Review: Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (DS)
Score: 73
The latest in a long line of DS conversions that is ultimately a little disappointing, Pro Evolution Soccer 6 comes good in several ways and occasionally frustrates in others...
All the usual football sim features are here, from team set up, in gory detail, in that you can change absolutely everything, to strategy and then match play, with player selection using the DS Lite's shoulder buttons. There's even a neat penalty shootout feature at the end, shown below.
The good things keep on coming too, with online support for the Nintendo DS's Wi-Fi Connection, so that you can go through your home network to find opponents online. Or, if you'd rather play a friend, you can do so locally, armed with only your one Pro Soccer cartridge, beaming over the game client to a friend's game console.
Dual screen use is pretty good too, with good colours throughout. Game animation and sprites are a bit jerky and blocky, perhaps tailored to the relatively low power of the Nintendo DS and DS Lite's processor.
Once a game's underway, the action's quite smooth apart from slowdowns on the occasional goal mouth gatherings, when the sheer number of sprites on screen conspire to load the DS down too much.
Also sometimes slow is the action when playing over Wi-Fi, with pauses while the Internet link keeps things in sync with someone (potentially) on the other side of the world.
Finally, there are almost no sound effects - did the developers run out of money? Still, many people play games in family rooms or cars with the sound off anyway, so this isn't a huge failing.
Still, there's quite a lot to like here and football fans will have enough to cheer.