I have been a fan of sports games for a long time. Played a lot of Fifa 98, for example; a lot of NBA 95... And a lot of the later incarnations of all these games. But nothing really comes close to Winning Eleven (Pro Evolution Soccer).

This game is a lot of fun. I played hours and hours of matches during the development of 50Cent: Bulletproof against some of my coworkers. So- after I moved to another company, I still wanted to play the game and the only feasible solution was to play Master League as a single player. And here is where the problems started.
Let me first mention that I play on maximum difficulty, hoping that I will get the AI quality that is closest to playing against a real opponent. Well, playing on five starts is absolutely NOT like playing another human.

Let's start at the beginning: If an AI player touches your player - you will lose the ball. This is not even vaguely realistic, since you are constantly asked to work around this glaring flaw. At the same time, if you so much as think of pressing X while running alongside an AI opponent, they automatically get a foul.

The next problem is one of AI scoring. Now, I don't have any objections to great goals, even if I am at the receiving end. But the goals that the AI opponents score are downright ridiculous - I have had the ball bounce of the bar, hit an enemy player in the head an end up in the goal. About 90% of the goals I have received have been the result of some mayhem in front of my goal and some incredible reaction of an enemy attacker. This is not fun - especially since it always happens 2 minutes before the match finishes. There seems to be an algorithm - if the score is 0-0, dumb down the player controlled defense so they let balls just slip by, and then bounce the ball of a few players and into the net. Very frustrating.

Another problem are the referees. They always stop play when someone trips a midfielder after he managed to pass it to an attacker who is in a great position to score. The algorithm for determining advantage is positively horrendous. Alternatively, when a defender completely collides with your attacker and sends him flying wildly, there is no foul.

Passing is flawless for the AI, but your players, specifically the defenders always seem to be able to find the opposing team's attackers to pass to. Another very frustrating thing is the fact that if you have 2 players at near positions with regard to the player who has the ball and is supposed to pass, the selection of who the ball goes to is purely random.

How to solve these problems? The AI needs to be realistic, not unbeatable. The passing mechanism definitely needs improvement and increased tolerance when deciding who shall receive the pass. The advantage algorithm for the referees should probably be completely revamped...

That all being said, I am playing this game a lot- but I think that's because of my competitive spirit. I really enjoy defeating the AI since I know it is not cutting me any breaks, but I could do without the frustration of late bounce-around goals. Reading this review you might think I don't like this game, but that's not the case at all. It basically varies from love to hate depending on how I do in the last game that I played.

Overall, a step in the right direction, but a little more work is needed for this to become a true classic.