Soccer Gaming

Welcome to this weeks column

Congratulations to Barca and Inter on fantastic seasons, both pushed all the way to their league titles.  I’m looking forward to the Champions League final it will be an interesting game and I’m sure not many would have predicted this final two months ago, let alone at the start of the season.

This week I was thinking we should dwell on last years promises for PES for a moment and see if they delivered what they said they would.

About this time last year Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH announced that PES 2010 will benefit from 360-degree control and further elevating the unrivalled realism of the title. 

The announcement comes following Konami’s close contact with the global network of PES and football fans, who have played a key role in the development of the new game. Via forums and feedback, the PES Productions team in Tokyo has canvassed opinion on elements fans hoped to see included in PES 2010, and 360-degree control was part of the long list.  Was this delivered, I don’t believe it was.  This was a topic last week and is a major advertising point of the forthcoming game, again.Konami has also confirmed a number of similarly crowd-pleasing elements as requested by the fan base, including:

Manual Goalkeepers: PES 2010 will be the only football title to offer users complete control of the keeper. Players can switch to their goalkeeper at any time, and will enjoy total control of his action. Anybody who has tried this will understand this is not easy to do and it does not feel like you have total control.  When you depress the analogue stick to take total control you invariably run your keeper towards the corner flag until you get control and then its too late. 

New Goalkeeper Moves: Players can now perform quick under-arm throws to their nearest defender to get attacks rolling more quickly.  True but this is determined by the AI once you have selected to pass.  The keeper doesn’t always throw it to the nearest man and it ends up as a bad pass quite often.
All-New Animation: Key animation related to dribbling, running, turning, etc, has been reworked and enhanced, creating a more natural and organic feel to the way players chase down balls, change direction and move around the pitch. The result is a more fluid and natural look to the game.　I agree the game has a fluid feel to it but if we’re being honest, something has been lost of the last few PES instalments in terms of cruyff turns and shirt pulling etc.  Whilst the animations may have been all new, I do not believe the animations are better.

Fine-tuned Close Control: The PES Productions team has worked to improve trapping of the ball and basic close control elements, giving the user more ways to spread and move the ball around effortlessly.  I do prefer pes2010 over previous editions for close control.  It does feel like you receive control and the ball doesn’t bounce off you like previous editions.

Manual Ball Request: The ability to demand the ball when running into space is now available to the player, and will be accessible in all game modes, such as multi-player, online, etc. This is not an area of the game I’m familiar with as we only play multi-player one v one and the on-line system has been discussed once or twice already this season.  If anyone knows if this works by all means let me know…

Simpler Skills: Moves such as feints, drag backs and upper body feints can be applied more naturally when taking on or trying to beat an opponent. The PES series has long been associated with clever flicks and tricks, and PES 2010 will boast the most to date.　I don’t understand this statement, simpler skills, I think not.  The 360 spin seems to happen at the most inconvenient times and I’m sure these are not simpler to control than when they are on the right analogue stick.  Again an advertised area of improvement this year.

In summary Konami have a lot to answer for this year.  With the emerging quality of the latest FIFA editions even the hardened fans amongst us must be considering at least a trial on the competition products.  It is clear that many of last years advertised improvements were not delivered and this must surely undermine the excitement around the latest release for PES2011, especially as we’re all getting excited by the same promises as last year!!

On another note…..

Has PES had an update I’m not aware of?  I’ve received penalties in three consecutive games with the CPU opposition receiving 2 reds and yellow respectively.  I was astounded.  This is more than all season up to then.  Has anyone else experienced anything similar? By all means let me know.

As usual you can leave comments below or contact me on doinotlikethat@hotmail.co.uk

Till next week