Pro Evolution Soccer 5 First Impressions

Dance Dance Figo-lution.

Today's isn't a question of how many marks out of ten it's worth, but it's worth outlining immediately that it's still a high number, and it's still a high number for a quantifiable reason. This isn't like Tiger Woods PGA Tour, to name something that's doing the opposite. You have to rate games within the context of their peers and predecessors; PES withstands that comparison. So yes, the review's coming next week, when I've had a chance to take the game online against various opponents, investigate the Master League, see what that PS2/PSP link-up's all about, and run rings around the AI. But, since you're all so impatient, I've been ordered to tell you where it's shifted this year. (Mainly because they found out that I spent longer playing it this week than anything else. Bloody spies everywhere.)

Pressing, then. It's a foul more or less automatically. This is annoying (sorry, annoying), but you do get over it. S'useful too, because it forces you to take more direct control of defensive players rather than lazily clamping face buttons. It'll break the game up initially, but you'll wise up to it and learn to use other approaches. Tackling more directly, for example - slide-tackling is more effective, and taking control of a player and then lurching toward 50-50 balls has an almost Sensible Soccer-like air of pre-emption about it. Get the line right and you can block advances quite effectively. Realistic? Not especially. But it works.

Of course you can avoid losing the ball to cheeky slides by passing it around, and one-touch passing plays a bigger role as a result - with an increase in the number of animations to match. You're frequently able to stick a boot in quickly - where previously you wouldn't have been able to interrupt the animation - and first-time volleyed crosses, for example, are tangibly more useful. As ever, it's the extra sharpness here and there that presents the most attractive new football - a volleyed cross converted with a first-time side-footed volley is, to say the least, beguiling.

Henry smoking. Or: the way breath hangs in the air.

Attacking in general is probably artificially easy to begin with as players learn not to press the same way they used to, and it also seems as though the midfield is artificially standoffish at times to ease the flow, although that might just be the way we were. It's certainly a game that wants you to move upfield though - passes in general are more like through-balls, fed in front of the player, while the through-balls themselves, while less effective than they used to be (hardly a bad thing), are more pronounced. Actually, I had most of my luck with them - passing it back and forth into the final third and then waiting to carve up the defence.

And, actually, I had rather more luck than usual. Traditionally, my sparring partner and I share victory around but he comes out on top. This version seems to be catered more to my natural game - which is to say, I suppose, that I like running around kicking, screaming and flapping. Another illustration of how PES shifts.

Speaking of flapping, I've got some question marks lingering next to AI and ball movement. Movement off the ball from AI players is typically awful - they always run too late - but there are goalkeeping quirks now too. Keepers have been given a bit more attention than usual - they're still mostly automated, but they can toss the ball Schmeichel-esque distances now and kick it in a couple of new ways - but they also have a tendency to, erm, chuck the ball in their own nets. Maybe not a tendency, but it's happened to me twice - the first time, a clearance pinballed off an attacker's head and his mate nodded it toward the empty net. Rushing back, the keeper managed to get to it and push it into the net - just as it was about to spin wide. Oops. Just hours later, a similar goalmouth scramble ended in similar embarrassment.

Henry: secret fascist.

In general, PES remains one of the best ball simulators in the genre. The way it moves from players' feet and reacts to control and direction is one of the most captivating elements of the game. But equally PES's remains one of the quirkiest balls in the bag, pinballing off legs and running loose. Satisfying and exciting when it tumbles loose in your favour; maddening when it goes against you.