Will PES ever be great again? Also, why i think FIFA is overrated.

Just to point out, this is my first Blog post on here. I was just going thru some today for the fist time and i though "Hell, i might as well give my views about something and see what fellow gamers think about it".

Anyway, let me start off by saying that I am not a PES “fanboy”. I know the title might say otherwise but im definitely not. Im a huge football fan and at the end of the day all I want to do is play a decent footie game regardless whether its FIFA or PES. So far this generation I havent played one.

For me, PES6 was the greatest football game ever made, and still is. It was almost perfect. The key reason why it was so great for me was because it allowed you the play exactly how you wanted. If you wanted to play counter-attacking football, you could, all out attacking football, you could, pin a team into their box and pass around it ala Barca, you could, play everything thru a creative midfielder ala Zidane or Riquelme, you could. You get my point. Also another important point was the individuality which is all but gone from modern footie games. Every player felt different. Their strengths and weaknesses were more apparent and were vital to how you played the game. If you were on the ball with Zidane you would notice immediately because of his great control, tight dribbling and smooth passing. So it would be wise to get the ball to him every chance you could. Where on the otherhand a player like Roy Keane was great for pressurising players and winning the ball back but wasn’t very creative therefore you wouldn’t dribble much with him or try any killer passes. This injection of individulaity and simple, yet precise, gameplay mechancics made PES6 so great to play.

You would think it would only get better coming into the next generation but PES 2008 proved otherwise. PES 2008 was a huge surprise to PES fans simply because of how poor it was. But many fans, including me, just assumed it was a result of the jump to new consoles and PES 2009 would be the real successor to PES 6. We were wrong. Ok, but PES 2010 will surely be the real deal. We were wrong. The terrible animations, rigid gameplay and mistake prone goalies, among other flaws, were still present. Oh, but PES 2011, with way more animations, true 360 movement & passing and more “freedom”, this is it, PES is back! We were wrong. Although, as bad as it can be, PES 2011 does show hope, they tried new things and I could see what they were trying to achieve and it was the right idea. Except the results didn’t match the vision. It turned out to be the most frustrating game in the series. Erratic animations, clunky dribling, unresponsive players (especially defenders), terrible refereeing, non-existant close control or pace, mental goalkeeping, useless high through-ball, the “stumble”, broken shooting, poor AI…..that pretty much sums it up for me. Although I mentioned a lot of serious flaws, the thing is, these things can be easily fixed. Along with a much improved Master League and the introduction of ML Online and a brilliant tactic system, I still have hope for PES 2012 and the series in general. Even though I wouldn’t be surprised if I was in the minority regarding this. What do you think?

Now, the FIFA being overrated part. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate FIFA. Its not a “bad” game, but for me it aint a “great” game either. Yet the last two editions have received critical acclaim. “Footballing Perfection” as OPM put it. But that’s the thing, its not, its actually far from it. It does a lot of things right, it has fantastic presentation, a great soundtrack, nice graphics, smooth online, the ability to change aspects of the game from automatic to manual, the brilliant dynamic commentary and I love the aspect of playing around in the Arena during loading times. But when it comes down to the reason we bought the game, the gameplay, that’s where it fails for me.
When I first got FIFA10 I loved it. I loved the feel of it and the brilliant animations. But after a few games I started to notice things that snnoyed me more as I played. Every goalie I played against made world class saves. I found it hard to hit a low driven shot. The refereeing was very leniant. The game would get congested a lot where players would crowd a certain part of the pitch, especially midfield. Small players were knocked off the ball by stronger players way too easy. Defenders always go for the ball instead of containing players. The game sometimes felt like rugby with the overload of jostling. There was no pace, fast players were useless because anyone could catch them. One of the most annoying things was that every player felt the same and after a while every game felt the same. That is why I got sick of FIFA and started to wonder why it was getting such praise with so many glaring flaws.

FIFA11 promised a lot of improvements especially player individuality. Yet when I played it it was basically the same, with most of the same flaws and the only difference that really stood out for me was the slower passing. I rented it for the week and at the end of the week I was bitterly dissapointed as I actually thought it would be a great game. Unlike PES, I havent much hope for FIFA simply because what I consider to be a average game is getting great reviews and therefore EA are not under any pressure to make any major changes. Whereas because of the bad reviews, Konami are.

Now im stuck in a footie game limbo, last year I though for the first time I would have two great footie games, this year my expectations are much lower. Luckily for me there is loads of great games out around the same time.