Firstly, please allow me to indulge myself. After 9 years of contributing to PES Gaming in a formal way, this will be the last ‘official’ piece I scribe for the site. Due to the sites links with Soccer Gaming, there may be occasional crossover pieces, and my name may feature on a forum here or comments section there, however, after being one of the Senior Members of the editing and blogging team since 2007, and a long term forum post contributor before this, I am officially moving on from a role that has provided me with some great experiences. I would like to thank Double D and Barry for their excellent work this calendar year, and hope they continue to breathe life into the site for years to come. I would like to thank all the committed PES players who took part in the Interfering With Play leagues of 2008 and 2009, I thoroughly enjoyed organizing and running them for you guys. Finally, I would like to thank every single member of the PES Gaming community, who has agreed, argued, slated, contributed or simply read one of my long winded and boring posts over the past few years. These have been few and far between in the last 12 months, however prior to this I know I had a decent readership, so thank you!
So my final piece, my final article. I wish I could say it was on a happier note, however the main reason for me moving on from PES Gaming is nothing to do with time commitments, family or work. The reason is very simple, I no longer play Pro Evolution Soccer. I feel it would be exceptionally hypocritical to roll up onto a site that is designed for fans of a particular game, only to never actually play that game in my own time. The passion and love for a game and indeed a franchise that first grasped my in 1996 has gone, and whereas I will still happily fire up my old PS1 for games on ISS Pro 98 or look fondly at PES 6, the truth is that the current PS3 offerings have slowly diminished the enjoyment I feel when playing Konami’s game.
My initial plan for this article was to write a list of 100 ways in which Konami ‘needed’ to improve PES in order to (in my opinion) compete in a modern day market. As I started, I realised that I was simply looking for faults in a game, which isn’t the sign of a good article. Therefore I have simply put together a few points which hopefully will make someone, somewhere take note. If not, then, unlike previous years, I will not be here in 10 months time to complain about not being listened to, but instead smile and acknowledge the fact that some things don’t change. If these changes are implemented however, there is a chance that Konami will have a game worthy of its older predecessors, and I will be more than happy to pick up a copy next year!
When Konami initially released their ISS titles for the PlayStation, they were entering a bustling football gaming market. The lack of licensing, branding and even budget wasn’t so much an issue, because ultimately, there were other games doing exactly the same thing. The difference was the gameplay. Konami created a game that was exceptionally enjoyable to play yet felt like real football. It was impossible to dribble through players and carry the ball the length of the pitch unopposed like many of its rivals, the game played like the matches being watched on TV. Skills such as heading and defending were equally valued as running and shooting, and this translated throughout the early Pro Evolution Soccer era.
Other titles started to employ professional footballers to promote their games, whereas Konami held on to their relatively low marketing budget, making their game a mainstream title using almost independent levels of promotion. This allowed it to see off many bigger budget titles, by maintaining a truth to its gameplay roots. The pinnacle of this was PES 6, which married excellent game play with a plethora of new game modes and options allowing a single player gamer to take his or her pick of multiple ways to get into the action.
Since that moment, Konami tried to shift the power and compete with their number one rival, FIFA Soccer, a game which had been poor throughout the early parts of the 2000s. They brought in Ronaldo and then Leo Messi (before going back to Ronaldo) to promote the game, they started tampering with game play speeds and game modes for the sake of change and ultimately, neglected to constantly evolve and improve their unique selling point, the quality of the action on the pitch. This brings us up to 2013 and a game which may well be Konami’s best every football game. Unfortunately, the level of improvements have seen FIFA simply overrun PES, and the once exceptionally game play now even looks dated and feels robotic.
I would like to stress that point again, that PES 2013 is the best game Konami have managed to produce and develop. It is better than anything else on the current generation of consoles, and competes head to head with PES 6 on the PS2. However, the baby steps made each year have seen it get overtaken, and the genuine concern now is instead of learning to run in order to travel forward, it is going to revert into crawling by.
So here are my points that I feel Konami and PES must address. Without these, FIFA will only run further into the distance. If you agree with these, I am glad, and please feel free to add your own in the comments section. It is a shame that many of these points are additions to modes which we have spoke about for years on this very site, and a lot of them can also be found on FIFA 12 / 13. If PES are claiming that FIFA has copied them, then it is really a case of embarrassment, because EA Sports have done everything better!
• The Animation of players are no where near the level expected nowadays. What worked in 2006 does not work in 2012. Subtle improvements are not good enough for a modern gaming audience. If we compare a first person shooter from 2006 to one made in 2012, the animations are much more realistic and life like, the same can not be said for Pro Evolution Soccer. Players are limited to what they can do by the animations, and having to wait for a ball to bounce or leave it to run out of play because they can’t slide to get it should not be happened. A complete overhaul of the animation system is required here. It may be costly and may be a risk, but it is the only way PES will move forwards.
• Collision detection is arguably worse than in 2006. Players feel like solid objects that have very little flexibility at all. Whilst this ties into the animations, it also ties into the fact that players seem to have a virtual skeleton made up of 6 parts (head, torso and two arms and two legs). Modern day games see virtual sprites have joints at their knees, elbows and waist, allowing for more realistic movement but also reaction to impact from external factors. On PES 2013, when a player is hit in the leg, his whole body spirals into a predetermined animation. Compare this with FIFA 13, where a plays leg with move differently to the rest of his body based on the collision. At times, this may look untidy graphically, however it will eventually develop to be smooth, and give players a feel that they are controlling footballers, not football playing robots.
• Artificial Intelligence is still very poor. As someone who works in a professional football environment, I genuinely question Konami’s research and planning stage prior to programming. The movements players make off the ball still seem to be very much ‘on the rails’ with little creativity or intelligence. Watching the games I have played, I find it amusing that it is not a well timed run of the forward that springs the offside trap, but instead the inexplicable positioning of a full back standing 3 m behind the defensive line which keeps him onside. Defenders possess no sense of danger, and will usually run alongside an attacker as opposed to making a recovery run back to the goal or to influence the next phase of play. Games are becoming more intelligent, and what was acceptable 5 years ago is no longer allowed. Watching the developer videos of PES 2013, I saw nothing that I would have quantified as intelligent football play.
• The goalkeeping issue is simply unacceptable. I am not going to drone on, as Double D has gone through it at length, but anyone who genuinely thinks the GK have improved needs to play 10 minutes of shooting on FIFA 13. Animations, intelligence and controls are all a long way from the required level.
• Heading should be about timing and positioning, not simply standing and mashing the button.
• Set pieces are far too robotic. FIFA gives players the opportunity to create their own plays. PES is using the same format as it has done for the past 10 years.
• Defending is no longer an art form on PES. In the need to try and create swift, attacking, fluent play, Konami made defending an after thought. I personally used to love the battle of keeping a clean sheet, whereas now the CPU with attack the same way each time, and the should they get a lucky break or deflection, the AI will ensure their forward is onside or the GK lets it bounce. This is no more apparent than against Human players, whereby the score lines are regularly high.
• The once great Master League is now hanging by a thread. Magic boots, limited players and a very strange funding system has ruined what was once the best footballing game mode . Will Konami fix it? Probably not. Will they continue to add questionable features that act as simple novelty? You bet. A brave decision now would be to walk away from Master League altogether and create a game mode that is new and fresh. Taking a grassroots club from the lower leagues to the big time is one solution, providing different pitches and stadia, as well as poor opposition progressively getting better.
• Referees are getting worse. The penalty issue (or lack of) from 2010 seems to have reared its ugly head again, and the lack of retrospective bookings and the erratic ‘play on’ decisions make the game at times unplayable. If I hit someone after the ball in a tackle, I’d expect a Yellow Card. This happened in PES 6. It happens on FIFA. It does not happen on PES 2013. Inexcusable.
• The replays are still limited to ten seconds. Furthermore, there is no way to export or upload replays to be viewed anywhere other than the console, in game. Most games that have replay allow You Tube uploading. Dated
• The shocking exclusion of league mode just reeks of trouble. Why take out anything of a game that is already way behind in terms of sales? Unless people are genuinely moaning about it, keep it in. The same could be said for PK mode, Challenge mode, Scenario Mode etc. Konami just take items away for no obvious reason. They need to stop doing this.
• If you have a license, milk it. FIFA will throw Premier League logos everywhere. The Europa League isn’t even playable. 50% of the Champions league teams aren’t licensed. Must be better.
• The once great edit mode is now showing its age. Why not take (another) leaf out of FIFA’s book and have a PC based creation centre, which allows for easy transfer of information and data. It would mean the game could be edited much quicker by novice editors, meaning more people are likely to play the game.
• Online play is still laughable. I am yet to play a decent Konami game online. There has been little to no improvement in terms of the treatment of players quitting mid game, and connections are still exceptionally shaky.
• The game’s woeful transfer updates are chronic. Using FIFA as an example, the game updates every week. Not only do player’s stats changed based on their recent performances, but line ups and injuries are taken into account too. I am still waiting for Joe Allen to be moved to Liverpool on PES. Konami need a team that at least seem bothered about the aftercare service, not 3 sporadic updates with a couple of new boots.
• We spoke on here 2 years ago about overuse injuries, whereby players pull up late in the game after doing a lot of sprinting. FIFA implement it. Players still have the same single injury of holding their leg.
• Konami still use the woefully dated form arrows that have no relevance to the players real world performance. A player could score a hat trick game one and have no form game two. How does this work in relation to real football?
• Commentary now officially falls as the worse on any sports game. Anyone who doesn’t believe me needs to play one game on NBA 2k13 then compare the dialogue to that of Jim Beglin.
• Adding managers was a nice touch. However when you bring off Wayne Rooney for Manchester United to be created by an African Manager, questions have to be asked on what is the point. Simply attach a manager to each team, allow him to be customised, simple as that.
• In my opinion, the games presentation still feels so dated. Yes the music has improved, but fonts, the language used by the game, the menu screens all feel very laboured. They look nothing like the screens shown on TV. A complete overhaul is required.
• Stadium editor is a great feature. The fact it was added and has remained the same for three years is not good enough. Improve it.
• Support between the actual game and the community is not good enough. An online hub linked to the PSN or Live should be the norm by now. EA Sports do it, Activision do it, and Ubisoft do it. Is this Konami cutting corners, or just admitting they are not as big a company?
I am sat at a junction now. My list still has ten points to add, however I feel that I will be banging my head against a wall by the end of it. Each of these points could be an article within themselves too. I would also like to point out that I hate using FIFA as a comparison to PES, however the annoying part is that whilst FIFA’s gameplay is getting stronger each year, its overall package (which ultimately is what we are paying for) far outweighs that of PES. It is also worth pointing out the sales figures. Concentrating on just the 360 and PS3 versions, PES 2013 has sold just under 1.07 million copies worldwide. 900,000 of those were for PS3 and 370,000 were from the Japanese market. Compare this with EA Sports title, which has sold 8.78 million units. With a gulf like that, the worry is that EA Sports will continue to invest, whereas Konami may see the franchise as a lame horse! I take no pride in preferring to play FIFA 13 (in fact it makes me feel quite dirty) however I have always chosen to play the game I enjoy the most, and for the past two years, that has not been Konami’s offering.
I really hope I am wrong, and that I will sit here next year holding a copy of PES 2014 in my hand, systematically ticking off each of these points, and playing a truly exceptional football game. I will remain a fan of this site, and will still follow the build up to PES 2014 through Soccer Gaming, however, for now at least, my time with PES has come to an end.
Thanks for Reading
dan@soccergaming.com
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First!
Dan, thanks for all the posts of the years. Gave me plenty of pleasure while at work.
Your points are perfecly valid, what gripes me most is that the current PES could deliver twice the fun without even tweaking the gameplay, but optimizing the user interface.
The game does not allow you to indulge and make fun of the (limited) potential. What I mean is, why can’t we see friendly, ranked, legends, community, and MLO match rooms all at once on the mainscreen? That way we could instantly change from MLO after a harsh loss, to a friendly 2v2 match in our community, because we see instantly that there is a room available waiting for us.
Also, they could easily implement a team filter to prevent barca vs barca.
These simple things would keep me playing a bit more, while at the same time they implement the changes you mentioned.
If they hired a volunteer, they could implement the changes I have listed in perhaps weeks.
Anyways, good luck and keep rocking.
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not sure i agree as i prefer pes over fifa although the points raised are valid, its still more enjoyable imo to play pes so for me its the best football game.
@ Dan Bolas I am totally agree with you. i play pes from 1998 and i am very disappointed of pes series at ps3, except pes 2010 who was the best pes ever series!if only the game speed was like in pes 2013 it would have been superb. we are in 2012 and gameplay is very worst. SHAME AT KONAMI. they are destroying the great filling to play PES and are lying us with “new boots…” more real fans of PES like you and me, will stop to play PES our favourite game because konami is not interested about what we want, REAL GAMEPLAY!!!!!!!!!!! yesterday i play PES 3 on PS2 and its a very good game from that time!!! PES 2013 is a worst game for our days!!!:defending, GK, referee,camera angle replays,AI is CRAP,heading, positioning…! sorry for my english
I totally agree with everything you say Dan……. this year was the first time I actually didn’t buy PES and I got FIFA instead. Don’t get me wrong FIFA has its own issues for example having to pay for certain extras like a created team within Manager Career after forking out full price for the game and certain glitches that I personally was effected by but even so I still think its a huge improvement on Konami’s offering. For me (and I also hate saying this as I was a huge PES fan) FIFA just seem to have developed most things better than PES now.
I haven’t been on this site for a while now mainly due to not playing the new PES and feeling that I seem to be constantly complaining about something that I truly believe needs to change and evolve, I think Konami are just not listening anymore and there are fans of the series many of who also visit and comment here, who in my humble opinion see only with rose tinted glasses or blinkers on when it concerns PES or its future.
I have enjoyed your articles Dan over the last few years and I am sorry to see you leave. I still have hope that Konami will see the light and make a great game that we will all want to return to and who knows it might even bring about your return to writing here……..Farewell!
Micky P: Thats perfectly fine. I have never once tried to force my views on someone, simply offering an option and point of view which I feel is correct. Out of interest though, would PES be a better game if all of those things were implemented?
@Dan Bolas
anything would be better then what we got now.But I agree with you.All these stupid tricks make me mad.I have the strategy guides from all pes and I remeber the passage when it came to trikcs.Seabass said that their just add ons they dont add anything to the game as you can be a great player without ever useing them.What happened??? It’s all just Speed Merchants and fricking tricks now.The skill i taught myself of pin point high balls across the field doesn’t matter no more.Its just through balls all day.
The best pes for me is no 5 still playing it update file every year.
Hate to see you go Dan, but it was inevitable.
You are indeed a great writer that always highlight the problems facing PES with great clarity.
I joined in 2004 and rarely visit this great site anymore. Only come back to see the progress of PES every now and then. However, there has been very little progress.
I am one of many many fans who have chosen to play Fifa over PES. I know you may not have said it this way but ….PES is garbage compared to other sporting titles ….especially Fifa.
Fifa has not grown on only new fans….they actually converted many PES fans too. The game is simply just miles ahead of PES.
For me, PES died a loong time ago. I decided to leave the franchise in 2008 when i realized they could not figure out how to successfully add a working online system to the game. Every other single sporting franchise did this …but they could not. Not even to this date.
I cannot see how anyone enjoys playing this horrid robotic poor design of a game.
Best wishes
Peace
I respect everyone’s opinion.
People play PES 2013 because:
* It gives that special feeling when you score that perfectly worked team goal or long range screamer where the players give you exactly what you wanted, this gives you a level of satisfaction that no other football title can instill within you.
* It allows you to score from ANY “football angle”, if you can do it in real life you can do it in PES with regard to the shooting. Other footy titles you are limited to the type of goals you can score.
* It can be a high octane roller-coaster ride which takes you on a journey through all your emotions, positive and negative.
*People who play it ignore the poor animations because it provides a match which is constantly played at a high tempo. Fifas animations slow their players down and make them look and feel like they are intoxicated. If you watch an El Classico match in real life and compare the pace of that match with Fifa’s and PES’s Konami’s product replicates the fast tempo of it perfectly.
*It’s difficult to master. People complaining about through balls and skills need to go back to the training mode because if you know how to defend properly these dribblers and through ball spammers should be the easiest opponents to defeat. Fifa is a pick-up and play game made for those people who are too lazy to put in the effort to learn a game.
*It requires the player to focus every second of the match because you are constantly under pressure like real football even with full assisted passing you still have to get your timing spot on if you want to pass around a defense outside their box. When playing Fifa you have an eternity on the ball.
*It still delivers the best player likeness models in terms of their movement and all round play. On fifa one can score crackers from the edge of the area with Puyol and a Messi whose shooting with his right foot. (i did this)
*You actually build relationships with the players because of how predictable the game is.
*The heading is not as bad as some people say it is. Use manual shot for headers, problem solved.
Is Fifa any good? I played the demo and hated it. I suppose after I have won the ML for the 20th time I could rent it out for a week? :-/
@ Kingsuarez
You don’t know what your talking about. I switched from Pes to fifa in 09, that’s around the time i gave up hope for Pes. Pes is just arcade trash, and it hasn’t got anything on fifa which is a far better football sim. Your using that old cliche propaganda retric. Pes is way more predictable than fifa and everything you describe is actually the reverse. I play fifa and score all types of goals, i actually enjoy proper tactical battles in the seasons mode. Pes is for run merchants and the deluded thinking it’s the better game. I only come back to the site for it’s amusement factor at all the deluded people who still haven’t woken up yet. Blimey! Even the blogger has woken up before some of you’s, now thats funny. Once a big Pes fan but no more, Don’t delude yourself by mistaking me for a fifa fanboy, i stiil have a soft spot for pes, i just recognise what’s best, which is not.
Good article Dan goods points, havn’t enjoyed PES for years. Didn’t buy this years one, I personally think they need more European influence in it’s development. The Japanese simply, ‘don’t get,’ the European and American markets.
Sad to see you go Dan.
All your points on Pes are valid.
I dont think you mentioned the big issue with Pes, scripting.
I however disagree with you on FIFA. Having bought just about all of them since the first one on the mega drive, I cant say I have particularly enjoyed any of them after the first 2. They do pretty much everything well and as you say, the whole package is better than Pes. But to me that means nothing as I dont enjoy the gameplay. I find it unrewarding and ultimately quite dull.
I believe Pes has a handful of very talented programmers, but they seem hamstrung by poor decision making, probably from the top. This leads to a love hate relationship.
My goto game is still Pes, i just dont goto it that often.
Going to try and answer some points by comments.
As I said from day one, these are my views, and I would never force someone to have my opinion.
Duffman76: Exactly the way I have been for a few years prior. I personally enjoyed PES much more, in spite of it potentially being a weaker overall package. I feel the same way now about PES game play as you do FIFA. Limitations make the game dull and frustrating for me, almost as if the game is being played on stabilizers. I want to be able to make my player volley or slide for a ball at a certain height, yet PES won”t have an animation for this. This directly effects the game play (for me) However, if you enjoy PES game play, you obviously have to play that, you’d be silly not to!
KingSuarez: I can tell straight away you have a decent knowledge and level of respect that is admirable. Just a couple of points raised. I think up until maybe FIFA 11, there were only a handful of of ways to score. PES has always had excellent variety of goal scoring. I think both are very similar now. I think the emotional point is valid, however for me, playing online eclipses that feeling against AI. PES can’t handle a structured online system at the moment. If you play PES 2013 and then FIFA 13 directly after, the tempo is quite obviously slower on PES too, almost to a snails pace. I found myself praising the slower pace of PES 2013 this year, but at times it is almost TOO sluggish. Finally, the player models and likenesses are arguably the other way round, PES used to be far and away the better game in terms of feeling as if you were controlling a certain player. I find it much easier to score with Robben’s right foot on PES than FIFA. Play as any lower ranked player, and the shot accuracy with weaker foot is more consistent on PES than FIFA, which is a shame (power plays a much larger part in PES)
I have logged maybe 40 hours / 50 hours on PES this year, out of respect to this site and the game. Very few of those matches were as enjoyable or even as realistic as PES 6.
Very honest and spot on article Dan, but through the years we came to expect that of a very good blogger!
And no suprises, in the (few) times you did write for the site the last 2 years, inbetween the lines it was all too obvious your opinion (although not spoken out loud) about PES was the reason for the “lack of contribution” on PESGaming.
Thanks for all the great reads and well written articles. Even when I was not agreeiing you could always give good arguments and facts without letting your personal opinion blur them and that deserves nothing but respect.
I hope to be reading articles of you on other sites as you are a natural writer!!
I get the impression when reading comments, that theres a big difference between the opinions of PES and FIFA, dependent on whether you play offline or online.
Pes seems to have many online problems with lag, cheating, playing on regular skill level, spamming of through balls as people aren’t playing with manual passing etc etc.
I only play football games offline. This is where I believe Pes is better (which is why my biggest gripe is scripting). I can fully see why online football gamers would prefer Fifa.
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