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'Fun'

ClassicD

ClassicD

Galáctico
11 November 2001
Glasgow
Team
Celtic
Threw on Winning Eleven 7 International today (Think the PAL equivalent was PES3), and despite half the teams/licenses/whatever, what struck me was just how much fun the game was to play. It has it's problems of course, but it felt like instant good times rather than the slog that the series has become. Certain graphical elements actually look better, I don't know how that works but they do. The camera for instance, FAR (one before WIDE), is set a little higher up and is lovely. Mainly though, the game is so much more intuitive and playable.

I'm going to try some of the other versions later, but it really brings home what a pile of shite the latest releases have been, particularly PES5 and 6.

Opinions?
 
I still have WE6FE tucked away somewhere. I didn't play PES2 as it was totally shite. Instead, i chose to play the aforementioned instead. I also have the J-League which came out just after i think. That was fun, as the player stats were nice and mediocre.
 
PES6 is a game devoid of fun, so it's inevitable that previous versions seem more fun.

PES6 should never have been released - it only exists because it's "that time of year" when they always release a new version. They clearly didn't know how to improve the game any further on PS2 so just modified some of the numbers that are fed into the core engine so it plays slightly differently to PES5....and in fact made it worse. The physics is ghastly....it's all wrong.

I have little doubt in a few years time Seabass will admit PES6 was his worst effort on PS2.

PES1 was more fun than PES6.
 
yeah all the old versions r classics but PES6 is the best for me....jus get used to it n stop bitching !!!!!!
 
I don't keep the old ones, but I'm tempted to go back. I played around with the stats and settings on 5 quite heavily and I was reasonably satisfied with it. I've really struggled to get into 6, no matter what I change it always seems like a chore.

Last night I tried 5 unedited and it played pretty much the same as 6. I'm not sure what it is but it just doesn't seem like a football game to me. More of an assault course.
 
I'm really having a lot of fun with PES6. Even though WE9JL is a personal all time favorite, I think PES6 might be better. Having a lot of fun. Loads of varied attacks, loads of varied goals, and the opposition are actually good at times (as opposed to WE7, in my opinion). But each to their own! :)
 
T Butcher fan said:
I don't keep the old ones, but I'm tempted to go back. I played around with the stats and settings on 5 quite heavily and I was reasonably satisfied with it. I've really struggled to get into 6, no matter what I change it always seems like a chore.

Last night I tried 5 unedited and it played pretty much the same as 6. I'm not sure what it is but it just doesn't seem like a football game to me. More of an assault course.
Click to expand...

Did you see that I had released a version of my tweaked file for the PS2?, have you tried it yet?

It should play the same as my PC version
 
F1GG13 said:
yeah all the old versions r classics but PES6 is the best for me....jus get used to it n stop bitching !!!!!!
Click to expand...

There's a difference between allowing time to adapt to how a new version plays, and having to slog through each match. It's not a matter of difficulty, the game isn't particularly hard, it's just not much fun to play. TB got it spot on, "assault course" is a perfect description.
 
Obviously I'm going to agree, after what I've said over the last few weeks. I'm glad that, even though you Classic would probably dislike my choice of football game this year, you've made the thread you have.

I still argue that if you put WE6FE on, I can't resist but have a game if you put a controller into my hands. The later versions, I've got to be in the mood, and PES6 I literally wouldn't play if you paid me (anything less than £20 per hour at least).

As a whole, I've had a good gaming year; Gears of War is probably the best non-sports game I've ever played, Tiger Woods 07 on the highest difficulty is a hell of a game (frustrating but rewarding old-school-PES-style), Table Tennis was a mini-revolution for me and PGR3 was absolutely fantastic online. For football games though (with Football Manager 2007 excluded) it's been a disaster.

Just out of interest Classic, can you see yourself playing a (newly released) PES regularly in the near future? Do you think Konami will produce a "fun" PES again?

Roll on next year, anyway.
 
I'll always have a go on the new ones, definitely. I'm not sure why the series has ended up the way it has. My gut feeling is it reached a brick wall in terms of what they could do to improve it, using the engine they had been. What then? Do you take a risk and do a redesign from scratch, or do you change each version for the sake of changing it, to make it look as 'different' as possible. They chose the latter, IMO. A series which was reknowned for being innovative and evolutionary with each new version, that sparked genuine anticipation in the lead up to a new release, is now recycling itself every year, content with just being slightly 'different' (read:not better) each time.

P.S. There are animations in the older versions which aren't in the later games, and they're not shit animations which needed replacing either. To me, that about sums it up, they're ripping the arse out of the series now rather than taking it forward.

I await the first PS3 version with great interest (the 360 release as expected, is a HD port from PS2). If the game isn't radically different and improved, then it's goodnight IMO.
 
I've got to honest, I'm a bit concerned that PES on PS3 will not actually be that much better in terms of the gameplay experience. In fact, I'm expecting it to be a disappointment.

For all that they've added new on-pitch features in recent years, they're always negated by the need to make the AI cheat more to keep it challenging. This seems to be the fundamental philosophy at the heart of the game now. PES6 has much to praise but I dislike it intensely because of the all to obvious scripted nature of the match, the perpetual cpu interference to make sure the match flows the way Seabass has decided he wants it to.

I've heard people say that over the years, the game offers the player more and more freedom to express themselves on the pitch, which is in part true, but my underlying feeling is that the freedom is being suffocated by the cpu script. Far too often you're not even in control of your guy, having to put up with the ridiculous physics scripting the ball to predefined positions. The ball is not a free object, it follows scritped paths to wherever the cpu decides it should go, mostly straight to a cpu player. The whole game is just smothered in this sh*t.

The game has always been of this nature but it's becoming worse and worse, as is evident by the ever growing number of people now noticing it.

The only way I can see me really falling back in love with this game is if they ditch the old engine and build something brand new. I'm not interested in the old game engine any more. They've flogged it to death and killed the gameplay.
 
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I know that all this is is very subjective and most people who have posted in this thread are people i respect very much, but i don't understand why you people think the last edition is that much worse...i haven't read a single real argument that convinces me (in fact i haven't read a single argument).
What is a "fun" PES????
Maybe the game is still intresting because i'm not a good player...i like PES6 because it seems to me the most difficult.
If i rea that people like Classic play a ML and win everything in two seasons (and i believe him,it's a nice person who doens not feel the need to brag) then i understand that it's less fun...
I play 95% of the time ML (but virtually always with underdog teams) and in 6 years i've only once everything there is to win...
I still enjoy it alot although i have to confess that i preferred PES3 and PES4 to 5 and 6...
 
The point or the argument is that Konami have not drastically changed the game from PES3 onwards! There have always been tweaks here and there in terms of gameplay, licenses etc. But if you're a fan of the series from the beginning, a game like PES6 is quite boring actually after a certain amount of time.

Features like online play and international challenge will not suffice for me and others, obviously. The online mode is only interesting if you know a group of people (like evo-league.com or something) that plays proper football with realistic teams, because the lobbies are filled with intentional laggers, stat cheaters, permanent big team choosers etc. The 2vs2 or 2vs1 is fun, ok, I admit that! And the international challenge is interesting only once. Once you've made Trinidad & Tobago or Uruguay world champions then that's that!

Obviously Konami is smart marketing PES6 this way and making a huge profit out of it. Apparently Konami is focussing on next-gen installments of the series. Hopefully they come up with something that will blow all of us away in terms of 'fun'. ;)
 
The common sense assumption is that they have been working on the PS3 version, so a lot rests on that, but I won't hold my breath. There's a distinct possibility that they've just run out of ideas. (Although I was thinking about this last night - the only two viable football game makers are Japanese and US/Canadian. No wonder we are where we are.....)

In terms of the 'fun' that's missing - it's very hard to put in words but with the last couple of PES's, I very much got the feeling that I was just going through the motions. The best way to describe how I feel is that it's like having sex with a bird you don't fancy anymore (or never did! - we've all been there ;)).

There's nothing left to create or try. It's very much "this is how we've always done it, so let's get on with it". The difference with 6 is that now she doesn't fancy you either.
 
Exactly. Spot on TB.

Perhaps it is just us though, I mean think about it; they can't do a complete rewrite of the game every year. You play a game like MGS, it's great, you play it again in two years time and it's a totally different animal, same characters but a totally different world with totally different things to do and ways of interacting. You can't do that in a football game, it has to have the same teams and a ball.

But saying that, FIFA 07 on the 360 (sorry, don't shoot me) has been completely reworked and is excellent. But saying that, Football Manager is a game that can't be rewritten from scratch and yet that is excellent every year. But, FM is better every year for one reason; the new features they add give you a lot more power to shape your games. PES gives you a new stepover and about ten online issues.

What annoys me is that they don't even add new teams, which admittedly isn't as important as gameplay, but it gives you more to do and it's a start; but they just cannot be arsed (every other football game includes the lower leagues from around the world now, even Japanese ones such as Sega's World Football Climax, so the excuse of "Japan don't want that" loses it's power). The price of an extra few researchers isn't going to bankrupt them and it would make a better game. But they're not bothered, even if it means keeping up with the competition, because they know their game now has a following and will sell regardless. Konami are the new EA.

To copy what TB has said, there's just not enough difference between each version; I don't sit down and go "oh wow, that's new, wow I couldn't do that before". It's the same. You have mates over and you realise even more that you're playing the same game you have been for years. There's no extra control, there's no extra competitions to win or things to do; it's the same game, the same gameplay. With a new set of animations and shinier graphics - which is what I hate, and the reason I stopped buying FIFA for ten years. I'll say it again, Konami really are the new EA.

If they could just improve one "important" element then it would make the game a hit again; perhaps fixing the way they seem to run on rails, improving on the lack of control you have (again, sorry chaps, don't shoot, but if you download the FIFA 07 demo for the 360, you can witness how you can make your players move when you press the stick, rather than ten minutes later - I wonder what Konami are doing over in Japan all year).

Nothing fundamental is changing. If they released one game every year, or even every two years, then they might be able to concentrate a lot more and make a hugely better game. But of course, Konami are a company, and £50x3 per customer each year is always going to be better than £50x1 per customer each year.

I also agree with what TB said about the places making the football games, to an extent. That's not being racist or anything (gulp); but the European market will want different things. I don't know anyone who could argue against adding lower leagues, making the Master League less about fantasy or at least giving you more options (Castolo and credits out, random English YTS players and cash in please)... Both of those involve adding to the researchers and adding to the programmers and don't involve taking time away from programming the gameplay. So everything could improve. But they only care about one market - we get a port, and it sells well, so they're not going to change anything.

I personally think the only time we're going to see a game as fun as PES used to be is if an up-and-coming European team of programmers pop up and beat them at their own game. But in today's world of next-to-no games companies surviving next to EA, it's not bloody likely. The only team out there at the moment with a chance is Sony's This Is Football studio. And they're after both markets, trying to make a half-way-house between PES and FIFA. So they're doomed to fail from the start ("Jack of all trades, master of none" - you're never going to succeed trying to do two totally different things at once - you can't scratch your balls and hit a 300-yard drive at the same time).

Mind you, it's been a long time since their last game, so maybe they've been working away on making a half-decent game. Who knows.
 
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It tried playing Pro 3 the other day, near impossible. I've been playing since one, though I'm not sure if it's because I'm noo good at the game, but I've been enjoying some pretty tough games on regular mode, pro six seems fine to me.
 
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