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Day One: Initial/Gameplay Impressions

The ever popular Master League and Be A Legend modes return in PES 2012, along with a new one, Club Boss. First, the bad news: Master League and Be A Legend remain largely the same. However, the good news is that just by riding on the coattails of this year's improved gameplay, they already become much more satisfying experiences even without any substantial changes.

Master League

It wouldn’t be a PES game without one boneheaded decision from Konami. This year, to start Master League with real players or to play the Club Boss mode requires “game points". This means that you must play twenty matches in total to rack up the requisite two hundred points before unlocking the two options. Why? God only knows, but I digress.

Visually, Master League looks nicer this year with the introduction of cut scenes. They appear with some frequency during various moments of your career, like your initial hiring, unveiling a new player, or meeting with your assistant coach. While this feels exciting initially, there really isn’t much to it as you’re given no role to play except watching the scenes unfold. Admittedly, some of them are nice touches, like the club introducing your latest big money transfer. However, for the most part, they feel merely like window dressing on information that would’ve come up in a text box in years past. The only exception in this case is the pre game meeting with your assistant coach, where he gives you a very useful lowdown on your opposition, including their formation, tactics, and key players. 

This year, you can communicate with your players — but only if they contact you first. It’s a fairly simplistic process. Players come to you with different requests and you choose one out of three possible answers. Sometimes these requests are match related (they want a rest, or more playing time), other times they are not (a player wants to wear the number ten). While it gives you something new to do, it’s not deep enough to provide any meaningful sense of immersion. As well, it would be nice if the game gave you options to act and react. For example, as opposed to players coming to the manager after the game to complain of being benched, I would appreciate an option to tell a player beforehand that he will be rested.

My biggest gripe with player happiness, though, is that they are too fickle. Bench a player for one game and he’ll demand an explanation. Give him the wrong answer and it will make him unhappy. If Edin Dzeko and Carlos Tevez had a lovechild, he would still look like a beacon of virtue alongside some of these Master League players, especially those with low loyalty ratings. This issue also applies to contract extensions as well. Since they can only be done during January, you have just a month to convince an unhappy player, who will usually put talks on hold until his happiness improves, to renegotiate his contract. Unfortunately, this is proving to be more difficult than it should be, and most of my efforts have been fruitless thus far. After January, if these players are anywhere near useful, they will most likely be signed by another club on a Bosman before you get another shot. In short, players get unhappy a little too easy, and it will force you to rotate your squad more than you should.

On the topic of team management, there is a subtle but welcoming change to Master League. Instead of advancing game time in weeks like in previous games, PES 2012 now progress in days, which means you will have conceivably more time to perform any team management tasks. Periodically, your chairman will drop in and give you certain "missions" to accomplish. They range from qualifying for a certain competition to playing a specific player for a number matches. If you fail enough of them, or just lose too many matches in general, the chairman will fire you. Disappointingly, the game then just ends with a "game over", as opposed to you seeking new employment. In short, still no moving clubs this year.

As for transfer realism, it’s the usual going rate of two to three weird ones per window. Again, I don’t think manager modes in console games should be compared to Football Manager in terms of accuracy because they’re totally different beasts, so don’t expect it. Amongst the more questionable ones are Xavi, the lifelong Barcelona talisman, transferring to Chelsea; and Manchester United buying Gigi Buffon without offloading David De Gea. This is why I think Master League is best enjoyed if you choose to start with the original Master League scrubs instead of real club players. That way, by trying to win with a team of randoms, it puts the focus of Master League on the gameplay — undoubtedly PES 2012’s strongest suit— and loses a lot of baggage of trying to be a “realistic” management simulation, which it struggles with.

Like I said, PES 2012's much improved gameplay is what ultimately makes Master League more enjoyable than last year's offering. While the action on the field speaks for itself, its effects ripple to off the field management as well. One of the strengths in this year’s gameplay is the feeling of player individuality — that there are distinctive differences between various types of players when you control them during play. This, coupled with the intelligent AI, makes it incredibly satisfying when you upgrade your squad with the right players, because the subsequent on pitch results are so much more pronounced than in years past. 

Overall, PES 2012's Master League is still deep by console standards and will remain addictive to most footy gamers. But that has more to do with the solid foundation laid by older PES games than the improvements made in recent years.

Become a Legend

Similarly, the main improvement in Be A Legend stems from the improved gameplay — namely, the AI intelligence. Compared to PES 2011, when my player had to constantly beg for passes, and then pass them right back because I was lacking support, PES 2012 makes everything much easier because teammates react realistically. In a sense, this is almost the perfect showcase for the game’s AI. If my player drops into space, I can expect a pass to my feet, upon which there will be a host of options for me to choose from. Usually in these "be a player" modes, it’s always the most fun being a striker. Not this year. Midfielders, because of the AI intelligence, will get incredible mileage out of the mode by playing as the setup man.

This year, players are initially placed on a random team offering the player no choices. It’s another one of Konami’s questionable decisions, as there wasn’t much wrong with last year’s setting to begin with, when you could choose from several mid to lower tier clubs.

Periodically, your player is assigned missions to accomplish. Most of them come from your manager, usually asking you to attain a specific match rating. If you succeed, he will have a more favorable impression of you, and will be more likely to start you ahead of other similarly rated players in your position. You can now see how the manager and fans view you in relation to your teammates. This isn’t a huge addition by any means, but it does gives you some extra motivation to perform better.

Otherwise, the mode remains relatively unchanged. The goal is still to play your way to a top club, and depending on the nationality of your player, lead your country to glory as well. 

Club Boss

The newest addition to Football Life, Club Boss gives you the option of being the chairman of a football club. You determine which manager to hire, the club's transfer and marketing budget, and you can even influence the manager's tactics and signings (think of it as the Be A Berlusconi/Abramovich mode.) It sounds more interesting than it is, as it essentially takes away the best parts of Master League and focuses on its weakness. Basically, it's a sandbox mode that feels too sandbox-y and without consequences. Just for fun, controlling Manchester United, I was able to release Rooney and Nani from their contracts with nary a protest from any players or management. So if you want some fun, go ahead and try it out, but don't be surprised if you get tired of the mode pretty quickly. 

Final Thoughts

While Master League and Be A Legend are still as fun as ever and will still keep you playing the game for a long long time, you can’t help but notice that this year the two modes didn’t get as much love as they probably should have. There were a few thoughtful additions here and there, but I’m really hoping for the introduction, or revamping, of something more substantial next year.