Winning Eleven PSP Hands-On Impressions

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Macca00
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Winning Eleven PSP Hands-On Impressions

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Post by dbdynsty25 »

Hmmm...thanks for the impressions. Maybe Fifa 06 will end up being a better handheld footie game...obviously it won't from a pure gameplay standpoint, but from a overall package standpoint, it might stack up pretty well.

Thanks for the impressions though...
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Post by Boltman »

dbdynsty25 wrote:Hmmm...thanks for the impressions. Maybe Fifa 06 will end up being a better handheld footie game...obviously it won't from a pure gameplay standpoint, but from a overall package standpoint, it might stack up pretty well.

Thanks for the impressions though...

Agreed, I think I am in the same lines of logic as you DB, going to stack up nicely.
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Post by 10spro »

In addition, my buddy from Osaka, is telling me that the speed of the game overall feels also quicker than the big consoles. It's harder to control a player that has the football and make any tricks because the CPU is in your face before you know it.

Part of it because of the difficulty in controlling the analog. The chants are there, it would have been nice to have the commentary specially from the Japanese guys, but it's not that big of a deal.

One thing he really likes is the tranferring of the option data from the PS2 to the PSP automatically without having to tinker with the PSP options too much. Graphics are good, but again he feels that the gameplay is in too much of a hurry. Impressions based on a 3 star play.
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Post by F308GTB »

I picked it up and I do like the play. I did have one instance of slowdown but overall the game plays great. I don't really need the commentary as it would be in Japanese anyway. Gameplay is definitely up there. If anyone wants a copy, let me know and I'll pick it up over here. It's running around 4700 Yen ($43 or so).
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Post by sportdan30 »

Is Virtua Tennis available where you are? I know it's been out in Europe for a couple weeks. If it is, I'll gladly pay you back.
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Post by ScoopBrady »

F308GTB wrote:I picked it up and I do like the play. I did have one instance of slowdown but overall the game plays great. I don't really need the commentary as it would be in Japanese anyway. Gameplay is definitely up there. If anyone wants a copy, let me know and I'll pick it up over here. It's running around 4700 Yen ($43 or so).
Is there an English menu option?
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Post by F308GTB »

sportdan30 wrote:Is Virtua Tennis available where you are? I know it's been out in Europe for a couple weeks. If it is, I'll gladly pay you back.
Nope. Not out in Japan.
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Post by 10spro »

No, but if you have the same game on the PS2, you can data link both systems, giving you the option that you have saved on your PS2.
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Post by Blublub »

Great review, Lavan. This curbed my enthusiasm somewhat and I was braced for a letdown when my copy finally arrived yesterday. My rambling first thoughts follow.

First Impressions:

After what seemed like an interminable wait, my copy (actually the first of two) arrived yesterday.

I don't have WE9 PS2, and skipped W8LE, so it took a little while to slog through the Japanese menus since they are slightly different. Fortunately the main screen is in English and the submenus have little icons that help identify what they are.

My first reaction was, uh oh, this sucker has load times that rival the worst of the EA games. Even after going through the initial option file save, it probably took a good two minutes to load up my first test match. Strangely enough, though, it hasn't happened since then. Load times are definitely not fast, but they are pretty bearable - maybe a minute between matches.

The second reaction is WTF, only League and Friendly matches? This is a huge let-down. Why is there no cup mode, at least? We're not talking rocket science here. For chrissakes WE GBA had cup mode! I can understand no ML mode to get it out the door, and the compromises that had to be made for the sake of avoiding slowdown, but this one remains incomprehensible. I'm still not sure how much replay value will suffer because of this.

In setting up that first match, I realized it is a bear to make out the team logos with only that and Japanese team names to go by. Some are pretty easy, but get into the bowels of, say, La Liga where it seems that every side has the same shield-based logo, and it can get pretty tough. I'm hoping this can be rectified in edit mode or with one of the option file downloads online. But more on that later...

After struggling through the match menus, I think I've arrived at what I want. A few other observations about the interface - the kit graphics on the selection screen are really pathetic. I miss the full animations of the past PS2 versions, and am not sure if this is necessary in the port to PSP or if this is the way it is in this year's console version. It's a small point, nonetheless.

It loads...and loads...and loads. I would later discover that hitting a button to speed the process does nothing other than skip through the lineup screens. I soon stop doing this since it's much better to look at the lineup screens than the plain grey background you get if you skip these.

Finally, we come to the familiar WE scene at the start. Right there I'm wowed by the graphics - they are truly faithful to the PS2 version. But once the wow wears off, I immediately think the camera is too close. I knew there was no wide mode going in, but this was closer than I anticipated. Having always played wide with camera angle 3, or even "birdseye" at times, I wonder if this is going to kill the whole experience for me...

After the opening kick all previous gripes fade away quickly. It takes about 15 seconds to realize that here you have 100% WE goodness in the palm of your hand. There seem to be no compromises in the game-play department. Many hours off continuous play later I realize that this is probably the first PSP title where you forget you're even playing a handheld. It is that good.

I'm not sure how many of the changes are unique to the PSP version or were introduced in the series since WE8/PES4, but game-play seems to have never been better. In my first La Liga match as Barca, Eto'o and Ronaldinho were firing with deadly accuracy en route to a 5--1 drubbing of Santander (if I remember correctly). But fatigued by the match schedule further down the line, I was forced to start Maxi Lopez who couldn't shoot his way out of a paper bag. Lack of finishing cost me a shock 1-0 defeat at Mallorca.

Other things seem much improved. It is much easier to shoot low with power now, although it is definitely dependent on the skills of the person shooting. Guys with pace can sometimes outrun slow defenders. CPU Marking seems to be not quite as tight and first touches can be iffy if skills are low. On the down side, the refereeing is as suspect as ever, although there seems to be fewer red cards for your guys than in WE8. Come to think of it, I have yet to see the CPU get a booking of any sort. There are also still too many cheap fouls called in the box leading to penalties. And finally, is it just me or is the advantage rule STILL broken?

In the grand gameplay scheme of things, hese are very minor gripes. The beauty of the series, the variety of goals and unpredictable outcomes, remain fully intact. This alone should bring people back to the game like crackheads for just one more fix, despite the lack of cup and ML modes.

It really is the ideal PSP title. Sleep mode is a godsend. Watching Man U-Benfica this morning (out here), I got in the first half on the PSP during half time, put it to sleep and picked it up again immediately after the real match was over.

I should note that after the first friendly I wasted no time in downloading the option file from Evo-Web, and it makes a world of difference. It's not perfect - some of the team names and names of Asian players are not translated and apparently transfers for the Italian sides aren't complete. I'm fairly sure the former is a limitation of the editor. Further it is powerless to change the kit design of the non-licensed sides (the single-striped Newcastle is particularly bad), but it does add proper sponsors and logos to these. It seems that all the latest transfers are here, as are real names for the sides with fictitious players (US, Netherlands, Germany, etc.)

Gripes, I do have a few. Most of them echo what Lavan and others said before. But some things are going to bother each person more than others. So here's my take:

Things that Bother Me More Than I Thought:

- Lack of cup mode
- Inability to translate licensed team names
- The blue and white nets. While they are rendered and animated beautifully, call me a purist but if we're going to have only one set of nets I'll take plain white.

Things that Bother Me Less Than I Thought:

- Two grounds. The constraints of the close view make you forget this pretty quickly.
- Lack of commentary. I love Kabira as much as anyone so I thought this would be a major knock. Still, after a few matches I grew to actually like just the ambient noises. The tinny little "thwack" that accompanies each kick does get pretty annoying, though.
- Slowdown. I still have a very hard time with the slowdown in the box on WE8 PS2 so I expected to have big issues with slowdown here. But I'm pleasantly surprised to find that only rarely is it even noticeable, and then has no impact on game-play. At all other times the frame-rate is silky smooth.
- Control issues. Everyone is going to have their personal preference here but so far I've seemed to manage just fine with the analog nub. It is nice that the game seems to offer a variety of control schemes, even if I can't figure out what it all means just yet.
- The lack of wide view. This surprises me, but I am not bothered anywhere near as much as I thought by the close-in perspective. Actually it plays like a different game from wide view - you need to know your squad assignments and to rely on the surprisingly functional radar. The wide-screen aspect ratio also helps you see more of what's going on where it counts. All that aside, I would still like to see wide view in the PSP version in the future. I'd imagine it was removed because of frame-rate issues, but once Sony gets off their butts and officially sanctions running at 333 MHz maybe it can be restored. You can mimic wide view in the replays and these seem to run fine without stuttering, so they must be close.
- Lack of half-time and end--game highlights. I thought I'd really miss these but have come to realize that I usually skipped them anyway. It should be noted that the in-game replays are exactly as in the console version, which is fine for me.

Neutral/Still deciding:

- It's probably just me, but something just seems a little off with the proportions of the players to the pitch. They seem just a little too big or the pitch too small. Or maybe it has something to do with changed ball physics, but it seems like deflections sometimes travel too far.
- Weather effects and and on-pitch ref would be nice, but not the end of the world.
- I still suck at set pieces. I've practiced for years and I can remember exactly one goal direct from a free kick. That's probably just me, though.
- Whether I can live without cup mode and whether the replay value will take a hit.
- The overall pace is maybe slightly more frantic than I would have liked.

Nice Surprises:
- There is a full practice mode, albeit sans challenges.
- All the stats from the console are there, with the exception of those exclusive to the ML.
- Licensed kits for La Liga, Serie A, Dutch league and a handful of others including Arsenal and Chelsea. Thankfully Konami seems to be working on this, and an improvement over the handful that were in WE8. Full and accurate logos for everyone in the edited option files.
- The goal variety. Not really a surprise but oh so great to see it's still there. In ten matches or so I've seen a few freakish goals I never have seen before, including one where the keeper anticipated a flick-on from Eto'o of a through ball that he instead allowed to go through and trickle into the back of the net. Very nice stuff.
- Can be tricked into thinking it is running 2.0. Very important in my book, as it should allow for custom kits and other mods in the future. I know a graphic editor is being worked on. So if you're thinking this might be the time to upgrade to 2.0, you might want to give it another thought. Hopefully that bricked rumor is just that ;)

Questions:
- There seems to be two logo editors in-game, but I'm not sure what either does. Anyone have any ideas?
- The slowdown is far from a gamekiller, but it's still there at times. Anyone know if there are loaders that work with WE that let you change the clock speed? I tried FastLoader 0.7 but it just freezes.
- I still suck at set pieces. I've practiced for years but in all my WE-playing days, I can remember exactly one goal direct from a free kick. Anyone have any tips?
- It looks like there is some pretty cool profile-tracking features, but they seem to be for online matches only. Anyone know if these can be turned on for one-player vs. CPU?
- Anyone know how to assign the chip shot to a double-click as in past versions? That's one thing I can't live without but can't seem to find it in the control options.
- Anyone with the ProEvo 5 PC demo care to post some screenshots of the menus to assist in translating? There's no broadband out here so that huge download is pretty much out of the question.

Summary:

In short, there are some disappointments about the missing modes, but in the game-play department where it really counts it is everything I had hoped for. It REALLY IS essentially a miniature clone of its big console brethren, as others have stated, which is absolutely f-ing fabulous.

That said, if I were on the fence I'd definitely wait for PES5 PSP to come out in late October and hope that they don't monkey with the engine too much. Fernando of menu translation fame has stated that he won't be doing a PSP version (since he doesn't have) so it's probably worth three weeks' wait to pick up a fully-English version. All the stats from the console version are there and it would be great to get these in a language that can be understood.

But, if you're a fan of the series (and who isn't) and have a PSP, you owe it to yourself to pick it up in some form. Overall a very solid first effort by Konami and should result in portable football gaming bliss that hasn't been possible since the old WE GBA.

The other two soccer titles out in the US are far from crap. I really like the way FIFA is headed (and the huge variety of sides and modes), and there's a lot to enjoy in WTS (like the unlockables and the deliberate dive button). Still, these aren't in the same league as WE PSP primarily for that sense that only iin WE do you never know what is going to happen next in a match.
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Post by Macca00 »

F'ing brilliant review blub! I'm finished my WE:UE review for MG but I'm away from home right now so I won't be posting it until this weekend. Anyway, I agree with you on almost all of your points. Unfortunately for me, many of those "Things that Bother Me Less Than I Thought" bother the s*** out of me - especially the camera angle and the analog nub. I've finally managed to get used to the d-pad's diagonals (so I can use the nub for analog passing) but the lack of R2 and L2 buttons still hampers the gameplay for me.

I'm actually looking more forward to Fifa 2006 PSP!

Anyway, if you like WE:UE's gameplay, you'll be really happy with WE9 as it's the same engine just more polished (because of the extra controls, camera stuff, and more options).

Use HK's UMD Loader 0.8 and you can turn up the speed to 333Mhz and it gets rid of the slow-down and the little bit of ghosting that's present.
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Post by Blublub »

Thanks Macca. Don't get me wrong, just because some things don't bother me as much as I thought doesn't mean they still don't bother me - everything on your list is certainly valid and hopefully Konami will address these in future versions.

I too am really looking forward to this year's FIFA. I haven't been able to say that with a straight face for like five years now. The first PSP version was very solid. The only real beefs I had were the lack of stat tracking (no league/cup leaders or assists tallied), and the long-standing complaints of too little variation between strength of sides and lack of goal variation (although both were vastly improved over past titles in the series). That said it does do a lot right. The pace of the matches is dead on. The little touches are great, like customized supporter banners for nearly all sides and the huge selection of grounds (particularly compared to WEPSP).

I still definitely miss the Master League in WE9 PSP, which I neglected to mention. It's fair enough to give them a pass for not including this in the initial release, but I certainly hope it is there in future versions. Some sort of career mode (better than the one in FIFA 2005 console) would be a great addition to FIFA as well. If you have licenses for lower divisions as EA does, it seems a shame that you can't replicate relegation/promotion even in a rudimentary form.

Thanks for the tip on Loader .8, which I will definitely try out. Since the earlier message, I did see some pretty significant slowdown in the box during one match with Barca at Villareal. I have no idea what made that different than the rest, but fortunately that's the only notable case of slowdown I've experienced. Still it would be nice to eliminate it all. For whatever reason I'm not seeing the ghosting issue, but I think it has more to do with the peculiarities of my eyesight than anything else.

In all these things, Sony needs to officially sanction 333 MHz now! It seems like half the games suffer from slowdown issues out of the box. I would bet that most would gladly trade a little battery life for smooth gameplay.
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Post by Feanor »

PESFan has some good FK guides. I have scored 30+ in the four months I've owned WE8 Intl for the Xbox so if you have some specific questions maybe I can answer them. It took me many hours of experimenting on the training ground before I got decent at taking free kicks.

http://www.pesfan.com/bulletin/showthread.php?t=53147

http://www.pesfan.com/bulletin/showthread.php?t=84290
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Post by Blublub »

Thanks Feanor, those look like solid tips. Seems like I've tried everything by now, but I'll certainly give these a go.[/i]
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Post by Macca00 »

Full review of WE PSP:

http://st39.startlogic.com/~maccasga/reviews/WEPSP.htm

I gave it the same score as Fifa PSP.
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Post by dougb »

Macca00 wrote:Full review of WE PSP:

http://st39.startlogic.com/~maccasga/reviews/WEPSP.htm

I gave it the same score as Fifa PSP.
"Don’t bother to import this and be sure to try BEFORE you buy when it comes out in Europe and North America. As for me, I suspect Fifa 2006 PSP will be garnering most of my handheld soccer gaming time this year."

Picks jaw up off floor, applies wire and adhesive to fix it back in place before heading off to orthodontic surgeon!!! :wink:

It's a real sign of how much Fifa's gameplay has improved and how little effort Konami have made (well, none at all really) in improving the options and licenses for what should be, and generally is, hands down the runaway greatest video sports series of all time. It's sad when the absolute brilliantness of the game engine is partially offset by the complete lack of effort on the licensing side.

Best wishes,

Doug
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Post by geehep »

i can't buy something that got a 78. i was looking forward to it too.
my coworker buys any PS2 and PSP sports title that comes out so I'll just borrow his soccer games when they are released.
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Post by ScoopBrady »

Well, I've finally had a chance to play this game and I'm very impressed with the game. I can't understand the menus and I've never played a Japanese version before so I am pretty much limited to playing single games. I can't even sub players or change my tactics because I don't know the menus well enough. I can't comment on modes or anything because of the whole translation issue but I can say that the action on the pitch is top notch. Definitely like having a portable version of everybody's favorite footy title.
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