Pro Evolution Soccer

First made available on Octber 26, 2007, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 was the first soccer video game in Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer Series to use the year-based nomenclature. This is in contrast with previous entries, which were identified by "version." Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 is officially abbreviated as PES 2008, and it is known as Winning Eleven 2008 in South Korea and Japan. In addition to Windows-based PCs, the game was also released for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and Xbox 360.

PROS

Since its inception in 1996, Pro Evolution Soccer has built a reputation for being the most critically acclaimed soccer video game franchise in the planet. This is mainly due to its admirable attempts in making the video game play as close to the real thing as possible. PES 2008 continues the incremental improvements with Teamvision, its proprietary adaptive AI system. The system can adapt to any player's style of play. This gives the game a better-flowing and more tactical feel than other soccer video games.

Also, like with past iterations, the ball is treated as a separate entity. Shot timing, for instance, is completely up to the player. When the AI senses an attempt at goal building up, it makes sure that defenders begin to close up space and prevent a goal from happening. Distribution of passes works the same way, with players using the available spaces to switch the ball between them. PES 2008 has more skill-based moves than ever before, and there's more dribbling control: all combined to aid in getting past defenders.

CONS

For people used to more mechanical soccer video games, the fluidity and freedom of PES 2008 might be a little harder to master. Also, the lack of official FIFA licenses--resulting in imitations of real team and player names--might be a huge turn-off for people used to the data preciseness of the FIFA games.