Broken mechanics, bugs, frustration, but quite fun to play. Like every single year. And like PES 2012 will be.
PES clearly lacks a proper match engine. If you play Fifa you'll play in a reliable, bug-free match engine.
In PES, you'll be driven by frustration in many circumstances. On the last PES this was also a problem, and the random bouncy-odd physics as well. They did fix the majority of the physics this time, just to introduce several, gameplay hampering bugs and mechanics.
Here's a few bugs and nuissances that will occour throughout:
- Players stumbling for no reason
- Players not positioning themselves to defend/cover, when its clear that the loose ball will be of the opponent's possession
- Players chasing balls that will go out, automatically, no matter where you try to move to (a.k.a. automatic gameplay playing the game for itself)
- Players having difficulties in calculating balls paths
- Players often stay in offside in completly avoidable situations
- Players failing to know which side has/will have the ball, leading to mispositioning and hilarious moments. This arcaich broken mechanic should leave the game and be replaced by something more consistent, realistic, fluid and reliable
- Player selection is aweful. If a pass is made to China but it misses the target and goes to Japan, the player in China is always selected instead of the player in Japan. Just saying!
- Players rushing shots leading to them tackling the ball instead of getting close to it and shoot with power
- Players shooting... I mean, passing, to the opponent goalkeeper. Some shots are just absurdly weak
- Players missing passes/shots (failing to hit the ball, literally) on situations where the opponent is pressing and their animations end up failing to hit it.
- Many other odd behaviors
- Kick off.... wtf!? What were they thinking!? Just let me do the 1st pass!!!
- Corners totally OP for A.I.... defensive A.I. can't track the ball down, can't cover players properly, and sometimes will fail to even TRY to head it out, just standing doing nothing
- Direct FKs still a bit too hard to score, and still totally OP for A.I. (even after 2 or 3 consecutive versions where this happens)
- In indirect FKs the A.I. takers do wide crosses 70% of the times. And those wide crosses are never reached by someone. This is a fact. They go too wide many times.
- Players automatically receiving through passes late, even when its obvious that they will get intercepted and they should receive it earlier, and you cannot stop this (a.k.a. automatic gameplay playing the game for itself.... again)
- Your actions, specially shots, are heavily influenced by wether or not you're being pressed. Sometimes just the fact that a player is BARELY pressing you makes your shot much less accurate and much weaker and easier to save. I don't like it.
- Lack of animations means that players (and specially GKs, you notice this a lot) will have a hard time executing an action that demands interaction with the ball, and even fail to hit it at times.
On the case of the GKs you see them sometimes failing some saves because of this... they do an animation, when IRL they would do another one to try to save/parry it.
- The A.I. will shoot in 90% of the cases where, after a corner, the ball is cleared out to the middle, 20-35 meters away from goal, even if the shot implies doing a very acrobatic, odd, or stupid movement to do it. Shooting just for shooting, mindlessly no matter what.
- Keepers still a little too good coming out, winning 99% of the balls by very close margins in many cases... this cirurgical precision/timing is a bit too much OP
- Getting into the area to unleash a good finishing shot is almost impossible at times. There's a point where the cluster of defenders will eat your face at 20 meters or closer, where they will press relentlessly and the forwards will fail hard to create any spaces. You end up getting 50% of your goals as long shots as they are mildly viable.
Most of the problem is that if the opponents press too hard, you will lose contact with the ball and it will bounce away, or it will be too hard to hit, or it will be instantly parried, or the shot comes aweful.
- Player's rating needs tweaking. Some interceptions are not accounted (hell knows why), and breaking the psychological barrier of 7.5/8.0 is so hard, that the player with 1 goal and 7.5 will have the same rating as the guy with 5 goals. 100% ridiculous.
- Referees still calling some fouls where you clearly tackle the ball, and not the legs, and also the way around.
- Cards to A.I.? Rarer than an UFO. So no, just to the player.
- Commentary completly ridiculous. 1st, the voice of that commentator is becoming really a nuissance. Secondly, many fails:
> "That ball went close to the corner flag" when it went 2 meters away from goal
> "That ball wouldnt go in even the goal was twice as high" is a lie
> Very bad shots being praised, horrifically good shots "not worth it"
> A whole number of situations where he expresses an opinion that does not correspond to the situation/dangerousness/etc/etc
> Completly careless application of commentary all-around. I am 100% sure that the developers put almost zero effort in making commentary X appear when this happens and commentary Y appear when that happens. The criteria is out of control and basically just "anything goes" and any commentary can happen regardless of, for instance, how good you shooted.
The commentray is even further worse when you experience a truthfully good one, like the Fifa series. You only realise how bad the commentary of PES is once you played Fifa.
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But there's also the good stuff!
- Passing is good regardless of what everyone says. It was a needed change and, for instance, is much easier to long through passes now, which was almost impossible on 2010.
It's not perfect, but good.
- Best penalties on any videogame, ever. Needless to say, also the most frustrating ones to learn ever, but once you understand it, you see that it was really a change for good.
- The whole ML is good as always, and what you can upgrade etc is also cool and makes you do some choices. Also slightly easier to sign some top players if your team has the stature, but also very expensive to do so (like expected)
- BAL is ok. Still needs some sort of flair, maybe some challenges/achievements/etc like in Fifa.
Overall it's fun like always, but too many bugs and nuissances that make the whole experience frustrating. A let down to see that the big news for PES 2012 are related to player movement. Couldn't care less if the whole gameplay is broken.
And we already what the next PES will be... more bugs.