MatTheCat
Registered User
PES 2010 is far from perfect so I will start with some glaring annoyances in the game.
The goalkeepers in general are just not all to clever but from time to time the goalkeeping AI goes totally awol. Indeed, this often undermines gritty hard fought contests where horribly lame goals that give no satisfaction to anyone can occurr due to faulty goalkeeping AI. I am not talking about cheap parried shots or keepers letting balls go under their legs here, I am talking about keepers quite simply taking off as though they have just seen an ice-cream van somewhere at a crucial moment. These flaws can of course be combatted by the fact that you can take control of your keeper. Indeed, this little (re)addition to the game certainly adds extra excitement and satisfaction elements to the game when you begin to get good at doing this, but only if the game allows you to take control quick enough which leads me to the second major flaw in the game.
Button lag is unnacceptable. Contrary to what the usual Konami arselicking sites (PESfan, WENB) like to promote, it's not 'realism', its not 'waiting for animations to complete', and its not an 'intended part of the game'. Its just damn frustrating but something you will have to learn to work with if you are going to tap into the vast pool of gameplay depth that this game offers.
Other than there are the minor flaws such as the robotic player animations, limited ball control methods, limited methods for passing ball around, horrible collisions system, etc etc. You get the idea, plenty has been written about these things and are presented as the main reasons for PES's suppossed 'inferiority' to FIFA on many review sites.
Before I move on to actually telling you why I love this game and gain a fantastic amount of excitement and enjoyment from it, I should also mention the crowd noises. To sum up Konami's default chants, they are nauseating. In a few words, they are completely fucking headache inducing and make me want to puke all at the same time. 'Poor quality crowd chants' may not seem like a big deal, but I was unable to play PES for more than 20 minutes until I had sorted out and installed a chants pack for it. Since I play on PC, this wasn't a hard thing to do (see: http://www.pesgaming.com/showthread.php?t=73745 ). But if I was a 360 gamer for example, I would be stuck with these bloody awful droney chants that never let up and they would serioulsy damage my enjoyment of the game. Like I said, I couldn't really play PES2010 until I got my chants pack sorted out.
So what is good is about the game you ask and how is it different to PES2009?
Apart from another new lick of paint, on first examination, this game is not a lot different to PES2009. However, when you get playing it a bit, you will realise it is nothing like the last incarnation of ProEvo and for me, that magic lies within the AI which in my opinion is the best balanced AI engine that Konami have ever produced. It is now a lot harder to simply charge down the line or through defenses with all the best players although it is still possible. However, the way the defensive AI has got so much more clever in dealing with this type of exploitative gameplay) means that the cheap goal scoring methods are no longer the most efficient route to goal by an order of several magnitude. Of course, you can still score cynical looking goals but the game no longer rewards the gamer so richly for 'that shitty style' of gameplay. Indeed, if you are needing to get a goal back for a game that is worth a £10 bet, you are probably more likely to get it by setting up a Lampard or Ballack for a 20-25 yard blast or from an early crossed ball (when the radar movement suggests the time is right) than by getting the ball to Messi and simply trying to run through everyone. Whilst, I am sure that given the passage of time all the usual cocksuckers that end up top of PESwankings will have worked out the lamest method of getting a goal sooner or later, for most of us the AI really does encourage us to try 'playing the game' instead of trying to break or exploit the game.
Furthermore, I should add that the sliders system in PES also has a very noticeable impact on how your team plays, moves, defends, and attacks. So I would imagine that when the 'Cut-back Queens' do start to disover PES2010 AI flaws, knowledgeable adjustment of the sliders could well greatly frustrate thier cynical ploys, whatever they may turn out to be. But moving away from playing against the Rob McLeans or Wallaces's (PESwankings top gunners) of this world. The sliders are something that you will overlook at first, but when u get playing the game, and feel that your team needs say more width or perhaps need to tighten up thier act and be more tenacious in the middle of the park, adjustment of those sliders work a treat.
Finally, what makes ProEvo 2010 a cracking game in my eyes is that the game makes me cream my fucking pants on a regular basis! Over the top utterly fucking fantastic goals are a regular occurrence in PES2010 and I for one couldn't give a crap whether this reflects real football or not. I would rather be playing a video soccer game against my bros/mates where half the goals scored are screamers from 25 yards out or bullet diving headers than practically all the goals being scored from dribbling and short passes before shooting from 6 yards out as has been the tradition amongst so called 'great players' of ProEvo in past times. Some people argue that in PES2010, you get far too much space to shoot from long range and it is indeed the case that the game does encourage long range shooting opportunities. It is also true that if you know how to read radar movements, that big long high crosses can be utterly devasting on a regular basis. But combine the opening up of the defensive AI in this respect and combine it with the tightening up of the AI in response to the cynical dribbling cut back bullshit of yesteryear, and you have a game that rewards creative and ambitious gameplay as oppossed to punishing it, whilst bending it over and bearing it's arse to anyone who opts to dribble through the whole team into the same old sweet-spots with Messi and co, PES4 - PES2009 style.
Also I should stress that 'these cracking goals' which I have stated occur regularly in the game, have not the slightest whiff of a 'pre-manufactured' feel to them in the same way that many of the seemingly 'amazing' goals scored in FIFA do. Each of them is very different; each of them makes the gamer think that HE scored it; and for most of them, an intuitive sense of timing (again, unlike in FIFA) is a critical factor between hitting the G-spot or not. At its best, scoring in PES2010 gives big time thrills, whereas scoring in FIFA10 gives mild satisfaction at most.
In short, despite some horrible bugs, PES 2010 is a genius of a game. The biggest thrills come from the games shooting mechanics but this would mean nothing without being built upon a brilliantly well balanced AI system that actually encourages and rewards the gamer for actually 'trying shit out', for a fucking change!
