Wed, February 22, 2006

'Winning Eleven' will humble you. Winning Eleven 9: As good as it gets 'Winning 11' is football heaven

As the second soccer franchise to arrive on the PSP, and released long after the popular and high quality FIFA series established itself as the high mark in the genre, Winning Eleven 9 does a great job in providing an experience different and noticeably separate from the EA standard. And depending on what you’re looking for in a soccer game, very likely a superior one. Winning Eleven 9 takes a very serious and detailed approach to the game of soccer, and if I learned one thing while playing, it’s that aside from that rule about not using your hands, I know nothing relevant about how the game of soccer is truly played.

I would imagine that Winning Eleven has that same effect on many people, even those overly confident in their soccer skills. It’s not just the large variety of available moves on the field that is overwhelming, such as the 5 shot types or the 18 different types of passes, but the absolutely staggering variety of control over your players off the field. Thankfully there is always the option of bypassing the tricky stuff and just hopping into a quick match with everything set to default.

Should you choose to exert your absolute control over your squad, the first thing you must decide on is which players to use, and in which positions. You can then alter their actual locations on the field using a series of defaults settings, such as attack, defensive and counter-attack formation, or you can move each individual player to any location on the field that you choose. You can also individually alter each players AI settings, such as their tendency towards offensive or defensive mindedness, determining their preferred angle of attack and defense and many other settings that will change how that player reacts on the field. Team strategy offers just as many options, allowing you to choose general strategy settings before the match, and select four specific strategies, such as counter-attacks and offside-traps, which you can execute throughout the course of the match.

Once the match begins you are treated to some of the best graphics seen to date on the PSP. As with what has now become the standard with PS2 conversions, the PSP version looks identical, if not better than the original console version. The large and colorful screen does a great job of showing the action on the field, with zero frame rate problems, and absolutely no noticeable glitches. The sound effects are the standard crowd noises with the occasional grunt and impact noise from the field, though the quality is high and does a great job of immersing you into the game.

Winning Eleven 9 does a great job with its opposing team AI, which on the default setting presents quite a challenge to beginning players. No matter which difficulty setting you choose to play on, the AI never becomes cheap or repetitive, and is never easy to beat with the same set play over and over, which has often been the problem with many sports games. This keeps the game fresh over repeated play sessions, and offers great long-term replay-ability.

Only one issue can be brought up against Winning Eleven 9, and it’s a familiar problem to many PSP owners. Unfortunately there are quite substantial load times when booting the game, as well as before and after each match. It takes well over 3 minutes from the time you turn on your PSP to the first kick of the match, which may not sound like much until you spend about 1/4 of your bus ride looking at a loading screen instead of playing the game. It’s a situation familiar to PSP owners, but likely abhorrent to those used to the Nintendo DS and its ability to literally pick up and play any game 10 seconds after booting. In the game's defense, once you begin the match it's smooth sailing with no loading until the game is over, which can be anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes later.

Aside from the load times, Winning Eleven 9 offers an amazingly complete and well polished package. For soccer nuts that need the utmost control, or beginners just looking to have fun kicking the ball around for a while, Winning Eleven 9 is a beautiful and effective game of soccer that offers all the long term playability and short term action that you can ask for.

WHAM! Rating: 9 out of 10 ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) Official Web Site: 'Winning Eleven 9'