With the addition of online gameplay to the best soccer engine in the world, Winning Eleven 9 is worth a purchase, but it still somewhat feels like the American release of last year's Winning Eleven 8: Live Wire more than its own standalone game. Does it improve on the last game as dramatically as 8 trumped 7. Is Winning Eleven 9 better than Winning Eleven 8? Yes. Of course, for 360 owners, all of this talk could become a moot point if backwards-compatibility support comes out for this game, as the button layout with the left and right blisters feels more natural than the Controller S. It's an advantage that balances out the flaws of playing on an Xbox controller versus using a PS2 controller. Rather than typing on a keyboard or using generic phrases, players can talk as they would in any Live game. Players still have the option to play in either English or Spanish, and most importantly, Xbox Live supports the headset. It's a fairly barebones experience, but is still significantly better than the PS2 experience. Xbox Live performs significantly better than Konami's PS2 online setup, although it doesn't seem to indicate how many players are online the way that the PlayStation does, and there are no scoreboards. For soccer fanatics looking to take it to the next level, though, Master League is as deep as it was when I couldn't run it properly in WE 7 or 8 without crashing and burning. Take it from someone who lost so much that the game ended. And it's not easy if you're more skilled on the pitch than in the virtual office. That means keeping the players happy, making salary requirements, and keeping the team in the league, if not taking them to the cup. In this mode, players take on the role of club manager. On the sunnier side of things, Master League is back in full swing, and it's exceptionally deep, just as it always is. But that's something totally separate from this review. Unless you own some sort of memory peripheral. Lord forbid players go through and fix the names of each player on the national team rosters -here's a hint: the FAQ page runs 53 sheets deep. So, once again, fans of the Premiership (England), Ligue 1 (France), and Die Bundesliga (Germany) are going to spend upwards of an hour (at least) editing team names and abbreviations, as was mentioned before. A die-hard Premiership fan such as myself felt a little disappointed to see that yes, Arsenal and Chelsea are in the game, but there's still no Manchester United or Liverpool in the mix. WE 8 blew everyone away when it picked up the Spanish and Dutch clubs in addition. WE 7 was a step in the right direction with the introduction of Italian teams in the sea of hours spent fixing team and player names in the edit mode. If there's any real beef to be had with presentation and the experience, it's a lack of new licenses. The presentation has been neatened up a bit, although the super-happy Japanese house music on the menu has the high potential to grate on nerves. Nonetheless, character models look fairly realistic and decent moreso on Xbox compared to PS2 -Ronaldo looks like Ronaldo, and David Beckham looks like Beckham, and the game runs at a consistent framerate. Visually, it's still not necessarily the prettiest soccer game out there, but graphics aren't necessarily what has been a draw for the franchise it's always been more focused on creating a realistic soccer experience through gameplay rather than authentic eye candy and corporate logos. As of review time, WE 9 is not backward compatible with Xbox 360 an odd quirk considering that Pro Evolution Soccer 5, the same game (with a different name) in Europe works. If players can deal with that difference, then they will still find themselves happy with one of the richest sports titles around. If there were ever a game that should force Xbox owners to get a third party controller with black and white buttons equipped on the shoulders, it'd be this one. Certain plays are just plain hard to pull off on a Controller S, and the Dual Shock really lends itself to the gameplay style required to play. PS2 has a slight edge over Xbox, yet again, in the control department.
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