PES 2012

Platform: Wii

Released: 2011

Remember when Coca-Cola brought out New Coke? No, of course you don't, because you're under 40 years old. OK, remember when you saw some minor celebrities talking on some crappy TV show about how they remember when Coca-Cola brought out New Coke? (Although they were probably told about it and shown some clips just before they recorded their bit and didn't really remeber it at all. TV - lying to us all the time.) Anyway, the point was that New Coke was supposed to be better. It tasted better, it was sweeter, and the focus groups said they preferred it to regular Coca-Cola. The reality was that it didn't really work. No-one wanted the change and most people didn't like it when it came. Coca-Cola ended up having to bring back the old drink as Coke Classic.

Which brings me to PES 2012. PES 2011 was the first good football game on the Wii. Better than the previous poor showings in the series on the Wii and better than the improving but still slightly rubbish FIFA games. Konami basically just replicated the old PS2 PES games for the Wii, but made the AI better and added a few new features.

With PES 2012, Konami promise us the "most realistic football experience to date". It is "the definitive football title". How have Konami done this? They've started by replicating PES 2011 almost identically. All the features are still there (Champions League, Copa Libertadores, Master League etc), the online play is still a bit dodgy, and the computer controlled teams are better still. All sounds good. However, it's now harder to pass the ball. It goes astray a LOT. Sometimes, the ball sprays around all over the shop. Simple passes go behind the man you're passing to, and players seem to run into each other for no good reason. The pitches seem too big if you try to play a formation that isn't really narrow (my patented 3-4-1-2 formation is useless) and it's hard to get a good passing game going. It's incredibly frustrating and a lot of goals come from dispossessing the computer teams near their own goal or from set pieces. Which isn't a lot of fun.

Maybe Konami should just reissue PES 2011 as PES Classic and be done with it.

It's still better than FIFA 12 though.

Rating: 2.5/5