In Europe and America, Konami’s biggest soccer title has been called Winning Eleven or Pro Evolution Soccer. This year, to eliminate any confusion, Konami has put the two names together for the longest soccer title ever. Winning Eleven and FIFA have gone at it head to head for the best action title soccer crown. For years, Winning Eleven has taken the award with FIFA creeping ever so closer. Based on what I’m seeing this year, it could be the fiercest competition ever, so let’s get to the specifics.

First, I have been enjoying the original Xbox version of Winning Eleven on my Xbox 360 for some time (ever since it was made backward compatible). One of the features of the original Xbox game is that it does upscale to 480p and it looks pretty darn good, which brings me to one of the biggest let downs I have ever had with my Xbox 360. Specifically, the Xbox 360 version of the game doesn’t look that much better. This is not the game to show off HD with, that’s for sure. The ball is accurately detailed and the crowds aren’t bad, but I was expecting a lot more.

Second, most everyone is aware that Winning Eleven does not have the official FIFA blessing, so instead they have gone around and licensed teams individually, and not with a whole lot of luck. Manchester United and Arsenal are available and are represented accurately, but even major European leagues like the German Bundesliga have disappeared from this game.

This wasn’t necessarily a big deal as many people with a love of the game created GameShark file saves and re-edited everything from team kits (jerseys) to player names and so forth in order to create a realistic experience. With the Xbox 360 game, for some reason Konami thought it would be best to limit this functionality. That’s right – while you can edit player names and ability points, you can’t change team kits or team names! It’s another disappointment on a so called next-gen game.

There is one area where WEPES always shines and that’s the gameplay. The control you have over your player is simply amazing, but the manual is definitely well worth a read as there are so many moves you can make with your player – from a spin move, to a back heel, to shielding the ball. It’s much easier said than done in this game and practice makes perfect. Thankfully for those of you renting the game or who don’t have access to the manual, in game help is available and the game does show all the controls and button presses on screen, making life somewhat easier.

For those trying the game new from the FIFA series, let me make one thing clear: this game is hard even on the ‘regular’ difficulty level. The game truly plays like ‘real’ soccer and you have to plan accordingly using skill passes, crosses and headers in order to get a shot on goal. On defense you really have to work on intercepting passes and crosses as well – just playing “muckle the guy with the ball” doesn’t work very often here, unless you’re the computer when it works just fine.

All of the touches of a real soccer game are here – the fans are very much into the game, blowing whistles at inopportune times to make you think it’s the end of the half; the referee plays the advantage when necessary and makes motions on the field that are very realistic; the game does have linesmen that call offside violations, throw ins and corner kicks and players call for the ball themselves. The game really feels like soccer.

The audio and play by play commentary hasn’t changed very much over the years – it’s not repetitive but it’s not great either – it’s pretty generic. The audio of the crowd is very good and the in game music is very European rave-ish.