A nightmare before PESmas?
Posted by: not-Greg in Konami, PES2009, Seabass, pes2008, tags: Konami, pes2008, PES2009, SeabassSo, it’s been a few days now. A few more PES2009 gameplay videos have appeared. A lot more reports are filtering through from people who’ve actually played the game.
Today, as of right now, I’m deeply concerned about PES2009. I hope that I am wrong, but I can see a nightmare scenario unfolding before my eyes.
On Wednesday I was quite happy, with just a few reservations. I was happy about the early reports that PES2009 is PES5 with HD graphics (as I and many others wanted it to be).
I’ve spent most of the past year whining about the hideously wrong turn taken by PES2008 (on PS3/360/PC). That game was an arcade score-’em-up for the kids. PES2008 in fact sold a lot of units, but it did so on the franchise’s reputation alone. Right? Right?
Surely Konami doesn’t think PES2008 sold well on its own merits? Because if they do think that, PES is in big trouble. The kind of trouble from which there is no coming back.
The more I look at the videos coming out of Leipzig, the more worried I get. Yes, I wished for a Hi-Def PES5, and IF that’s what’s truly on offer then I’ll gladly take it. But I’m looking at these videos, and hearing these hands-on reports from players at Leipzig, and what I’m seeing and hearing is: welcome to PES2008 part 2.
This is the nightmare scenario: that Konami and/or Team Seabass felt no need to change what for them is a winning formula, and pressed on with a tweaked version of last year’s (in my view) disgraceful excuse for a PES game. My greatest fear all year has been that PES2009 would be merely a touched-up PES2008. Almost everything I’ve seen and heard so far from the Leipzig exhibition hall just reinforces that fear.
The only gleam of hope thus far has been the WENB hands-on preview. They also seem to be bemused by the appearance of the game at Leipzig. Debate currently rages across several PES forums as to whether or not the game at Leipzig is an older version of the game than the one played by WENB. And, if the versions are different, which version is the one we’ll get to play? Confusion reigns. There’s some extremely bitter in-fighting going on in the PES community right now. It’s like the Fall of Rome out there.
The acid test will come with the demo, which I now hear will appear for both the 360 and PS3 “in the week of release”. Hmmm.
It’s all very worrying. I don’t know what to think. On the one hand we have WENB’s (and others’) testimony that PES2009 is a next-gen PES5. Once again I have to say that, if true, I’ll take it and be very happy about it.
But is it true, though? Really?

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