Pro Evo 4

I have it. It plays wonderfully. And yes – that’s far too gushing for what is a mere game, but there you have it. Oh…and I have it for the ps2 even though I swore I would wait for the Xbox version.

What did it for me was a visit to Graham’s. He had picked up a Slide Tool and was playing Winning Eleven Soccer 8. It was superb. Graphically a step up from Pro Evo 3 and with much better gameplay. To top it all it had been patched with English menu’s and custom music and graphics – absolute class (and if anyone is interested it was the Ole mix of Winning Eleven 8 – check out Evoweb for more info.) So I ordered a slide tool, got the Ole mix and waited patiently for Mr Postman to deliver. Then I saw a Pro Evo 4 torrent.

2 days later (1 seed for the torrent and 2000 people downloading) and I’ve been playing pro evo for the last couple of hours. Some notable improvements:

  • Player animations are increased and more life like. Players themselves look a lot more realistic
  • Improved AI – the off the ball movement of other players opens up the game. Console games are also a lot tougher than previous versions. If you are winning you can see a noticeable step up by the opposition – they really hustle you for the ball.
  • Free kicks harder (maybe just different rather than harder)
  • Speed – its fast. Really fast.
  • Referee giving you a warning and not a booking 🙂
  • Referee is now visible during play
  • Proper use of the advantage rule. If you don’t gain an advantage from it the whistle is blown and you get a free kick.
  • No slowdown at corner kicks (unlike Winning Eleven)
  • A better attempt at real player names. Team names still mince though – Old Firm Blue vs Old Firm Green? Still, there will be an option file soon enough to sort that, or you could import a PES 3 one while you wait.

There’s probably more to add to this, but you get the drift. All it needs is online support (Xbox this November) and a wide-screen option (hopefully Xbox this November…but I have my doubts).

*Update* – there is some slowdown with certain stadiums. The old ps2 just isn’t up to it. Select 50Hz at the start of the game and you should have no problems at all.

Irony

It’s a big news day for the Virgin group. Branson has announced that they intend to run a space flight service and he’s bought 5 spaceships (stuffily called spaceliners on the BBC). You too could go into space…for £100,000 or maybe less. Nice.

Today’s also the first full day for the Pendolino (tilting) service the Virgin train group are introducing. Pity the first one was cancelled. One from Glasgow has also crawled into Carlisle at 50 Mph due to technical difficulties. Still fancy that space trip?

GT4 Offline

Bit of a shock – GT4 has been an online game for PS2 since it was first announced. Now comes the news that to meet a release of this Christmas the online component has been dropped with an online GT released next year…some time. This is a good move – online gaming on the PS2 is pretty lame compared to the Xbox and PC. The GT4 prologue I played at Graham’s earlier this year promised lots – I just hope there’s a bit less emphasise on improving and tuning your car. For me this makes the game unrealistic and ultimately dull.

Europe Win the Ryder Cup

Colin Montgomerie has just holed the putt thats clinched the Ryder Cup for Europe. For the first time I’ve listened to golf on the radio (5 Live) and it’s…..difficult. It’s time’s like this that Sky is tempting. £99 for Sky+ and a monthly subscription to Sky Sports for £33 is making my mouth water but I hope the feeling will pass over the next few days.

Back to the golf – a fantastic win for Europe although the Americans looked out of sorts not helped by some odd pairings on Friday. It looks like a late night for me as I catch the highlights on BBC2.

Spread Firefox

Looks like the browser wars are back. Spread Firefox has been launched to promote the Firefox 1.0 preview release. Even the previous owner of the domain firefox.com has handed it over. Using Firefox is a joy compared to Internet Explorer, but I can’t see them overhauling IE. It really is only the geeks and the tech-savvy that are using Firefox at the moment – it will be a while before the average user downloads Firefox and understands the difference.

Magnificent Seven

What a player Larsson is. Great to see him back in Scottish football playing better than ever. In all honesty the better team won – if the game was judged on the first 20 minutes of the second half then Celtic could feel aggrieved but over the 90 minutes they were outclassed. At least there still in the Champions league!

One year on and what a difference a year makes. I’ve said elsewhere that McLeish would be out by November – I now think he’s one dodgy result away from being shown the door. The real poser is this – who could replace him and do any better?

Burnout for Real

Been playing Burnout over the weekend and apart from connection issues it’s a class game. This video from America though looks like Burnout in real life. The police try 3 times to take him out and each time he managed to regain control. The scary part is that the police tried to take him out in fairly heavy traffic – what would have happened if he hadn’t regained control?