For a football series that's trying to play catch-up with FIFA on the Nintendo DS, Pro Evolution Soccer is sure taking its sweet time. The original Pro Evolution Soccer on the handheld, Winning Eleven Pro Evolution Soccer 2007, released last year to lukewarm critical reception, and you'd think that be enough to light a fire under Konami's butt to get cooking on something a lot more significant for portable gamers. The second game, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, contains slight tweaks here and there, but the core soccer's still pretty weak compared to the EA Sports offering.

The 2007 version featured a solid foundation for the 2008 team to build off of. Though the visuals were a step backwards in quality especially compared to what the console teams were doing, the actual soccer engine had potential. It was pretty rigid in spots but it at least played solidly on its own. Compared to the FIFA DS series, the game had a lot of catch-up to do, so the promise of another year in development could only be seen as a good thing for this rendition.

Full story: ds.ign.com