The audio hasn’t been upgraded either. While there is play by play and commentary in the game, other sports games (including FIFA) have even gone so far as to include pre-game commentary, talking about the team’s achievements and what to expect. This game pretty much says the same thing over and over – most of the “commentary” is just mentioning player names as they touch the ball, followed by some discussion about whether a foul or card was justified. It’s better to have the commentary than not having it, but it’s pretty plain vanilla.

The Gameplay is still the best of any soccer game out there. As mentioned before, there are just so many moves to memorize, it can make the game difficult – but once you’ve mastered them you will do very well online!

The game interface needs a lot of work – and this has been a common problem of the Winning Eleven series. It’s very unintuitive – you’re always trying to figure out what button does what – even if you have read the manual. The way the game shows ratings is on a pentagram – which really doesn’t help very much.

I am pleased to report that there were no incompatibilities when playing the game on a PlayStation 3 and that online play works fine, once you have set up the “fake” PlayStation 2 memory card and PlayStation 2 internet settings. Unlike EA games, you’ll have to create a new login for this soccer game (a login from last year’s Winning Eleven game will not work). It would have been nice to bring your old stats forward, but that is not the case. There is an option for “multi platform” settings so that, according to the manual, you can play cross platform, but this option isn’t available on the Xbox 360. I would assume that cross platform is only available on PS2 to PC, but that’s just a guess on my part.

There are plenty of online stats available and you’ll start in the worst division and work your way up as you earn victories. You can also be relegated if you start playing poorly. It’s pretty cool to have this kind of system in a soccer game.

Overall WEPES 2007 is a fun game, but I was expecting more – new additions, a graphical makeover, better audio etc. The ability to link to the PSP version of the game is nice, but I doubt many people will use it. Konami needs to stop resting on the reputation of Winning Eleven and work on catching up to FIFA.