A special post today as I have finally, finally, finally played a demo for PES2008.

I managed to get in touch with one of my few remaining real-life friends (Minanda and Burchet et al unfortunately don’t count) who has two things: an Xbox 360, and a high-speed internet connection. A couple of phone calls and a bus ride later I was sitting on his couch, holding the unfamiliar bulkiness of the 360’s controller as the loading screen for the demo of PES2008 floated in front of my eyes.

First impressions, and I mean first:

It’s not as fast as people made out. It’s still fast, but it doesn’t run at the insanely fast, Defender-style pace that I was genuinely worried it might do.

The slowdown is so imperceptible as to be almost a non-issue for me. When I first saw the slowdown in a replay, I actually thought it was a feature, something deliberately inserted to add style and/or drama at key moments. Far more serious for me is the mammoth pause before the referee blows his whistle and allows you to take free kicks and penalties. It feels like an absolute age. It was mildly frustrating in the demo games I played. Time will tell if it’s even in the final game, and if so, whether it’s something I can get used to.

Gameplay: fantastic! It seems to be everything I hoped it would be. Not only is the gameplay slower-paced than I thought, but the shooting mechanic seems to have been completely revamped. In PES6 I could score first-time shots for fun. In PES2008, so far not one attempt at a first-time shot has led to a goal. Instead the ball has either skewed wildly off to the sidelines (on one occasion actually hitting the corner flag), or rolled tamely into the keeper’s waiting arms.

The shooting is heavy this year. When was the last time we had heavy shooting? It was PES5, I think, although for some reason PES4 is nuzzling at my memory right now.

As for the graphics… So many reviewers and previewers remarked that the next-gen visuals were nothing to get excited about. Well. Call me Mr Easily Pleased, but I was almost literally speechless when I saw my beloved PES playing out in full HD next-gen graphics before my eyes. The qualitative leap seems as great to me as it was from the PlayStation to the PlayStation2.

I stayed at my friend’s place for a few hours, playing about 30 games in that time, making sure to sample all the teams and all the difficulty levels.I’ve gone from being slightly underwhelmed by the prospect of PES2008 to being extremely excited again.

The only cloud on the horizon is represented in this thread over on PESfan (membership required to view). Two of the UK’s leading PES players have got their hands on advance copies of the full game on PS3. One of the players - the European champion, Rob McLean -reports that the game is insanely fast. Most worryingly of all, it seems that the PS3 version may have significant slowdown. More significant than the 360 demo version’s slowdown? It’s tough to get a straight answer out of them, as they’re being bombarded with questions from all angles, and they understandably want to play the game. But it seems likely, especially given some comments reported from Seabass himself, that the poor old PS3 has once again been afflicted with lazy-developer-itis.

Certain kinds of 360 owners are cock-a-hoop at what they see as the latest victory in their ongoing battle with the notionally superior console. Me, I don’t care about the so-called console wars. I’m not 15 years old. I just want to play my favourite game in the most ideal conditions possible. I will wait to see the quality of the PS3 version for myself. If I have to get a 360 to experience PES2008 at its optimum, that is what I will do.

Who would be a PS3 owner at this time? If in the future the smoke clears, and the PS3 does emerge to achieve its full potential, those of us who were here at the start will never forget the cold, clammy feelings we had at times like this.

Another week and still no PES2008 demo for the PS3. Sony received a copy of a demo three weeks ago now, and I am starting to feel paranoid about why it has not appeared. Given the PS3’s ongoing growing pains, you would think that Sony would break their necks to publish a demo of the first PES game for its console. So what could be the reason(s) why it has been withheld?

The most likely reason is the quality of the demo. Reports about PS3 versions of the game from the time state that the game is bedevilled with slowdown and other random bugs. The 360 demo, although it had minor bugs, did not have slowdown (or if it did, I have not seen any reports about it).

The nightmare scenario for me as a PS3-owner, and for Sony as the PS3’s owner, is that the PS3 version could appear in the week of October 26th with slowdown. Three weeks is a very brief time to resolve issues like that and get the game published. It’s most likely that the PS3 demo, wherever it is and whatever it contains, is a representation of the final build we are going to get.

Should that happen (and I sincerely hope it does not), the PS3 will receive a justified kicking from a community whose forbearance has already been severely tested; it will also receive a gleeful, unrestrained kicking from the wider gaming community - and it will be justified in both cases.

But this is probably just random, paranoid talk born of frustration and impatience. Isn’t it?