First off, this is my first Blog post and may therefore be highly unpleasant to look at, I'll try to rectify problems as soon as I can.

Secondly, this will undoubtedly be a blatant whinge thread. Us Brits like a good bitch/moan! If you're going to be offended and/or bored, you may as well skip this and go back to making vodoo dolls of Rev Anthony, lest he live to criticise another video game.

Basically I'd like to vent my spleen here, over the shambles that is Konami's latest iteration of iits (usually) Pro Evolution Soccer series. As was well publicised at release, (5 months ago for the UK) the game had major problems with offline play, in that the framerate dropped heavily during actions of intensity. And by intensity I mean virtually every time the ball gets near the penalty area - a shame given that during any half-decent game the ball tends to spend a lot of time in that general area. Replays also suffered badly, meaning you had to watch them at around half speed in order to see what the hell actually happened. Being a rabid fanboy of the series I was willing to put up with these faults in anticipation of a patch, as promised by Konami. A matter of weeks after the release, said patch was released and lessened the problems, although they are still prevalent throughout.

But my main beef came with the online play, something that myself and virtually all other fans of the series were crying out for. (Yes, previous iterations had it but I'll damned if I can be arsed rearranging all my furniture around just to link up my PS2 with an ethernet cable!) Alas, we were majorly disappointed when it turned to be a complete sack of unplayable shit. The ball barely ever touched your feet, and when you think you've just about figured whats going on, your goal keeper has inexplicably dropped the ball from his hands and into the net. Great. (On a sidenote, I read the IGN UK review of the game, which failed to mention more or less all of the obvious problems with the game, so I was happy it would be a good buy. Turns out IGN sponsored the game and handily neglected to give it a proper review. Needless to say, I rarely visit IGN any more.)

Konami promised us a fix soon! They were hard at work sorting everything out - hurrah! The aforementioned patch did fuck all to help the online issues, and there has been nothing to sort it out thus far. 5 months of false promises from Konami, a highly respected - nay, exalted - name in the video game world. So those of us who can't stand FIFA are left with a full price game which is broken, and left wondering whether or not we should give up and switch to FIFA next year - something unheard of in recent years.

My question to you, Destructoiders - what the hell is going on with Konami and Pro Evo 2008? Will they ever patch it? Or have they just given up all hope and started work on 2009, in the hope that all of us who want a playable (maybe even enjoyable, strewth!) online game will just piss off and shut up? Either way Konami stands to lose a huge amount of revenue if they think that this is ok, along with a chunk of their previously golden reputation.