me. :D :) ;) :cool:

Does anyone ever wonder why the_man is so chill when it comes to 'arguing' about Fifa vs. ISS - I mean the guy never loses his temper, never goes overboard, in the end he always just sits back and says; 'cool, you play Fifa if that's what you want, I'll play Winning Eleven 5/ISS'.

Well one of the reasons he's like that is because he is indeed, a very cool guy. And the second reason he's like that - well, I understand now - and I'll explain soon.

Simply put; J-League Winning 5 is the dog's golden bollocks.

I can't read a word of Japanese, I don't know crap about the J-League players or teams, but my God, this game just blows me away. I got the game booted up at around 11 last night and I played until 4 - I didn't want to stop but I had such a long day, I just turned off the PS2, brushed my teeth and collapsed on my bed. In my jeans.

I'll go into gameplay details and other stuff later on (maybe in an hour or so) - I haven't even scratched the surface of the game, but I'm telling you now, Pro Evolution Soccer will blow your mind. I'm just drooling buckets imagining J-League's gameplay combined with International, Euro and S.American club teams.

So why is the_man so chill? Because there's no contest. Because J-League Winning Eleven 5 is sooooo much better than not only Fifa but ISS PE2 and any and every other football game in existence - it's so much better that it's just making me chuckle (literally) thinking of how the topic of ISS vs. Fifa is even argued. There is no contest if you're a football fan.

It's like neanderthal man trying to argue that his horse is faster than our Ferrari. It's not even worth arguing, you think that horse is faster? Fine, that's cool - you think the horse is faster, good for you, in the meantime I'll be driving my Ferrari.



Graphics impressions in about an hour or so.

Neutral.
[lucky bastard]

The eyes are red, and the thumbs are sore, but there's a smile on my face. I'll go over the graphics tommorow.

Nite.

thanx mate

You're right there's no contest

fifa isn't even close to iss
iss is at least 25x better

anyways can you tell more about gameplay

Will you be doing a 'proper' reveiw of the game like you did for ISS PE2 on that website you write for?

Heh

I got this game to on Saurday for ps2 and I also picked up fifa 2002 just to see what it is like on ps2. Its crap on PC.

Anyway I have never seen anything like this winning eleven. It is so fluent and looks amazing. The animations are incredible and its also one hell of a challenge. Should have PES this week sometime and seriously cant wait.

Oh and by the way fifa is practically identical to that of the pc except with the crappy flares. Mind you i only played it for 5 mins ish then went back to JL WE.

Top game and ill know that ill get around a year out of it before i get even slightly board and thats only the single player mode. I can see me and the lads will have some fall outs over this game.

Originally posted by stuie2k

[...]
Should have PES this week sometime and seriously cant wait.
[...]


This week? I wished you are right, but what I heared from the Dutch retailer of ISS it will be at november 23...:(

I think he means a beta version

Can we get that beta-version somewhere...? :cool:

damn u! i want it! i want it i want it i want it i want it!

*gets back to play ISS PE2

Originally posted by Han
Holland not to the World Cup; the qualifying system sucks


Haha Han, very funny man.

Originally posted by the_man


Haha Han, very funny man.

:) :) Costa Rica goes, Japan, USA, Korea, Australia....
Why don't they make World Cup for A-countries, B-countries, etc., like in Ice-hockey and Davis cup tennis ? ;)

Originally posted by Han


:) :) Costa Rica goes, Japan, USA, Korea, Australia....
Why don't they make World Cup for A-countries, B-countries, etc., like in Ice-hockey and Davis cup tennis ? ;)

Nah, I like the way it i now. Only the defending champs and the hosts get to go free, the rest have to work for it, except if you are Argentina, hehe. This keeps every nation on their toes. I say that if you make it you deserve to go, if you don't, you don't.

yep Han

They deserve it. They've played too arrogant in the qualifaction series and when they had to win it was too late.

[All apologies to the_man and anyone else who's played WE5 since this will be redundant info, but I've been stuck in the 'dark ages' with ISSPE2 so JLWE5 is one hell of a shock]

Graphics:

In a word, the graphics in J-League Winning Eleven 5 are; AWESOME.

I must have seen hundreds of screens and the excellent videos at iss-online, but it's nothing like when you see it on your TV screen. I use DVD-component input and the graphics are beautfully crisp and clear - and I'm sure they'd look just as good if you used S-Video input as well.

J-League WE5 starts off with a very cool introsequence that uses live-video/TV footage from the J-League. I wouldn't usually mention the intro sequence but JLWE5's is so cool it deserved mention, and I'm surprised EA Sports, with all it's licenses don't make intro sequences like use real footage.

I don't know what the stadiums are in the J-League but they're the first thing you notice when the match starts - they're absolutely gorgeous - the structures themselves are so detailed and the lighting effects, such as sunlight filtering through the stadium, lens flare and shadows on the pitch are awesome. The crowds have been improved from ISS PE2 and are animated - though they're not as nicely animated as the crowd in Fifa 2002, they do however mostly wear the colours of the home team which is cool.

You've all seen videos of the teams walking onto the pitch, and needless to say it's great to see the photographers take pictures of the teams, and the teams going 'into the huddle' right before kickoff. I also really, really like the graphic that shows how the starting 11's will line-up - it really makes you feel like you're watching a match on TV.

The player models and animations are as good as, if not better, than those in Madden 2002 PS2 - a game I consider to have the best graphics of any team sports game right now. Player faces don't look like hideous zombies like in Fifa, and there's a wide range of very noticeable player size differences.

The animations are out of this world. I used to think the animations in ISS PE2 were great (and they are), JLWE5 blows them away - so many little animations and the transitions between them are silky smooth. What impressed me the most are the massive variety of ball control animations - there must easily be over 20 different ones depending upon not only where the ball hits your player, but also HOW FAST and in WHAT DIRECTION your player is moving. A lumbering centre-back has to chest the ball straight down, an improved version of the animation in ISSPE2, and then move, but a skillful attacking player like Ono can actually chest the ball down to the side by slightly twisting his torso. There are also tons of animations for interactions between the players and it's awesome to see the defender and a winger running side by side with the defender trying to grab/slow down the winger while the winger tries to push back - all this while running down the touchline. Looks like something out of the EPL.

I think the only disapointment is the rain effects which don't look as good as those in Madden 2002, but I do like the way the grass looks 'heavy' when it's raining and water splashes up when players slide, run or when the ball skips along the turf.

Visually, JLWE5 is hands down the best looking soccer game on any platform, and arguably the best looking sports game, period - and I didn't even factor in player likenesses since I don't know the J-League teams or players. I can't wait to see Owen, Davids and Shevchenko in PES.

The stadiums are all the stadiums in the JLeague....I hate it when the defender actually does slow my attacker down, this happens to the smaller attackers, and the bigger defenders like Stam ;) do this successfully, but sometimes the ref calls it (more like Ortega gives a 9.5-USA 9.6-GER 9.5-ENG 9.7-RUS 4.2-FRA 9.5-SWE, those darn french :p ). Altho the rain grafx are not as good as FIFA's grafx, I love playing in the rain. The ball movement is soooooo cooool. I love shooting in the rain, the keeper has butter fingers, and rebounds are awesome cos you don't know how the ball will behave. I love hitting a long ball to the wing and I say to myself, oh, he's got it...then it bounces and skips and I say to myself, maybe not.

Whats your favourtie team to play with lavan? Is it Jubilo Iwatta? They're my favourite team.

I went to one of their matches back in 96(we were sitting on 'their' side of the stadium, so we nautrally cheered for them), and they had just won the j league when I was over there this year. I'm not sure of the players, but I think Nakayama plays for them.

I've been playing a lot of games with Kashiwa Reysol since they were the first team I picked. I'm completely thick though as I still haven't figured out how to start a 'season', and I really want to play as a 2nd division team and work my way up but I can't find the season mode even with all my prodding - so right now I'm just playing friendlies. I've figured out a lot of the tactics stuff (apart from the special plays since they're totally in Japanese) and the other basic menus (camera angles, tactics etc), and I found the really really cool tutorial in the training mode.

Would help a bit more if I read Japanese. :)

Do you know any English-language J-League sites? I'd just like to read up on the teams and see how the real life players compare to their videogame counterparts.

Here are two a links that might help you out with Rey Sol and the other J League teams and Japan Natonal Team. I played with Jubilo with J League Winning Eleven 2000 2nd edition. Takahara was in my team now he plays for Boca Jr in Argentina.

http://www.shu.com/reysol/index-e.html

http://footballjapan.com/index_e.html

later

IMO, this site is better http://www.wldcup.com/Asia/news/index.html

That has nearly everything you could want on the J league.

Photos, stats heaps of stuff.

And I forgot to add, that I also cheer for Gamba Osaka, my 'home' team (well, it's the city/area my mum was brought up in, and where my granddad lives, and where I go when I visit japan)

And it was Masashi Nakayama http://www.wldcup.com/Asia/jleague/jubilo/nakayama.html

This page takes you to the teams pages http://www.wldcup.com/Asia/jleague/teams.html

And I also had some Gamba socks, and we've got some Verdy towels somewhere too.

I'm pretty sure this is the stadium we were at too

http://www.wldcup.com/Asia/wc2002/jubilos.jpg

It was vs Jef United, and the score was 2-1 to jubilo I think, I could probably look it up.

I still remember some of the chants too:

"Getta goal, getta goal, getta go-al Jubilo!"

"Jubilo Iwatta *Clap clap clap-clap clap* Jubilo Iwatta *Clap clap clap-clap clap*"


{edit}
It was 2-1 http://www.wldcup.com/Asia/jleague/1996g.html#iwata1

It's the result 5th from the bottom. It wasn't the 4-2 win up near the top, I know it wasn't that high a scoring match
{edit}
Those claps are like 'clap, clap, double clap, clap' kinda thing. You porbably don't understand. It's hard to explain,

Neutral -I'm pretty sure I speak for everyone waiting for the 23rd to come along(well hopefully before christmas here in australia), WE HATE YOU :p

Only fault so far is an aesthetic rain detail, sounds good to me.

If your hands still work after your next gaming session can we have some gameplay details please :)

G-R,

Thanks a million for those links, really appreciate it.

PerthGlory;

Yup I'll do gameplay impressions when I get home from Uni about 7 hrs.

Needless to say JLWE5 is utter crap and Fifa is much better.

Some problems (in short);

+ Too hard to score, and too many ways to score - probably infinite.
+ I can't score from the half way line
+ Too many types of dribbling mean theres so many more individual plays - this is too hard for my feeble brain to comprehend, I just want to hammer the speed burst button
+ 5 types of passing, far to complicated and how come the ball doesn't mysteriously veer in odd directions obeying the laws of physics from the 6th dimension?
+ I have to pass the ball around to create chances and players move into space more intelligently than ever - too complicated, I want them to run when I tell them to and I want shining lights to fly out of their arses when they do so.
+ Far too many tactical options, even though I can't use half of them because they're in Japanese, the half that I can use are much more than those in any other football game. This is garbage, I want to put my players in the team before the game and see my striker line up at left back and my left back in the Main Stand next to Sven Goran Erickson with a cup of Bovril and a pie.
+ Unscripted, magnificent ball physics - I want the ball to come back to my foot when I kick it forward.
+ Much, much more.


[Sarcasm-of-the-day (TM) was brought to you this morning by Konami]

Btw, screw Chris James and Terry Butcher, I want the Japanese commentary, it ****ing rocks! I'm serious now; I run around the house screaming GOLGOLGOLGOLGOLGOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLL!!!! And SHOOOOTOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love it, I don't understand a word (except for 'Gol' which I think means 'what a brilliant play you international soccer superstar you' ;) and 'nice try') but I love it - you get so into the game when the commentator is going nuts. The crowd sounds are excellent too with lots of chants and drums - the atmosphere is great.

I think the best in WE5 is "...wondaful shuuuupaa, butiful gol!!!!" heh

Sounds crap mate, Im off to play FIFA 2001, this is a purists FIFA game.... FIFA 2002 has too many features for me, although I do like the fact that I have to use interpretation diagrams to play wingers... That kinda increases the strategic value of the game..... (will I get it right, will Giggs play upfront or at centre back this game?):crazyboy:

Originally posted by Perth Glory
Neutral -I'm pretty sure I speak for everyone waiting for the 23rd to come along(well hopefully before christmas here in australia), WE HATE YOU :p

Only fault so far is an aesthetic rain detail, sounds good to me.

If your hands still work after your next gaming session can we have some gameplay details please :)

Yeah, we hate you Pommies (I should be careful, my wife IS a Pom ;-)). My PS2 arrived yesterday, I had to order it in. They are hard to get since Sony slashed the price. I haven't tried it out as yet. Really, I am not interested in any other game. I am waiting patiently for my copy of PES to arrive from Ingerland. In the mean time, the PS2 can stay in the box :)

Whoa, busy day today - I ended up staying late at school to play indoor football and have realized that I am bloody out of shape (I haven't played hockey or football in almost a month because of Uni stuff) - I was wheezing like an astmatic smoking weed.


I could really go on about JLWE5's gameplay for pages and pages and I've only played the game a few days - I think iss-online's preview was pretty much spot on. 4 main things stand out for me; ball physics, control, AI, and the speed of the game.

The ball physics are just magnificient, the ball moves so realistically it's frightening. I've seen some truly amazing ricochettes and there are so many more factors into whether or not a pass or a shot goes where you want it to. The coolest thing is now the speed of crossfield (lob = circle button) balls, if you hold the button down hard then the ball is driven more across instead of having a lot of air underneath it. There's also a lot more whip or swerve on the ball, especially on free kicks, crossing and corners. I played a few games in the rain and the_man was spot on - it's so cool, the ball skips and bounces and sometimes even sticks. It was 1-1 in the 85th minute against Jef United and I had a free kick about 25 yards out, I magnificently curled the ball over the wall and it hit the post, then on the rebound deflected on the fallen and rolled ALONG the goal line until it STOPPED in the mud. Right there. On the #$#$ goal line, so here I was panicing and screaming like a little girl, thankfully a microsecond later I got my wits about me and rushed in with a striker (a posse of defenders followed), but the keeper lept over and instead of holding the ball just plamed/swept the ball off the line in desparation and then one of the defenders cleared it. I was awestruck.

Control - just like in iss-online's preview, I love the dribbling, I gaurantee that the first hour you play this game all you will try to do is take other players on - it's so cool and you have so much control, but of course, this is ISS and after you've lost all your games during that hour (:) ) you'll go back to playing football, but it really is cool to add much more of a sense of individuality and making dribbling a major threat. I've been trying to study the J-League players (thanks G-R) as I don't know which ones are great dribblers/assist men but I can't wait to try and take on defenders with players I am more familiar with like Giggs and Figo.

AI - so amazing that only after the first day of playing did I realize how good they were, you almost take for granted the intelligence of the players in moving into space and also improvising and making support runs. It's also much more obvious which players have good offensive and defensive awareness, there's one striker for Reysol who is a complete dunce (don't remember the number now) - I picked him because he was a red status arrow and the idiot wouldn't make that many runs into space it was totally obvious where the space was. I took him off and replaced him with the regular starting forward and he was much more lively and opened up a lot of gaps with his runs.

Speed - this is hard for me to explain because a lot of people play ISS PE2 on emulators so I don't know how the speed thing works, but on the PSX I play PE2 at about 3 notches above the slowest speed. JLWE5 is MUCH faster, but it works because I realize now that I turned down the speed in PE2 to make the dribbling a tad easier - but now not only is dribbling more in depth there's so much more momentum to player movements; even when you don't have the ball you can feel a major difference in the way you make players turn when they're running at top speed. I also love the way players can lose their footing in the mud (when it's raining) and just slip and fall - it looks really cool, and thankfully it only happens rarely - when you have a player running around like a headless chicken and trying to tackle.

When you're talking about the guys slipping over, is it when the make a sudden change of direction or something? And is the animation for it cool/real or is it just a fall over animation?

I'd like the sound of this 'feature' cos I've had my fair share of slip overs while playing in real life, and it sucks cos you usually end up losing posession and any advantage you had.

Originally posted by G-R
When you're talking about the guys slipping over, is it when the make a sudden change of direction or something? And is the animation for it cool/real or is it just a fall over animation?

I'd like the sound of this 'feature' cos I've had my fair share of slip overs while playing in real life, and it sucks cos you usually end up losing posession and any advantage you had.

Well I've only seen players fall down twice and both times in the rain. Once when I had a guy running after the ball and the defender made a quick turn to pass the ball off and when I turned my guy stumbled (like in ISSPE2) but instead of recovering he slipped and fell to the floor. The second time, I was going for the a loose ball but the opposition player beat me to it and when I turned to chase after him my guy just slipped on the mud. It looks really cool, and thankfully it only happens on rare occasions.

what about that speed?

you say it's much faster but is it a realistisc speed?
Or is it too fast comparing to real football?

Originally posted by Tim
what about that speed?

you say it's much faster but is it a realistisc speed?
Or is it too fast comparing to real football?

Fast but still realistically fast - it's like the EPL rather than the plodding Serie A, but you can slow the pace of the game down by just spreading the ball around, and the pace is slower in the rain. I'm just referring to the default speed though - I can't find the option to change the speed (it's probably somewhere buried in the Japanese menus) but I like the default speed a lot.

Just remember, Fifa isn't rediculously fast because the players move fast, it's because the ball travels at 600mph.

Originally posted by Neutral LFC [i]

I must have seen hundreds of screens and the excellent videos at iss-online, but it's nothing like when you see it on your TV screen. I use DVD-component input and the graphics are beautfully crisp and clear - and I'm sure they'd look just as good if you used S-Video input as well.



I know about software, but very little about hardware: Do you mean by "S-Video" the Euro AV Cable?
I use the separately bought Euro-AV cable SCPH-10142
And what do you use? DVD-component input: is that a monitor?

Originally posted by Neutral LFC


... I'm just referring to the default speed though - I can't find the option to change the speed (it's probably somewhere buried in the Japanese menus) but I like the default speed a lot.



Didnt the programmers remove the game speed slider from WE5?
Don't know if its made it back for JLWE5 and PES though.

Just remeber FIFA is ridiculous period :D

Originally posted by Han


I know about software, but very little about hardware: Do you mean by "S-Video" the Euro AV Cable?
I use the separately bought Euro-AV cable SCPH-10142
And what do you use? DVD-component input: is that a monitor?

There are three major types of video input/output for the PS2;

i)Regular AV Cables - these are the plain vanilla cables you often use with your VCR; video, and then the two sound wires (left and right). If you use these with your PS2 the picture looks OK, not bad or anything, just okay.

ii)S-Video - this is a square-ish video cable that makes the picture MUCH sharper, there is a major difference between S-Video and normal composite AV cables. You need to have an S-Video jack in your TV for this to work.

iii)DVD Component input - this is, I believe, what you guys in Europe call a SCART lead, though I'm not sure. In North America component input has 5 wires; THREE for the picture, and TWO for the sound - this has the sharpest picture of the three with no colour bleeding; your games and DVDs look ****ing sweet - the picture is very crisp and clear. However, there isn't as big a jump from S-Video to Component, as their is from AV composite to S-video, and a lot depends on your TV too. If you don't have a component jack on your TV it's no biggie because S-Video is still good. I bought a new TV last year mainly for my PS2 and DVDs so I got component input on my TV, now most TVs have them (don't feel so special now :)). In Europe though, from what I've heard, if you use SCART then macrovision makes DVD playback on the PS2 come in green - so you're better off getting S-Video.

Enough blabbing for now, the_man probably knows this much better than me, so if you still got questions or I made some mistakes just ask the pro.

Neutral LFC, from what you said I understand I have the good one :cool: I have a SCART-lead.
I bought the special EURO-AV-Cable and what you describe that must be the one!

Maybe the-man can confirm (or not :) ) this?