008 - now when you submit an offer to a club to buy a player you will find out instantly whether the club has accepted your bid or not.  Each time you submit an offer, it counts as one of your maximum five offers for the week.  If the club accepts your offer, you then have to wait til the next week to find out whether the player himself has accepted the personal terms.

This change to the transfer process means you can make offers on alternative players after being turned down on your first choice player without having to go through to next week.  This makes you always in control of what players you are bidding on when you process a new week.

So here are our tips on getting good transfers on PES 2009.

• Player popularity - If a player you are bidding on has a higher popularity class (A-D) than your team, you have little chance in signing him unless you a much higher bid than what the club are asking for.  If the player is not with a club, you will need to offer to pay him around 50%+ than what he is asking for if you stand any chance in signing him.
• Timing - If you bid for a player in the final two weeks of the transfer period, the clubs are more likley to sell as they will no know that it is their last chance to get any money for the player.  However, waiting until the final couple of weeks for the player means that you risk another club getting him.
• Bid higher! - If you are having trouble signing a player, think about how beneficial to your club he will be.  If you really think he’ll be a major asset to your team, then why not stretch your budget and bid a few thousand points more than the asking price - remember if he helps you get good results then you wil earn that cash back through match bonuses.
• Trade - Look for players whose clubs are willing to accept a traded player as part of the player purchase.  Trading your players means you do not need to part with too much of your club’s cash, and means you can off-load players that normally wouldn’t be bought up.
• Save before you bid - Okay some may see  this as cheating, but I always save a game save at the  start of the transfer period , and then every time before I progress to the next week.  This way if you get to the end of the transfer period, play your first game and realise you bought the wrong players you can go back and do it all over again.  Also, if you progress to the next week and your bid gets refused, then you can just load up your latest game save and try again.

What tips do you have?

Posted on October 24th, 2008 by William
Filed under: Tips | No Comments »

We’ve been loving playing PES 2009 since the launch, and are still loving the game as it seems to get better with each play.  But we do have a few frustrations with the game…

• The lack of updated team rosters on launch - When you get PES 2009 out of the box, you will see that Berbatov is still at Spurs, Robhino is still at Real Madrid, Saha is not at Everton etc.  The list is massive, and it’s very frustrating looking up the transfers that happened over the summer and manually inputting them.  There are updated option files for PS3 and PC available, but not for Xbox users.
• The team select menus are slow - When it comes to editing players from different teams in Edit mode, the vertical sliding menus for choosing a team are very slow to navigate.  So if you are trying to access Wigan from the English Premier League menu, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom.  The PES 2008 menus previewed the teams in a 5×5 grid which meant you could access each club with little time.
• The music has improved, but is still poor - Thank you Konami for improving on last year’s awful music, but this year’s play-list is not much better and a lot of players are just switching it off.
• The default kits are rubbish - Just go checkout Newcastle - is it me or do Newcastle play in white and black stripes rather than a solid black shirt?  Poor effort Konami.
• The cursor select has only three settings - Throughout the years in PES you have been able to adjust quite precisely how much cpu input you wanted for changing the player cursor.  Now you only have three basic settings which is quite infuriating for some people.
• The ball phyics can be a little pinball at times - Overall the ball physics have improved, but the ball seems to bounce around very heavily in short spaces which just looks and sounds unrealistic.  For example if you hit the post and it hits a player on the rebound, which the the goalie saves etc.
• The goalies animations dictate their saves - The player animations in PES 2009 have improved greatly, but you will notice that the goalies are not making saves that they should on one-on-one situations as the pre-set animation does not allow for the goalie to realistically stretch out and save the ball.

Let us know about your frustrations with the game.

Posted on October 22nd, 2008 by William
Filed under: Opinion | 4 Comments »

We’ve been playing the Become a Legend mode since Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 came out, and here are our top tips to getting the most out of every match.

• Adjust your strengths according to your position - You need to adjust your strengths to match the attributes needed by the position of your player.  So if you are playing as a winger then you will need to focus on speed, dribbling, and kicking.  If you are playing as a centre midfielder you will need to focus on balance, kicking, and power.  If you are playing as an attacker you will need to have good kicking, speed, and balance strengths.  Defending positions will generally need stamina, power, and balance, however if you are playing as a wing-back you may need a little speed in your strength.
  If you need a little help, just think of the top players in real life football who play in your position, and identify their top three to four strengths and adjust your strength blocks to those.
• Stay in your designated area - You need to stay in your designated area in order to pick up good ratings, it is no good if you are a striker who plays too deep in defence, or playing as a center midfielder who spends most of the time on the right wing in the final third of the pitch!  If you check your rating>details after each match, you will see where you are spending most of your time on the pitch.
• Pass, pass, pass! - Football is a team game and you will be rewarded a good rating if you make a lot of passes, just make sure they reach the player you are passing too or this could damage your rating.
• Avoid fouls - Playing a game of PES with just one player means you have the danger of making many fouls with the same player, and for every time you get booked three times you will receive a ban, not good for getting into the first team, or keeping a place in the team.  Committing fouls also brings down your post-match rating.
• Be the heart of the team - If you play each and every game enthusiastically like it’s a final, making every touch count, closing down every attack then you will be rewarded by getting a good rating.  Make every move you do count!
• Shoot on target - At the beginning of your career it is very hard to shoot and score, but the key to remember is that it’s important to shoot on target even if it’s not likely to go in.  There is no point making wild or fancy shots when you have poor stats as they will just miss, damaging your post-match rating.  Just get each and every shot on goal and you never know, you may get lucky and score a few.
• Play longer matches - If you are in the first team and are playing a tough team, then consider making the match length for 10minutes or over minimum.  The longer the match lasts in real time, then the more chances you will get to build your attacks, or calm your defence, meaning you are more likely to get a better result for your player and you team.

Let us know of what tactics you use to build your Become a Legend’s player’s attributes!

Posted on October 22nd, 2008 by William
Filed under: Tips | 6 Comments »

Yes the release of PES 2009 is just one week away! Have you pre-ordered your copy or will you be buying it on the day?

Posted on October 9th, 2008 by William
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »