Pro Evolution Soccer 3 Preview

Pro Evo we do, oh pro evo we love you, we do, oh Proooo EEEeeeevo we loooove yoooou.<br><br>It's the daddy. It owns us all. It's the best footy game around. You know it, you love it, and you?ve probably got it.<br><br>It's back for more this November<br><br>Pro Evo 3 will offer more of the highest quality football possible on a console as Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo strives to improve on last year's outing.<br><br>There are some big changes in store, and we hope this isn't just PR bluster. For a while we were getting a little concerned that Konami could settle into a lazy EA style of just bringing seasonal updates to the table with no real leaps forward. Thankfully our doubts have been completed unfounded, for Pro Evo 3 it seems that KCET will be re-working the majority of the game - not to say it needed that, but we always like to see new ideas.<br><br>Where to start, well, the basics; apparently 80% of the animations will be re-worked, we assume this is working from Winning Eleven 6 Final Edition, which appeared on GameCube and PS2 in Japan shortly after Pro Evo 2 was released in Europe - featuring a 30% increase in animations and an online roster update. The keepers should look a lot better as should all the rest of the players, as Pro Evo 3 / Winning Eleven 7 will include proper facial animations for the first time. These animations will change as the game goes on - well we'd be worried if they all had a continual pained expression like Max Payne! We assume this means that the faces on your players will reflect how they are feeling at that point in the game along with their physical condition. To be fair, this is just playing catch up with most other sports games out there, however we hope Konami can pull it off better than the rest.<br><br>Players will also choose their kits to suit the occasion, so short sleeves for hot, long for cold, or something similar we guess. Will they gasp in horror when you dress them up in a rather dodgy looking kit we ask ourselves???<br><br>Konami claim that Pro Evo 3 will feature an entirely new graphics engine (although we have our doubts) to allow for improved ball physics and fancier moves, such as flicking it over your head or powerful long-range shots that are easier to control. There will also be more situation and player specific moves, which should help to keep things that little more realistic. Interestingly there will now be off the ball moves as well; we're not entirely sure what this means, however we're guessing that this could become very interesting when you have more than one player on the same team, spinning of the shoulders of defenders to beat the offside trap with players like little Michael Owen perhaps...<br><br>We just hope one thing. <br><br>You know it's needed but this needs to be lifted off the chest. <br><br>WIDE SCREEN MODE PLEASE KONAMI!!!<br><br>Ahem, I'm okay now...<br><br>Crowd numbers will reflect the popularity of the teams playing, so don't expect a huge turnout for your bottom of division three scrappy matches! From what we have seen so far the crowd looks to be very much improved over the previous games (can't be hard - Ed), but let's just hope they animate with more than about 4 frames a second! <br><br>Away from the pitch there will be major re-workings to the Master League, now featuring four divisions and numerous cup modes. More importantly we've heard Konami has been working hard to secure the appropriate licenses, so hopefully Dutch players will no longer be named 'Oranges12' and clubs / players will sport their proper names and likenesses.<br><br>Interestingly there is now a shop mode where you can buy all sorts of wonderful things; stadiums, crowd effects, teams, players, strategies and hairstyles just to mention a few. It's like Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, but with men and not at all disturbing (and good??? - Ed), honest... To open up new content, you can earn cash from training and exhibition modes, we just hope there's a truckload of stuff to go with the amount we play Pro Evo.<br><br>You will also now be able to choose referees before matches, bah the N64 ISS series always had this, and you can, if you so desire, play an entire match as just one player - which could be interesting when there's lots of people playing on one team. A novelty perhaps, but it could allow for some recreation of Namco's interesting title 'Libero Grande' - allowing experimentation with a closer camera angle for one-player naturally.<br><br>We still don't know whether the online roster update will make it into Pro Evo 3, it was a feature in Winning Eleven 6 Final Edition and will be included in the Japanese release of Winning Eleven 7; we hope it gets into the European release, but it won't be the end of the world if it doesn't. Just so long as we can edit stuff easily and apply our unlicensed patches.<br><br>We will keep you up to speed with Pro Evo 3, this is just a first look, expect hands on reports from Winning Eleven 7 and as much information on PE3 as and when we get it.