PES 2013 Review

As always, PES is often seen in a negative light due to a lack of an official FIFA license, meaning there are only a few leagues and teams that are realistic in the game, compared to EA’s full database. This is again that’s something up to the fans to fix with manual patches and customization tools. Even for the rights that the game does have, for example the UEFA Champion’s League, it feels like more could have been done. The menu and field presentations are authentic, but it feels rather impersonal and like a different view of the same thing. Even the celebration of winning the actual cup is largely unchanged and feels rather short for such a great accomplishment. So if authenticity is a crucial factor for you, then sadly PES still lacks in that department.

Online competition has been tweaked slightly as well, most notably with a new opponent rating system. Depending on how often a player quits out of a match or how many fair-play community ratings a player gets from others, he will have a chance to be matched up against other like-minded and serious players more often. Master League Online is also back largely unchanged, not that there’s anything currently that needs fixing. The game does have an online pass this year, so you’ll need to enter a code before jumping in – annoyingly enough, our online code didn’t even work and we had to engage customer support to get it resolved.

PES 2013 looks and sounds well enough, but it doesn’t quite live up to FIFA’s sheer variety. The audio design stands out as particularly subpar, with a very limited soundtrack, overwhelming and low quality crowd audio that’s hardly dynamic, and commentary leaves much to be desired. Celebrations aren’t user controlled – but that actually works together with the realistic visual style to create a more satisfying celebration atmosphere than FIFA, thanks to the raw emotions of the players and group animations. Couple of technical annoyances include the excessive and very frequent loading screens, and still the inability to skip to the end of the game if your Legend player has been subbed off.

As such, Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 continues on its long run. It’s a title that offers some meaningful gameplay enhancements and a complex control scheme that any sports game would be jealous of. There are some new features here and there, but it’s all largely lost under the layers of familiarity. Lack of licensed teams and leagues, average presentation, and not a hint of any genre-defying additions make PES 2013 a decisively average but solid footy outing. It’s a step in the right direction, as always, but there is still some ways to go.