I have been keeping myself busy with PES 2009, Become a Legend mode for the last two weeks. I have looked at the Be a Pro mode on Fifa 2009 and I find myself thinking: “Wow, Konami has done this right!”.

Become a Legend mode is what this should be all about, what I have been dreaming since I was a small kid and playing soccer games on Commodore 64. My dream was to start a career being a 16-17 year old kid on a small team and climb your way up to be “the” player on world’s top clubs.

This is what Konami build with PES 2009, and it is available on PSP -our favorite console-. I have been doing my best on my mid-level English club to make assists, score goals and help my defense. The game is more than I have ever asked for with transfer offers, watching the game from the bench after you had bad performance or your teammates seeming to build confidence in you so they pass the ball to you more often.

On the EA side, FIFA 2009’s Be a Pro mode seems to be more shallow, where you pick up a real player (Steven Gerrard anyone?) and you play to achieve some goals. Well this is OK in some aspects, but giving the ball to your keeper and receivng it back 20 times does not make you a better player. Also, football is not always about statistics. PES 2009 only gives you a ranking at the end. Well, this is what we need.

Overall, I really liked the way PES 2009 Become a Legend mode turned out to be, and I believe I will be playing season over season until I am bored or get all the awards there are. Though I have to say that this mode is really hard even in a “regular” setting where you really depend on your teammates. A final tip, try to choose a team with a strong defense as all your efforts can go down the drain with a trivial error on your defence lineup.

Last few weeks have been all Killzone: Liberation for me. This old gem was keeping me busy with its fine single player campaing, challanges and impressive online capabilities including “infrastructure mode” support.

For a change, I laid my hands on the recently released Rockstar arcade racing titles “Midnight Club LA Remix”. Today I will share my first impressions which are not bad honestly but I can say that my expectations were much higher.

One can say that this game is a polished NFS iteration in terms of visuals, because it seems to be using the GTA engine (if this is how it is called). The game looks brilliant. You can play during the day and the night and the views of the sunset is absolutely gorgeous. Cars look fine, the city looks fine.

But a racing game is not just looks. It is also the atmosphere, the races, the cars, the feeling of speed. These are well done in this game, but there is a sense of arcadeness. The cars feel like the made-up cars of the GTA series. They bounce a lot but the handling is too good. This game is not a simulation like the TOCA series and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The time I have spent was fun and the difficulty level can rise quite sharply opposed to the NFS series on the handheld.

Briefly the game seems to be much better than any NFS I have tried on PSP. It is an arcade racing game so a direct comparison with the TOCA is not suitable. I believe it will probably prove to be fun the more time I spend. If I can spend any with contenders like the Force Unleashed, PES 2009 and Killzone.

See you next time…

For a long time I have been itching to write a comparison between these two well known football titles on the PSP (or any other platform). Besides these two games, there is no other well known game for football enthusiast around the world.

PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) is released by Konami and was known with two different names around the world, Winning Eleven and PES. UEFA Euro 2008 is actually very similar to FIFA 2008, the final iteration of FIFA series, released by EA Sports. These two games represent two different approaches two the same genre. In this comparison we will discuss the differences between the two games and who their respective audiences are.

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EA has been releasing new titles in 2008 and the newest one in the NFS series is named Need For Speed ProStreet. It is the latest, but does it have the potential to be the greatest, we will see in this review.

The Pledge

First of all, NFSPS bring vehicle damage once more and one can say that this is a divergence from the roots of the NFS Series. NFS series has been more like arcade games in which you had the speed, the graphics and some story in the latest installments (underground and carbon). We had vehicle damage before in NFS games, the one I like was NFS4 and it has been a great challenge to play that game. When you introduce damage physics into a racing game the game almost immediately becomes harder and to some of you this may sound strange but the realism of the game drops drastically. The reason behind this is simple. If damage physics is simple, you lose realism. If it gets complex and more real then the game becomes so hard that it is almost impossible to play. What EA has done in case of NFSPS is that they have introduced a driver assisting mechanism called “Driver Persona” which is actually levels of difficulty and driving aids. This way unexperienced players can find their way in the tracks without causing much damage while seasoned players can get the full driving experience. However I should say that damage physics is also pretty simple where you get damage to your tires and engine only which affects the handling and the performance of the car. Well, enough motivation for me to keep in the track, but not that realistic and difficult to enjoy.

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