In the past, the annual tangos between PES and its main rival FIFA were little more than mere formalities, strictly one-sided affairs with EA's title, resplendent in an outfit tailored to extenuate its fine features and encrusted with its expensive, licensed jewels, left completely flat-footed by the superior skills of Konami's game, which by comparison looked like a hick from the sticks who could barely string together a dosido. However, prancing around in football boots is about as risky as trying to do the same thing in high heels and last year Pro Evo got its routine badly wrong and ended up falling right on its face. So with this season's FIFA already receiving a 9 for its performance in our PS3 review how will pro Evolution Soccer 2009 fare? Well, ladies and gentlemen, please clear the floor because we've got a dance off on our hands.

For a long time, FIFA was EA's WAG; the huge amounts of money the company has spent on its presentation has given the game's looks a flamboyance that Liberace, let alone Konami, can't compete with. Consequentially, and partially intentionally, PES appears decidedly retro in style, more mid-gen than next-gen. Take for example the player models. You know when you're in your local supermarket and you think you spot Francesco Totti over by the 3 for 2 tinned spaghetti, but when you get closer you realise it's not him at all? Well, PES suffers from the same problem. From the standard match view the guy playing up front for Roma looks like the Italian striker but none of the players move particularly uniquely and when you see him up close he doesn't look like Mr Totti at all; he doesn't even look particularly Italian. The animations vary between the good, the bad and the boring, gliding serenely along through choreographed moments but quickly losing their smoothness during slow and clunky transitions and their interest due to frequent repetition. Inside the stadiums, the PES experience builds to an atmospheric crescendo. There's some nice lighting, the pitches are so well tended that it's like knocking the ball around on a parquet floor and the thousands who pack the stands around them are extremely vocal; it's just a shame their songs are all generic. The commentary from Jon Champion and Mark Lawrenson also doesn't inspire; their disjointed, often off key comment and Lawrenson's long periods of silence means that there isn't a warmth and believable camaraderie between the two of them. Instead, they sound like a second rate team; the guys who are always doing the European games on ITV4 while David Pleat works his incomparable descriptive magic over on the main channel.

Konami has worked hard to address Pro Evo's previous lack of official content by securing the exclusive rights to the UEFA Champion's League. Its capture is a giant coup - the world's most glamorous club competition and a tournament that EA has devoted entire games to in the past - but with the floor under Europe's most dazzling lights all to themselves, the developer has surrounded it with a mismatched partnership of licensed and unlicensed content and every misstep casts a long shadow. Although rights to most of this year's competing teams have been obtained, a few are missing creating matches like London F.C. vs. Bordeaux, which you can't even find on the red button on Sky. Almost half of the sides in La Liga and all but Manchester United and Liverpool from the Premiership have been given made up names like Middlebrook and West Midlands Village, which make them sound like they compete in a local under nine's league, and despite being the official game of the Merseysiders, while the new Wembley is amongst the nineteen stadiums, Anfield is not. The game is also missing all but the big three from Portugal and the entire Bundesliga, as well as a whole handful of late transfers like Robinho's escape from Madrid and Berbatov's kidnapping by United. At least this year the players' names are correctly spelt, which means that Andre Arshavin escapes the possibility of having his changed to something like Andrew Arsehaven. With content so cobbled together, PES needs a comprehensive editing mode and, thankfully, it has possibly the most complete one ever featured in a football game. Images, such as faces and badges, and sound files, like crowd chants, can all be imported to help alter and create players and teams - and while the breadth of options isn't quite matched by their ease of use, the investment of some time, and possibly a little assistance from the PES community, brings pleasant results.

With the issues that crippled last year's game now resolved, a basic match engine that still hasn't changed much since the series' glory days on the PS2 is revealed. It may be longer in the chin that Bruce Forsyth and provide games with a chess-like nature - passes need to be precise and planned, shots snappy but not snatched at - but PES 2009 also plays faster, looser and not as calculated as before. Skill moves have been incorporated into the standard directional controls, making pirouetting around the pitch easier than ever and of all the player attributes, speed is still king. This makes matches frenetic and fun but also causes problems; often it seems like the game wants to go faster than the canned animations will allow, leading to an uneven rise and fall in tempo. Shots are too powerful, resulting in goalkeepers parrying far too often and matches are niggly - way too niggly. Whether you're controlling players with the left stick or the d-pad, the eight possible directions you can move in have never felt so rigid or changing from one to another such a jarringly obvious event. These tendencies, combined with small things like the tighter camera angle, the icon above players' heads and the game telling you that "an injury has been discovered" gives PES 2009 a slight Japanese arcade football game edge; not surprising considering its roots but something the series hasn't really shown before. There's a hint of SEGA's Virtua Striker and, dare we say it, PES's long vanished stepbrother, International Superstar Soccer. It all just feels a bit shallower than FIFA. There's no equivalent to that title's Live Season or Custom Team Tactics and while building a team from scratch in Master League remains a challenge, there are even options that make this less hardcore.

The inclusion in last year's FIFA of 'Be a Pro' mode left Konami in a difficult position. Implement a similar feature and they'd be accused of copying, fail to do so and their game would be criticised for its absence, especially since they previously had something along the same lines in their Winning Eleven series. In what could be called a 'move of recognition' then, PES 09 introduces 'Become a Legend', a mode that's essentially the same as Be a Pro; rather than playing as a whole team, you create a player and then literally fill his boots, controlling only him in matches, covering every blade of grass and kicking every ball he does, trying to get him from young hopeful to club and national team player, dealing with all the trials and transfers along the way. It's engrossing and Konami has tinkered with the idea, predominantly giving you more freedom; a full career that starts at the age of seventeen rather than FIFA's paltry four seasons and the ability to make more decisions yourself rather than having an invisible assessor sitting in the stands, constantly instructing you. You can even hold down a button and the AI will move your player for you and there's no distracting shaky camera effect every time you get near the goal. The lack of guidance though also makes the experience a little detached; beyond obvious aspects like scoring goals, you're given little idea of what the game considers good or bad, which can lead to a tendency to overlook your team duties, particularly during the tedious training matches, and the lack of the option to play as a defender is bound to upset some.

Online, PES is also disappointing when compared to its competition; while up to seven players can take part in offline matches, the number online is restricted to four. The options for play are standard at best, with one-on-one challenge matches or the chance to pair up with another player being the bread and butter, and the amount of screens you need to navigate through to start and the lag that can crop up and ruin the experience seriously make you consider if it's all worth it. At least the online Legend mode has more structure to it, although, once again, you're limited to very simple games featuring up to a quartet of competitors.

It's sometimes strange to consider how quickly the two main performers in the world of football videogames have changed their styles. FIFA is now the American Smooth of the genre, classic, elaborate and elegant, while PES is like a Cha Cha Cha; faster and livelier but also seen as somewhat outdated. After last year's Pro Evo, Producer Shingo "Seabass" Takatsuka and his team went back to the basics because they were broken. This year they need to go back to them again and actually change them, because until they do, PES will remain an enjoyable game but not one that people will make the song and dance about that they used to.

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).

Read external PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2009 reviews on ciao.