Sights and Sounds
I’ve never personally had the pleasure of going to a professional soccer game in person, but I know they are supposed to be absolutely phenomenal. Luckily, Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 helps to sell that point by creating a very exciting and true to life atmosphere. The aforementioned new game engine helps to make the crowd look much better, which is always a complaint I have about a lot of games in the genre. It somewhat takes you out of it when they look overly fake, but this does a very good job at preventing that. On top of the crowd’s look, the sounds that they have put with them are fantastic. From just situations of them being loud to actual chants breaking out, you really can feel like you are playing an authentic soccer game rather than just a simulation.
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Confusing Training
When trying to draw in new gamers, it is vital to have a solid training section. Pro Evolution Soccer has a pretty long list of training exercises to teach you the most important moves to help you during your matches. However, the problem is that multiple of them are extremely confusing to figure out. There are the simple ones to start off that are explained well enough and are easy to complete. Then you start to get to the more complicated ones that require multiple steps, but the instructions will often only tell you part of the process, leaving you to find it out yourself. Sometimes I ended up having to play around for a good while and getting lucky eventually with the buttons. It overall just does not seem to cater to first-time players of the series of the series, which is what a training mode should do.
Replays
While playing through different matches in the different game modes, one aspect that constantly frustrated me was the replay system. Throughout every game, there will be multiple saves, balls kicked out of bounds, or less often a goal scored. On way too many of these the game will show a replay that if you accidentally hit the wrong button will bring up a menu to save the replay. It’s fine on big plays like goals or great saves, but it just seemed to come up way too often while I played. If the only plays that you can save are the ones they replay, it would just be much better to be able to go through them at the end of the game and choose which ones to save, similar to some other sports games, rather than during a match itself. If not that, just have it to where you can do it from the pause menu instead if you want to save one while playing.
Lack of Licenses
I chose to put this one last just because there is not much that Konami can do about it, as a result of contracts signed by its competitor. However, I did feel that it was important to bring up the fact that this can really hurt the game, especially for fans of American soccer. The game does have one huge license in UEFA Champions League, but it is missing a real Team US Men’s Soccer Team roster, Major League Soccer, and probably the largest, the Premier League. The Premier League lives up to its title by being the top English league, and top teams like Arsenal are not in the game at all. Luckily the game was able to license Premier League member Manchester United individually.
VERDICT
While maybe in the shadows of a larger selling franchise, Konami has once again churned out a solid entry in the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise. With the brand new game engine and physics upgrades such as TrueBall Tech, Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 really proves that it is a force to be reckoned with. While not an avid soccer fan, this game really drew me in with it’s high quality authentic and smooth gameplay as well as fun game modes like Master League. While the game may be missing some of the bigger and most well known teams to Americans, this is not a game to miss out on for soccer fans as it delivers an excellent experience all around.
[Editor’s Note: Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 was reviewed on the PlayStation 3 platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]