In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

[bjackets]

I can't play Fifa since playing PES. Outside of the Presentation, it is just plain stale. The player models have always seemed to small to me as well in Fifa. And the lack of control with the player you are controlling on defense is too pronounced. There aren't enough small movement animations on D which causes you to over run your angles to stay in front of your man. Now PES does have an issue with analog 8 directional control still being noticeable and there is the feeling of playing on these 8 rails. When you download the digital copy that feeling is hardly noticeable with the 2 teams you can play with while the download is completing, but for whatever reason it returns when the full game is finished downloading. I'm guessing this isn't what they intended. After playing Fifa that is the hardest part for me to accept. The other problem with Fifa and all EA sports games is that they basically program them all the same way. They use the same formula. All teams play the same but they just have different uniforms. Speed is always the most important attribute and none of the others have much impact. I think most people that like 2K, PES, etc enjoy them because an effort has been made to provide variety instead of the same canned coding that has gone on for years without any effort to provide more depth. Depth leads to variety which in turn gives the product longevity. I thought the review was on point. You aren't reviewing PES for fluff and conversely you aren't reviewing EA games for depth of gameplay. The companies have very different approaches to what they are trying to accomplish when making games.

[kashik]

Speaking of the 8 directional control and the feeling on being on rails...

I don't actually feel the 8 directional control or your feeling that the intro game is diffeerent from the full game. I think what I'm feeling is more genuine, but can sometimes feel weird since Fifa is overly smooth. I begun to notice that the choppiness in the movement in PES seemed to correspond with foot placement and change of directions. Sometimes movements could be smooth, but other times jarring if the player was making a change of direction... Which I think is natural. if you think about your own movements as you dribble the ball, small movements to the sides can be smooth but change of directions or more drastic movements are not. Now I may be giving too much credit here, but so far I'm under this impression and quite like it as it seems natural.

As for the on rails feeling... Absolutely. Like when running to a through ball, loose ball, or holding x to close down on an attacker, the player is definitely locked in. To be fair, Fifa is very much the same way in through balls and loose balls. I would like to see this improved in both games... Maybe it could be an assist that could be turned down.

[xicpanad]

Well I was a bit sceptic about this game but because I was playing the demo so many times, I bought it. At the beginning I played a couple friendlies and custom cups and started to think I did a bad choice, since I enjoyed fifa so much, and I was really immersed in its manager mode. But something kept me closer to PES everytime I wanted to play a soccer game.
Fifa´s replays are just so awesome at times, like real life, but feeling this PES in the midfield, passing short or long passes, its just amazing all the time. And the radomness of all things we do, its just almost overwhelming.

At first shots looked too easy and repetitive, but the more I play, the more variation I see. And also, people (me included) used to say on older PES´s, that buildups were varied, but only to realise it wasn´t after a good amount of games. But on this year´s edition, I have never, ever done the same play twice. Not because I don´t want to, but because the way the match flows simply makes me look for diferent chances in every minute. When we realise, we just had a match with lots of variation and totally diferent from the previous one. I´m really enjoying this one and getting the hang of it.

[nunogomes]

Quote: Originally Posted by orion523

Your not getting what I'm saying, the shots aren't physics based, so while there may be say knuckle shots in the game, they're random and have nothing to do with the way the ball was hit, just who hits it, and the dice roll.

There is a special hability that some players have (C. Ronaldo for example) called Knucke Shot, and only these players can hit them consistently (if you time it correctly).

The ones who don´t have these special hability, have a much smaller time window AND the probability of the shot being well taken his much lower.

[Beetlebum]

Orion, are you playing on manual or assisted shots?

[xicpanad]

I keep my words about it. I´ve seen some awesome unexpected swerves and dipping shots from random players. I don´t do them intentionally, I´m not that good, but sometimes I shoot in that particular moment. I even had the CPU last time missing a shot completely. The attaker caught the ball loose and tried to shoot first time, but the ball was bouncing and he made one of those shots where the ball hits really hard on the ground and bounces way too high over the goal.

Bah, saying is one thing, but watching it is so much better!!... This game has those moments now and then...