Interfering With Play – Tuesday 23rd June 2009
Posted by Dan Bolas in Interfering With Play on Tue 23 Jun
IWP League Champion 2009: Ivan Kostic (Internacional)
Welcome to this week’s Interfering With Play. Following the return of Double D, and the promotional launch of the PES 2010 website, it has become public knowledge that Konami are now physically asking for the help of the PES community, and with it PESGaming.com has launched its own form section that is directly linked with Konami. I do not wish to dwell on this, as it’s explained perfectly by Double D in the post below, but would like to pass on my support to the idea, and my appreciation towards Konami that sites like this very website actually can make a difference. Two questions have appeared as a result of these developments, both of which will no doubt be answered with time. The first would be just how much input Konami wish to take on board, and exactly how many of the ideas raised within the community will be implemented. With some people’s ideas directly contradicting each other, not everyone is going to be listened to. The way this potentially difficult subject is dealt with may be the make or break of the whole idea. The second, and rather more pressing issue is why Konami have waited until now to release this forum? With the game scheduled for release in just under 5 months, are some ideas going to be crammed in, or this is their usual way of working, concentrating on the previous title before giving the new one a 6 month development? With this said, I am going to watch on eagerly and see just how the forum works. It is a new era for the site, and indeed for Pro Evolution Soccer, something which many gamers have been looking forward to for a while. Let’s crack on with this week’s Interfering With Play.
“The Kids Aren’t Alright”
Maybe an obvious one to start the week off, but I have been following the UEFA Under 21 Championships with great enjoyment in the last few days. In my opinion, it is a great place to see some of the young stars playing top quality football in high pressure matches, and is something that players like Owen and Rooney missed out on, which in turn may have helped them develop further as players, although Rooney still has a lot of career left. Following on from this, I am very surprised the Konami haven’t picked up on the Under 21 squads, and decided to include them in a version of Pro Evolution Soccer.
If my memory serves me correctly, the original ISS on PS2 allowed gamers to pick from the current International or Under 23 squads, as the games release was just after the Olympic Games. However, many sides still featured fake player names, and therefore the game mode itself came across as slightly pointless. But with some real top young talent featured in these Under 21 squads, including them in the game would add a further dimension, as well as a handful of new players to each nationality. Furthermore, playing an Under 21 competition would act as a shorter, licensed competition to say a Champions League or World Cup, but at the same time feel authentic and genuine.
I may be slightly blinded by its obviousness, and missing some fundamental flaw in why it hasn’t been done before, but I would love to heat the views of the community on a potential Under 21 game mode. Perhaps it could be something that may be included in the new Konami forum.
“Get Your Booty On The Floor Tonight”
As mentioned within PRO-ve Your Skills, I have decided to give the Big Survey a miss this week, but instead I am going to use IWP as a front to discuss the main topic of the survey, football boots. Before we go any further, I would like to point out that football boots are nothing more than a graphical addition to the game. Certain players on PES do not run faster when put in certain boots, nor do the kick harder or turn quicker. They simply look nice, and hopefully this will put to bed a couple of the weirder questions that have been raised via e-mail!
From my own personal view, I believe it would be near enough impossible to have PES keep up with the latest football boot trends. The top players have alternating boots for home and away matches, and the big designers change their colour schemes, brandings and styles three or four times throughout the season. The best example of this would be the Vapour boot by Nike. At the start of the season, the Blue boots with the green tick were considered to be the height of footballing fashion. PES included these, only for Nike to release the much slated Pink Vapour boot and the eventually the much hyped green boots. As the season drew to a close, Ronaldo and co were wearing the two tones Red and Silver Vapour boot, a design that will no doubt be re tweaked and re evaluated for next season. Keeping up with this kind of fashion for nothing more than graphical changes seems like a fair waste of developer’s time, especially for no financial gain. The same could be said for the wide variety of boot brands. Along with the main ones, Nike, Reebok, Umbro, Puma and Adidas, you have the wealth of foreign makes and less popular designs, all of which are worn by different players.
It is pretty obvious, however, that the number of boot variations in PES is too few. Yes, the brand names have started to creep in over the past few seasons; however, having 12 – 15 styles of boots is simply out dated and needs to be readdressed. The solution could be to include an in depth boot editor, similar to the logo or kit editor. Players would be given a template and a set number of slots, (40) with the view to design their own boots using a colour palette and the ability to upload logos. This could be coupled with a number of default styles and patterns similar to the T90 and Predator styles featured in PES 6. Another possibility is the option of paid for content in the form of boot packs. Whilst I know this will cause uproar amongst some gamers, the majority of major franchises now offer paid for downloadable content. Things like Transfers and Squads should always remain free for gamers, but when the download enhances the way the game looks, a nominal fee is highly acceptable. Games such as Street Fighter IV and Little Big Planet have made good money post release charging a couple of pounds for new costumes, and four or five new pairs of boots every couple of months would be worth a £1.99 download for most gamers.
It is one of the biggest talking points within my e-mail inbox, and something which the patched PC game leads the field on still by several lengths, but with football boots being so popular nowadays; it would be wise of Konami to get in on the act. Your views, as always are welcomed!
“Spin Spin Sugar”
I am not going to dwell too much upon the 360 vs. D Pad debate that has been spoken about following last weeks IWP; however I did not want ignore the issue, and therefore would like to follow it up with the following comment. I am all for progression and moving forward, and would welcome the addition of 360 degree movement if it improves the PES franchise both in the short and long term. My concern would be, as a D Pad user, that the option would be removed from controlling players using the D Pad, and that the analogue stick movements become mandatory. With many franchises, the change between D Pad to Analogue was pretty smooth, in particular with fighting games, but I know many PES gamers that still swear by the D Pad for close control, and taking it away from them would be the final nail in their PES coffin.
As many mentioned within the community, as long as PES continue to cater for both, the inclusion of 360 degree movement will be a welcomed one, but as soon as the option is taken away, this is when Konami may start to run into some problems. Once again, it seems to be another case of wait and see!
“I Feel, So Untouched”
Regular community member Dave O must take much credit for the final topic this week, as it was his discussion point on menus that led me to the following views. Basically, why are football games still using a very menu based system, similar to that seen within the old Mega Drive titles to navigate around the settings? I use the example of the NBA 2K series a lot, but when that games starts up, it feels like you are watching a TV presentation, and this feeling helps to add to the pre match atmosphere. The same can be said for the Madden Franchise, with a bit of a different feel, especially during the loading screens.
More and more, TV shows are using video game style graphics in a true life imitating art style, and yet the video games themselves use dated and tired methods. Even a menu screen incorporated into a TV studio or 3D characters that present the match in a build up fashion instead of a loading screen would be more 21st century, and much more entertaining. I feel this is something you guys can give a fair amount of feedback on, and therefore I am willing to write a general piece within the Konami forum section about it, should the demand see fit. Get in touch in the usual ways.
That’s your lot for this week. As a quick recap regarding the PRO-ve Your Skills competition, the challenge can be completed on any difficulty setting. Also, the current champion is not permitted to enter the competition, meaning that we a guaranteed a new champion should anyone manage to beat the challenge. More information can be found by scrolling a couple of posts down, or simply e-mail me if you have any questions. At the time of writing, no one has beaten the current challenge. As always, you can comment in the public environment, or e-mail me personally at interferingwithplay@hotmail.co.uk. As always, offensive, rude or off topic e-mails will be deleted.
Thanks for Reading
First?
Woo Hoo!
Congrats Brucie, enjoy it before they take it away from you
D-pad must remain. Forever! =)
Good read Dan… But I can’t wait to hear more views on the news filtering through about PES 2010. Next week I guess.
As far as menus are concerned, I think we may see something similar to last year, but as long as there are no more stick men, it will be a step in the right direction. BTW if you want to see a sweet menu system check out the NHL 2K series. They have “the skybox” which is basically a virtual room you navigate through to choose different modes. You can peruse your trophies and unlocked jersey’s in a virtual trophy room, head to the replay booth, or even wander over to the “games room” and play a mini game or two (including a great version of table hockey).
Guys just quickly, including moderators!….
go to computerandvideogames.com
and it has more updated info on pro evo plus a new screenshot of torres which looks the most realistic shot i have seen!
my bad if it has been mentioned, but just incase you aint seen it
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=218072
Same old features, different names only master league improved
Rubbish
Yeah, the new pics look great. In the Torres pic you can see that there are individual hairs on the left side of Torres’ face. I didn’t think that was possible in a game…
IMO the hands still need some work (looks like the players have hotdogs for fingers), but I could care less honestly.
Also:
Boots – I’d pay for DLC boot packs.
U21 – good idea, but to me it’s not at all surprising that it hasn’t been done yet. There are a lot of good ideas out there but they can’t all make it in to each year’s game. That being said, I’d be happy if they had a U21 tourney, but at the same time I’d actually much prefer to see reserve sides and lower league teams, just because that would add so much more to ML and especially BAL. A U21 tourney would definitely add to BAL as well, but it would seem strange to have that but only play those crappy inter-team matches.
Full reserve squads would be awesome for several reasons:
- As mentioned you would have a team to play in when you first start out in BAL.
- In ML you could send players down to the reserve team, and they would still grow. You could even have an option to either play the reserve matches yourself or skip them. I think that being able to play them would be pure sweetness btw.
- Would be fun to watch fellow reserve team players also make it to the first team in BAL.
- They could even make the reserve league out of fake players if they had to.
- It would allow you, essentially, to play ML more like Arsene Wenger would (build a strong youth contingent), but you should also have to finance the youth team yourself, thus forcing players to have to choose between building for the future and having a strong team that is able to contend for trophies.
I realize it would take a lot of work, but it can’t hurt to dream, right?
good idea but would require a good amount of work, but hey if you wanna be the best you gota have stuff like that and a bit of inovation!
the most frustrating thing i think about pro evo is not that they have taken away more features than they added, on pro evo 5 on the ps2 there were so many smaller details such as kits getting dirty, shirts becoming uptucked and then theres the pro evo shop that must of got closed down in a pro evo type recession!
is that they have taken away more **
Chris – I hear you there. My opinion on that, however, is that they haven’t actually taken these features out. Instead, I think that they had to start pretty much from scratch with the next gen versions and that some of these older features never made it over to next gen. I’m not saying that I don’t miss those features too, but a lot of people seem to think that they actually removed features, whereas I think that it’s more a case of just having higher priorities and not having had a chance to bring them over yet. I do think we will see them in the next couple years though, since Konami are now listening to the public.
Or thats what they say anyway, Konami, that they’re “listening to the public”.
All well and good setting up initiatives to allow the PES fans a voice, but we need to see some of these ideas implemented.
Again I stress on the word some, as this article has already pointed out the contradictory nature of the wishes of PES fans, but surely there are some universal features that ALL PES fans would love to see.
Even little niggly – seemingly, easily-fixable things such as the return of the untucked shirts feature.
Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. Thats my two cents on the issue, cannot stress it enough.
For next gen consoles we definitely need substance over style.
They sure do look pretty though, the new PES screenshots =)
please have the game on 1080p for both systems.
3 main one’s for me are 360 degree movement, different styles of running and dribbling with the ball instead of the current robotic movements they have in pes 2009 and last but not least different shooting ’styles’ and they need to concentrate on implementing goals scored from volleys and bicycle kicks, the technique in how the players execute them in pes 2009 are poor. Come on seabass and co, please deliver this year!
Well said Karlos! Couldn’t agree more.
Also they need to improve the goalkeepers, give them seperate stats to that of outfield players.
I have to say I really haven’t seen any problems with the technique of players when executing volleys, scissor kicks, or overhead kicks. It also depends on the technique of the player you use.
the goal keeper issue is something that i feel is the most disapointing part of pro evo at times because its never consistent and keepers can cost you a match so easily that it becomes frustrating!
volleys and scissor kicks ive not had much problem with but improving them further is always as option
1 thing they have to remove at all costs is the computer making slide tackles on the players behalf, i have given away to many penalties from it that are not technically my fault!
also more realisic animations when you bring a player down would be cool!
Yeah dave o, i know there isnt anything wrong with the volleys, bicycle and scissor kicks, but they need to have more varied ways in which the players execute them, they’re all done in 1 standard motion, take fifas’ volleys etc and the players adjust their bodys in order to connect with the ball thus making every volley etc look different, know what i mean like dave o?
Good comments folks. Must say I agree with it has to be 1080p on PS3, it’s shocking how many games aren’t. Wasn’t that the point of Blu-ray with mega storage and true HD???!!!!
I too would gladly pay for some DLC Boot Packs amongst other things. Think they would get a shock at how many people would pay for sweet extras, even being able to get full licensed leagues or something silly like that ;-) ‘Ch-Ching!’
Liking the reserve team idea…
Happy to hear about more realistic commentary!!! “Call him a keeper?! He couldn’t keep bees!” etc… makes me physically sick.
All the latest news I’ve come across recently is very exciting indeed. PLEASE keep it up guys!