PES:
- The game generally seems to promote good football. You really need to make a good flowing movement to get the ball into a shooting position. There's much less defensive AI mistakes (i.e. completely leaving players unmarked, etc).
- The new passing system is great. It's much harder and will take some getting used to, but it's all for a more dynamic and challenging game.
- Animations are much better. More variety and generally more fluid.
- WTF have they done to the shooting? I've been playing the demo none-stop since it came out so I don't think it's a case of 'just get used to it'. With the standard power I'd use in previous games the ball seems to just fly over the bar more often than not, then with a little less pressure they don't seem to hit it hard enough. PES's shooting was one of the best features, why change it...
- The refereeing seems way too harsh, and there's no advantage which completely slows down the play and ruins any fluidity.
There has been hundreds of times were i've come at an opponent from the side to put in a standard conservative tackle, take all of the ball before the man, but then as the player follows through to collect the ball he makes contact with the player and the ref blows. It's REALLY frustrating.
FIFA:
I'm not going to go into detail, but FIFA once again seems like a very polished and good quality game. There are much less annoyances, and the football is all very good.
One main flaw is there personality+ and 360 passing. PES does both of these things better than fifa. 360 passing seems restricted rather than free. And as for P+, you can put centre backs up front and your keeper in midfield and they'll still knock it around like xavi and iniesta.
I prefer PES and think its gameplay is better and more rewarding in the long-run. Fifas play style seems too same-y to me, and I think I'll get bored of it pretty soon.
However, I do think that from an objective point of view FIFA is the better game. It's hard to explain. It seems more refined and finely-tuned, where PES is still a bit raw, but that's to be expected. Afterall, PES was pretty much revamped and fifa didn't change a whole lot. I don't think the creators expected pes2011 to beat fifa this time round anyway, they even mentioned this being a base to improve on, and they've done very well at that.