tremolo arm
Registered User
After one week of playing PES 13, I have come to the conclusion that I will have a love-hate relationship with this game.
No doubt Konami have steered the ship in the right direction, but PES 13 falls just short of being the best football game this year.
PES 13 does a lot of things right, the most important of which is the feeling of realism and the integration of real life phenomenon such as inertia, spin, etc. The editing mode is superlative, with the ability to even edit the posture of the player whilst dribbling or when shooting. But far too often the implementation of these real life facts is at the expense of control. Also PES is the victim of its own success. If you are trying to portray something in the real world, then falling just short is actually more irritating than knowing that that was never the intention.
Gameplay wise PES is more satisfying to play if you know the controls. Some people will actually enjoy investing time in learning the controls and deploying them in match situation, but many will rue the easy pick up accessability of FIFA.
In my view PES fails in the little things, the things that will leave you feeling flat after a game.
Examples:
Control
It just takes too long to execute certain things. Keepers throwing the ball is just one example. Resuming the game after a free kick is another. Trying to dissolve cut scenes is the ultimate. It’s unnecessarily slow.
Animations
There are far too many occasions, where it is clear that there is no animation to link two actions. Example: Keeper boots the ball and the two players expecting to receive the ball are standing there like statues, no attempt to move, jostle or jump. It’s just sloppy in this day and age.
This is where FIFA is very strong. They even have an animation for a player extending his whole body and sliding to keep the ball in. In PES I have lost the ball numerous times just because my player would look the ball going out without making an attempt recovering it despite me pressing the appropriate buttons. Had the animation been there, he would have made it and kept it in.
AI
For the most part the game does a very decent job at representing an organic movement on the pitch. The action flows nicely and somehow the AI is quite smart in the first two thirds of the pitch. However, get into the final third and the AI just collapses. The amount of time I’ve had a counter and found myself in a 2 on 2 or 2 on 1 situations and my AI teammate would just stand there with no urgency and no attempt to make a run or even move quickly is infuriating. I’m sorry but triggering runs with R3 is too distracting especially when the counter is flowing quickly.
Keepers
The number of instances where keepers parry and push the ball in the path of an opponent is just absurd. I concede most of my goals from rebounds like that. Why can’t Konami code it so the keeper pushes the ball over the bar or around the post? OK, so there will be times when the keeper will spill it in the path of a striker, but having that happen every second time is not acceptable and is just poor coding.
Referees
Today I got my defender sent off for a second bookable offense. I carefully watched the review of both incidents and in neither of them he actually touched the opponent. That’s sloppy. The ref is inconsistent at best, does not let an advantage flow (even in clear situations where a player is clear on goal) and generally stops the game too frequently. That, combined with the cut scenes that you cannot remove mars the whole fluidity and enjoyment of the game. This is what I mean that Konami are a victim of their own success. In the pursuit of realism, they are actually making it too clunky, slow and ultimately frustrating.
Non gameplay observations
Most (if not all) ML games are played at night time. First of all, league games around Europe (not sure about elsewhere) are predominantly played at daytime. Sure, there are night games too, but it’s mainly day. I could have been OK with this lapse on Konami’s part if they had given us the option to manually choose the time (and light condition) before each game. However, there is no such option in ML. Why? Was it so difficult to enable that option before each game? Sloppy and silly!
FIFA’s not perfect and is the inferior game. Their approach is gimmicky. The first touch control is nothing more than an arbitrary error coded into the ability of players, yet they dress it up as some phenomenal innovation. But ultimately FIFA is more organic, snappier and easily accessible. They are just more clever about how they do things whilst Konami consistently shoot themselves in the foot (no League Mode anyone?). IN Fifa, you push a button and the action happens. Keepers throw the ball, players generally do what you ask of them quickly and easily. OK, so the gemeplay is arcady, but the control is there and it works perfectly.
I wish Konami could take a step back and look at these little things (which in most part would not be too hard to fix). OK, so the AI is a bit more complex and requires a bit of effort, but giving options for playing the game at different day times in ML, enabling a league mode, making a keeper throw the ball quickly, allowing the user to skip cut scenes quicker, not having to wait forever to resume the game, all of these should really not be too hard to implement.
No doubt Konami have steered the ship in the right direction, but PES 13 falls just short of being the best football game this year.
PES 13 does a lot of things right, the most important of which is the feeling of realism and the integration of real life phenomenon such as inertia, spin, etc. The editing mode is superlative, with the ability to even edit the posture of the player whilst dribbling or when shooting. But far too often the implementation of these real life facts is at the expense of control. Also PES is the victim of its own success. If you are trying to portray something in the real world, then falling just short is actually more irritating than knowing that that was never the intention.
Gameplay wise PES is more satisfying to play if you know the controls. Some people will actually enjoy investing time in learning the controls and deploying them in match situation, but many will rue the easy pick up accessability of FIFA.
In my view PES fails in the little things, the things that will leave you feeling flat after a game.
Examples:
Control
It just takes too long to execute certain things. Keepers throwing the ball is just one example. Resuming the game after a free kick is another. Trying to dissolve cut scenes is the ultimate. It’s unnecessarily slow.
Animations
There are far too many occasions, where it is clear that there is no animation to link two actions. Example: Keeper boots the ball and the two players expecting to receive the ball are standing there like statues, no attempt to move, jostle or jump. It’s just sloppy in this day and age.
This is where FIFA is very strong. They even have an animation for a player extending his whole body and sliding to keep the ball in. In PES I have lost the ball numerous times just because my player would look the ball going out without making an attempt recovering it despite me pressing the appropriate buttons. Had the animation been there, he would have made it and kept it in.
AI
For the most part the game does a very decent job at representing an organic movement on the pitch. The action flows nicely and somehow the AI is quite smart in the first two thirds of the pitch. However, get into the final third and the AI just collapses. The amount of time I’ve had a counter and found myself in a 2 on 2 or 2 on 1 situations and my AI teammate would just stand there with no urgency and no attempt to make a run or even move quickly is infuriating. I’m sorry but triggering runs with R3 is too distracting especially when the counter is flowing quickly.
Keepers
The number of instances where keepers parry and push the ball in the path of an opponent is just absurd. I concede most of my goals from rebounds like that. Why can’t Konami code it so the keeper pushes the ball over the bar or around the post? OK, so there will be times when the keeper will spill it in the path of a striker, but having that happen every second time is not acceptable and is just poor coding.
Referees
Today I got my defender sent off for a second bookable offense. I carefully watched the review of both incidents and in neither of them he actually touched the opponent. That’s sloppy. The ref is inconsistent at best, does not let an advantage flow (even in clear situations where a player is clear on goal) and generally stops the game too frequently. That, combined with the cut scenes that you cannot remove mars the whole fluidity and enjoyment of the game. This is what I mean that Konami are a victim of their own success. In the pursuit of realism, they are actually making it too clunky, slow and ultimately frustrating.
Non gameplay observations
Most (if not all) ML games are played at night time. First of all, league games around Europe (not sure about elsewhere) are predominantly played at daytime. Sure, there are night games too, but it’s mainly day. I could have been OK with this lapse on Konami’s part if they had given us the option to manually choose the time (and light condition) before each game. However, there is no such option in ML. Why? Was it so difficult to enable that option before each game? Sloppy and silly!
FIFA’s not perfect and is the inferior game. Their approach is gimmicky. The first touch control is nothing more than an arbitrary error coded into the ability of players, yet they dress it up as some phenomenal innovation. But ultimately FIFA is more organic, snappier and easily accessible. They are just more clever about how they do things whilst Konami consistently shoot themselves in the foot (no League Mode anyone?). IN Fifa, you push a button and the action happens. Keepers throw the ball, players generally do what you ask of them quickly and easily. OK, so the gemeplay is arcady, but the control is there and it works perfectly.
I wish Konami could take a step back and look at these little things (which in most part would not be too hard to fix). OK, so the AI is a bit more complex and requires a bit of effort, but giving options for playing the game at different day times in ML, enabling a league mode, making a keeper throw the ball quickly, allowing the user to skip cut scenes quicker, not having to wait forever to resume the game, all of these should really not be too hard to implement.