Managing your gameplay strategy is made easy for beginners in the set up menu by selecting the "simple settings," players can manage their team's positions, formations, and tactics by choosing auto-adjust options labeled "attack," "defense," and the like. Teammates actually get into the right positions and the enemy also acts and behaves like real players would. They're incredibly lifelike, making such visuals as dribbling fun to watch (and fun to control) bone-cracking tackles can look pretty sick both in a good (realistic) and a bad (makes you pity the player) way. Speaking of physics, player motions are some of the best to be seen in the series. The ball doesn't gravitate to a player's feet and contains some of the most realistic physics for ball movement. Moving onto the gameplay, in general, it's solid as usual. That means seven people can play a match offline at the same time.
Interestingly, PES 2009 makes good use of the PS3's maximum number of controller ports - which is seven. Getting right into the footy action, we chose which countries were going to duke it out and then proceeded to pick our sides. Not one to shy away from a challenge, we hit the latest build of PES 2009 this past Tuesday and we quite enjoyed our friendly match.
The series has been known to always get the footy crowd going this leaves the latest entry - Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 - with some mighty spikes to fill. If you've come to love soccer football not only as a sport but as a videogame, then chances are you've played the Pro Evolution series.