FOOTBALL (NOT SOCCER) WARS: PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2008 VS FIFA SOCCER 08

So, we were chatting, out of hours, as you do, and two of our writers, Steve Boxer and Chris Burke, had quite opposing views on which was the best football franchise. Chris was totally into Pro Evo Soccer and Steve was pinning his colours to the FIFA side of things. Here we let them explain why they think their favourite respective title is the best. First with the ball is Chris Burke on Pro Evolution Soccer. Hereeeeee’s Chris.

Pro Evolution Soccer is the best footie game series ever. Fact. And the PS3’s power means that Konami’s latest game, PES 2008, is an absolute belter. Its beautiful, super-sharp graphics, detailed likenesses, smooth movement and realistic animations and lighting effects make this as close to watching the real thing as you can get – and of course you’re controlling the action. The ball physics are just one of the many, many things Konami have improved (none of that cannoning-off your shins that went on in previous versions), and ball control now is pin-point accurate.

It’s not the easiest game to master, but it is very easy to get started – and the tricks and techniques you’ll master are intuitive and will become second instinct. There’s nothing prescribed about the way Pro Evo plays either - it’s one hundred per cent down to you. Mad skills are there to be shown off of course, but as in reality Sunderland players can’t convincingly pull off the Cruyff turn, whereas Cristiano Ronaldo can do his step-overs and shimmys and Ronaldinho can still curl in a pin-point free-kick over a flapping keeper.

Those familiar with previous versions on PS2 will be relieved that scoring is a little easier - though it still takes a steady hand and a focused head to bury it in the back of the bag. The keepers on this version don’t feel unbeatable. In previous versions, for example, a loose ball in the box was always collected by keeps. Not so now, and you can shove him a bit and put him off. And, for the less gentlemanly player, you now have the option to pull shirts, use an illicit arm, and dive. In possession, you can really dig in and shield the ball – but in tackling, you can get your foot in and needle for the ball too. You can do through-balls from throw-ins, and the formations you set before the match are accurately stuck to by your teams.

The replay system is comprehensive, and the game now replays all decent goal attempts, even those that come off the bar and back into play. Only two Premiership teams are licensed, sadly, Newcastle and Spurs – fully licensed teams and kits are something that its rival Fifa 08 can boast over Pro Evo. But in my opinion that’s the only thing. And ask yourselves, do you really care that Leyton Orient’s kit has those little white braces down the sides of the shirt? In any case, it’s part of PES’s charm that a handful of players aren’t licensed and you end up with ‘Van Donghorse’ upfront for ‘London’. Commentary-wise, thankfully Trevor Brooking’s been sidelined for PES 2008, and instead they’ve roped in John Champion and Mark Lawrenson. Which is good enough for me.

But really all that’s just icing. Forget about the merchandising and the endorsements, this time it really is about the football. Pro Evo is a beautiful game. It plays instinctively and realistically, mixing the fun of arcade-style play with football accuracy, and in multiplayer it’s going to rock the PSN. Fifa may be the only choice for the footie nerd – the kind of guy who will watch any game, from any league, including women’s football, and pores over Opta stats – but the only choice for the football-loving gamer has got be Pro Evo. PES is about having a good laugh playing it with your mates – for that, all you need is a really good football game. And believe me, this is it.

So that was Chris Burke singing the praises of PES, but here’s Steve Boxer on a counter attack, dribbling through midfield and lining up a curler for the top corner in support of the FIFA series.

I am a fan of both Tottenham Hotspur and EA Sports’ FIFA series of football games, and you get pretty much the same experience when you support either – both are once-great footballing institutions which have become inferior in recent years. I used to play FIFA obsessively in the days when it was on the original PlayStation – but sadly, it went into apparently terminal decline after FIFA 2000. A period which saw the rise of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer.

Last year, EA Sports decided a drastic approach was required, so it ripped out FIFA’s innards and started again from scratch. The resulting FIFA 07 was a half-finished mess, but EA Sports’ endeavours, so dubious at the time, have now been vindicated by FIFA 08, which is the finest FIFA since FIFA 2000 and more than capable of giving PES a run for its money (particularly in a year in which it has merely been lightly tweaked).

Even when everybody agreed that PES was far superior to FIFA, I could never get into Konami’s football game. The biggest stumbling block was shooting: hold the square button down for more than a quarter of a picosecond, and the ball would balloon over the bar. Or if you held it down for less than an eighth of a picosecond, it would (and still does) dribble embarrassingly in the vague direction of the goal. I’m a Tottenham fan, which means I’m not interested in games full of intricate passing movements which end up as 0-0 draws. And that was all that PES ever offered.

Plus there was PES’s controls, which reverse the buttons governing lob-passing and shooting in comparison with FIFA, the need to fiddle around interminably with pre-game substitutions and play styles if you ever wanted to beat anybody and the simple fact that I can’t play through PES in control of Tottenham Hotspur, because it hasn’t licensed any of the Premier League clubs.

But what of FIFA 08? Whatever PES’s legendary Sea Bass might say, FIFA 08 is the only custom-designed next-gen football game (whether on PS3 or Xbox 360). So it makes good use of the PS3’s number-crunching capabilities, constantly making decisions about which direction off-the-ball players should run in and moving your player according to the relationship between his feet and the ball, and the direction in which he is being moved, rather than merely running stock animations in response to button-presses. This high-tech behind-the-scenes trickery brings about two things in which PES previously trounced FIFA: passing is ultra-controllable and very slick, and your players actually move where you want them to. No longer do central defenders charge off towards the half-way line when confronted by a dribbling attacker. You can even hit the left bumper to tell players to go off on a run – so at last, the through-ball button has a use.

In FIFA 08, shooting is a bit more PES-like than before, which is a shame, but is still vastly more forgiving and hugely superior. And – shock, horror, you PES fans – it actually has some new features. The most controversial being a new dribbling system, which you trigger by holding L2, and which lets you manoeuvre the ball around using the right stick. The idea is that by tapping the right stick in a sequence of different directions, you build up a series of moves that build up to a coherent trick. Or, if you press R1 and get the timing right, you can perform keepy-uppies. This system requires a lot of practice, and is a tad fiddly in the cut-and-thrust of a game, so it’s not a complete success. And you will need to use it to get round players if you play the single-player game in Professional or Legendary modes.

But the best new feature – and one which PES will surely copy in future – is called Be A Pro. This lets you control just one player in your favourite team, and rates you according to things like pass completion, receiving the ball when you ask for it (by pressing X), shooting and tackling. Combined with a down-the-pitch view, it really does give you the feeling that you’re controlling your favourite player, and that view also makes the new trick mode much more usable. Before long, you should be able to play five-a-side with a bunch of your mates over the PlayStation Network, with each one controlling a single player, and EA Sports eventually wants to expand that to allow 11-a-side games. Which will spark a true revolution in football gaming.

In terms of general polish, the graphics are superb, every team you can imagine is present (and with the correct playing staff down to the youth teams) and even the commentary team do sometimes get things right (although they also often make embarrassing gaffes). You can play through an entire Premiership season (opting to let the computer play the games for you, if you want, although why you would is beyond us), and you can create your own tournaments. If the real-life footballing experience is what you crave, then FIFA 08 is best.

It isn’t perfect – one of FIFA’s best aspects was that you could crank up the game’s speed to approximate the Premiership style, but FIFA 08 has dropped this, so now it’s played at a pace which is almost as funereal as that of PES. It appears that all those years of playing second fiddle to PES have caused EA Sports to bottle it in certain areas. But with this year’s iteration, FIFA has rediscovered its identity, and much of its soul. So hopefully, next year will see its designers removing those few remaining traces of an inferiority complex.