After the 1st watch, I was kinda pissed because the animations shown in the trailer do not show the same fluid and realistic motions of the Messi trailer.
After the initial disappointment with the trailer, I started to notice more positives; for instance, I see a lot of PES5 in some of the dribbling animations and subtle touches on the ball, which is a positive for me because PES5 remains my favorite PES in terms of feel and animations.
Adam from WENB reafirmed this sensation, when he said that PES 2011 plays like a proper current-gen rendition of PS2 games like PES5 or PES6. Adam also said that the animations feel or look notably better when actually playing the game, Suff also said more or less the same thing; I think the WENB fan-boys are telling the truth this year... but we'll see when the demo arrives.
Also,
The graphics look much better now, much more life-like and less of the plastic-like appearance or sensation. This is most notable (imo) in the HAIR of the players, it no longer looks like a piece of bright plastic glued to the head of the players. And this is something that is very noticeable in the trailer, particularly with Messi, the first thing you see in the trailer is that Leo Messi now looks almost identical to his real life self, he no longer has a piece of plastic on top of his head.
The 2010 Messi did not really looked like Messi, in my opinion, the graphical improvement between 2010-Messi and 2011-Messi is massive: the same thing can be said about CR9.
Overall,
I 'm still somewhat disappointed with the off-the-ball movement, from everything that I have seen so far, I just do not see defensive midfielders and attacking midfielders moving and reacting realistically to the position of the ball.
If Konami can strike the correct balance between playing with the ball and playing without the ball: the game would improve in a very positive way.
To date, the tactical side of the game is not relevant enough, mostly due to the fact that defensive midfielders and attacking midfielders do not move and react realistically to the movement of the ball.
After improving the movement, instead of being almost completely automatic (like it currently is), the tactical game should revolve around a semi-manual and intuitive feature, attached to just ONE individual who will move around the ball, depending on the direction via the right analogue stick.
Instead of the atacking midfielder automatically moving however he wants, the user would have on-the-fly control over this aspect of the game, the user will have control over how he will get his key player into the game, consciously creating how he wants to start the attack; and from the defensive perspective, you would also have more or less the same level of control.
For example, a slight touch backwards will have the selected player moving towards the ball, the player will automatially stop his movement when he is within a 10 feet distance between himself and the position of the ball. At this point, you repeat the same backwards movement, and the selected individual will move to where the ball is.
The amount of times you can use this off-the-ball feature would be limited, perhaps a maximum of three times per play, or perhaps less, thus it would be impossible to over-use or exploit.
Adding a new on-the-fly element to tactical play. Though, this could only be possible AFTER the defensive midfielders start reacting and moving realistically.
That's the type of tactical feature that I want to see in future PES games. But all things considered, PES 2011 looks like a massive step in the right direction: it looks like a proper current-gen rendition of the PS2 PES games.
