Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Winning Eleven: Pro Soccer 2007 (360) Impressions, Turning Into Guitar Hero II Notes

I'm very fond of the Winning Eleven series. The animations are spectacular. The gameplay is intricate and has a high degree of fidelity to real life. The PC version, Pro Evo Soccer, has been absolutely fantastic, and the user patches real players and leagues have made the game almost comprehensively accurate.

So when I say the first 360 version of the game is a letdown, it's really a letdown. This is a sorry-ass, weak effort that looks like a port from the PS2 version. It doesn't look next-gen in any way whatsoever. If I had bought this instead of renting, I would have wanted to jump off a building.

Nobody wants to ever give a version of Winning Eleven less than an 8 or 9 because of the stellar gameplay, but Konami totally coasted on this version. When the first, true next-gen version of the game comes out, I'm sure it will be stellar, but this isn't it.

Which is why, after an hour, I took it out and turned on the PS2 to play Guitar Hero II. I'm still stuck on Laid to Rest on Expert. That song is everything I don't do well wrapped up in one package.

What I've done for the last few days is go back to Hard and try to at least 4-star every song. I've done 32 of 40 which includes almost all of the first seven sets except for a couple of songs I really don't like to play (Woman is one, Freya is another). It's not much of an achievement for a good player, but for a grinder like me, it feels pretty good, especially on songs like Crazy On You.

Eli 5.6 also passed his first song in the game tonight. I never let him play for more than thirty minutes, and he hasn't played much at all in the last two months. When he does play, he usually just plays Strutter in practice mode. Tonight, though, he decided that he wanted to create a band ("The Rock Stars") and actually try to pass a song on Easy. He passed Surrender and Woman and was all amped up.

Next stop, Woodstock.

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