PES 2016's seemingly shonky PC port gets a demo

Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 is, reportedly, great. Pro Evolution Soccer 2016's PC port is, reportedly, a load of balls. (And, as this is a football game, not in a good way.) Like last year's entry, it seems to have more in common with the last-gen, PS3 and 360 versions of PES 2016 than the shinier PS4 and Xbox One releases, and as you can imagine, the Steam page houses a load of negative reviews.

If you'd rather not spend 40 notes on an unnecessarily ugly footie game, you can now step gingerly onto the pitch with a demo of PES 2016, found on Steam here. It's possible to review demos on Steam, and again that page is chock-full of "mostly negative" missives, complaining about the nasty low-resolution assets, and the seemingly misleading screenshots plastered all over Steam. For some reason (possibly to save on the download size?), PES 2016's demo is locked to the 'Low' graphics setting—surely Konami would want to present their game in a good light?

There are seven teams available in the 1.5 gig download, plus a couple of stadia: Juventus Stadium and Arena Corinthians. Relatedly, Konami is reportedly stopping development of any big-budget game that isn't PES. Perhaps they could use the money to make better-looking PC versions of Pro Evo?

Ta, RPS.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.