➤ Athletic gesture 🎮

PES Club Manager's managerial parenthesis aside, Konami has seen fit to finally bring a "full feature" touch reduction of its football par excellence to iOS and Android devices, almost six years after Pro Evolution Soccer 2012. Here, then. debut on the App Store and Google Play, in the now traditional freemium format, Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 Mobile.

A title strongly characterized by the introduction of a new control system, which effectively exploits the gestures to allow the execution of the various movements in the most immediate and precise way possible. A short tutorial illustrates the new mechanics in a matter of minutes: without prejudice to the presence of a virtual analog stick, repositionable and invisible, on the left side of the screen, you have to make a series of gestures on the right side of the display to make passes, shots and so on. In this case, when we are in the defensive phase we can hold down the right part of the screen so that the player closest to the ball approaches the opponent to steal it, possibly with a slip, while in the offensive phase we can literally draw the steps on the touch screen (holding pressed to become filtering), perform spectacular crosses (with a "bounce" gesture), activate the shot (simply holding that area of the screen while we move) and finally conclude with a low shot (two quick touches) or a calibrated shot (the second touch kept). Easier to do than to say: within a couple of games you will have become perfectly familiar with the new control system, but if you do not really like it you will always have the possibility to return to the classic commands with large separate icons.

Good conditions, yet ...

The Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 Mobile rig works very well, the feeling is actually that of being in front of a "regular" episode of the Konami series and the new control system is immediate, effective and fairly precise, however the developers have not been able to pack an adequate outline for these interesting novelties. In the first place, the traditional modes are completely lacking: the game is structured as a pure freemium, with a campaign more in the style of FIFA Ultimate Team than Master League, in which you have to face sequences of ten matches against teams managed by other users, in the 'scope of an asynchronous multiplayer, starting from a formation composed of discrete brocchi and obtaining quality players through the use of virtual or high-quality currency. In short, it is not possible to control real teams in real competitions, and this turns out to be a sensational own goal; also and above all because the impossibility of adjusting the initial degree of difficulty will make the first impact with the experience absurdly boring, with sensational 15-0 to be trimmed to teams who not only will never be able to take the ball away, but who will practically score goals from every position, showing off the slowest goalkeepers in history.

It is possible to try out a simulation mode in which we will do nothing but make technical decisions, changing modules and training if necessary but passively attending the matches: an interesting option for those looking for a managerial, but without the amount of adjustments that usually characterizes the genre. Then there are the challenges, with events consisting of two or more matches in sequence, and online multiplayer games. Only the latter immediately guarantee a minimum of challenge and therefore go to exploit in a dignified way the qualities of the game, which from a technical point of view offers fluid, detailed and convincing graphics thanks to the use of the Havok engine, as well as a pleasant column. signed sound and the possibility to download for free the commentary in Spanish commented by Fabio Carezza and Luca Marchegiani: the first good as usual, the second still not very comfortable in the role. Waiting for an update that can substantially enrich the experience and allow a less boring departure due to the very low difficulty, you could think of Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 Mobile as an excellent football for online challenges, but it remains a bitter taste for the structural inadequacy of the product and for a very slow recharging of action energy, which fortunately does not concern multiplayer.

Comment

Tested version iPhone (1.0.0) Digital Delivery App Store, Google Play Price Free Resources4Gaming.com

7.0

Readers (21)

6.9

Your vote

Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 Mobile is an excellent starting point for the future of the Konami series on iOS and Android devices, thanks above all to the introduction of a gesture-like touch control system, very intuitive and effective. For the moment, however, the substance is missing: the campaign is anonymous, initially boring given the very low difficulty, devoid of official competitions and severely limited by an action energy indicator that allows you to play only five matches in a row before requesting a very slow recharge. The good news is that online multiplayer games work well and provide a lot of fun, the bad news is that on most other fronts there is still a lot of work to be done.