Re: FIFA 09 - Discussion Thread
I'll put this in here because I'm genuinely worried about putting it in the PES thread for fear of being called a fanboy or God knows what...
I've been playing PES2008 on the PC and PSP this week, with the PC version edited to slow the players' speed and acceleration down 35%, and the PSP version being a decent speed straight out of the box.
THREE THINGS PES DOES BETTER
1) In PES I was under pressure from the defence so I just hit a hard low shot from miles outside the box in desperation. It went in (not because of poor goalkeeping or a bug, because it was a good hard shot), and for a second I was thinking "that shouldn't have gone in, that's not right" - because in FIFA it is impossible to score from certain angles, the keeper has it covered 100% of the time. Which obviously isn't realistic, and also means in PES practically every goal is different, whereas in FIFA practically every goal is the same.
2) Crosses in PES (on the PSP at least) are hard, well-struck crosses with venom, and if you get your head on it, you can really smack it into the net. On FIFA it's very hard to hit a hard cross, and bullet headers are very very rare.
3) The CPU AI in FIFA and Euro is terrible. PES does it so much better, not because it's particularly spectacular programming but because it's done properly. In FIFA, as any Premier League team, you beat every team on semi-pro and every team beats you on professional (obviously I'm generalising, some players will play on world class difficulty I'm sure, but this is based on what me and my friends all experience). So you choose Liverpool and against the likes of Wigan, or even Championship sides, you lose (not just "occasionally" or "most of the time", 99% of the time).
In PES I chose Portsmouth and I was drawing most games and winning/losing 1-0 on occasion. I chose Liverpool and I've won five in a row - on the same difficulty. THAT WOULD NEVER happen in FIFA. People say it's because the stats mean less in FIFA, and I agree - buy good players in PES and it makes a massive difference, in FIFA you might as well keep the same team forever. But I think the bigger problem is that the difficulty levels are only concerned with going easy on you or beating you, no matter what team is against you.
THREE THINGS FIFA DOES BETTER
1) The physics and the engine is stuck in last-gen territory. You can say "give them time" but Konami have said themselves that a new engine won't be around until PES2010 at least. It's not just a bit old-fashioned, it's very old fashioned, with passes dropping onto an invisible rail and being "sucked in" to players' feet, deflections magically dropping to the CPU over and over, and no chance of interrupting the script 90% of the time. What pisses me off the most is those situations where YOU KNOW what's coming. If the game lets you win a tackle in a certain area, the ball is going to deflect away to another CPU player. If it lets you win it again, it will do the same again. That's how the good teams win; because the game gives them the most luck compared to other teams. Against Wigan more tackles will result in you winning possession, against Arsenal it will take miraculously powerful deflections and land at another player's foot time and time again. FIFA is so much more realistic and so much more fun to play, IMO.
2) While the AI obviously has some kind of balance in PES, with good teams winning and bad teams losing, there are so many scripts that ruin the match, and limited controls that don't allow deviation. In PES, if you try to pass to a teammate and the game decides the CPU is going to get it, rather than go slightly off-course and the CPU player intercept it, it goes straight to the CPU player - which is not only infuriating but it looks ridiculous, as if your players have all been bunged.
3) I've missed six open goals in PES within a couple of games, all because when I tap the shoot button (as lightly as is humanly possible, honestly), it flies over the bar. Now I know stats mean more in PES than they do in FIFA and you need fantastic players; but if Peter Crouch, a Premier League striker, can't roll a ball into the back of an empty net, then something is wrong.
This is about the controls though; everything is so automatic and after playing FIFA/Euro for 12 months and going back to PES, it's like stepping back in time. Everything is decided for you. Now depending on your point of view, that could be a realistic thing or totally unrealistic; you could argue that a Premier League footballer is good enough to do everything "automatically", it's not the same process as Sunday League footballer, and perhaps that's how FIFA feels when you take on a team like my beloved Tranmere and you occasionally misplace a pass or put too much weight on a ball and kick it off the pitch. But personally I prefer that because it's MY fault the pass went wrong, MY fault I just knocked someone in row Z's teeth out. Not because the CPU decided it was "fate".
THREE THINGS NEITHER DOES BETTER
1) When the CPU needs to cheat, both games give invisible barriers to opposition players and drug your defenders. You can stand next to a player, press the stab-tackle button, and he will either bounce off like he's ran into a wall or run in the opposite direction. If you play another human, it doesn't do this.
2) The Master League in PES hardly represents a real league structure; you can't buy players in your first pre-season, the finances ("points") are fake and don't mirror a real currency which makes it difficult to know just how much you're paying, you can only play in the first or second division (whereas I like to take teams from the lower league to the top league in FIFA and Football Manager), the teams that come up from the lower league aren't teams from the country you're playing in meaning you have a Premier League with French/German/Scottish etc. teams in, you can only manage one club in your career etc...
But in FIFA, the manager mode is sterile, especially at a lower level. That level of player all feel the same as I've already mentioned, so you might as well not bring any new players in. Every team's stadium at this level is the same, so mix that in with the fact that every player feels the same, and you're left with the feeling of playing the exact same match over and over. Also, there's no playoffs, which is ridiculous in a fully-licensed game, and even though you can switch clubs, you can choose any team you want - so after a season with Chester City you can manage Chelsea.
3) Because of the above CPU frustrations you turn to online play. In PES players disappear and reappear all over the pitch, the netcode is awful, and lag is a big issue (looking at the problems Konami had with Metal Gear Online, this is something that is effecting all Konami games). Also, in PES, all you can do is one-off games. No leagues or competitions - the online leagues and Euro knockout cup in FIFA/Euro were things I have wanted to see in a football game for longer than I've been a member on Evo-Web.
In FIFA the reaction times are a waste of space, and the same (but to a lesser effect) in Euro, along with matches that last too long and ridiculous scorelines because of the attackers having too big of an advantage over the defenders.
This was all about gameplay, hence why lack of teams in PES, poor faces in FIFA etc. wasn't talked about; because gameplay comes first as far as I'm concerned
