Re: [Junka'z] J-League Winning Eleven 2007 Club Championship hands-on review pics+vi
Okay, well, here's my first impressions after an hour or so (normal play only, not Fantasista). All of this may well change so stay tuned.
I'm a bit 50/50 to be honest, not sure how to feel. On the one hand, I'm enjoying it (which I find hard with PES6), but on the other hand I honestly can't see a lot that's changed. The game as a whole is slower, you really feel it in the first five minutes (how Junka can say it's faster I have no idea, sorry Junka
, but then you adjust to it. The speed is more realistic though, definitely. I can imagine that if I put PES6 in now, it would seem like it was going ten times faster than before.
Dribbling is easier because it's slower, but it's not too easy at all. Personally I find it very hard to dribble when you've only got eight-directional movement but if you can do it on occasion in PES6, you'll be able to do it more often in this.
Passing is improved, it's more fluid and easier to pull off. They seem to have enough power to reach the target this time, which is nice, but as with previous PES games, the players tend to stand perfectly still and wait for the ball, which is so fucking annoying. So it's an improvement, but it still needs fixing properly.
The shot bar is a lot better, but I've still had three shots from outside the area go over the bar when I've only tapped the button. It's more rare, but it's still there.
AI is a lot better, the CPU can even make mistakes!!!!!! Shock horror!!!!!! I've seen passes go quite badly wrong, and times where a pass will go to my man instead of theirs. They appear a lot more realistic, and the way they play football in the middle of the park is very realistic. Keeping possession and waiting for an opening, rather than being 99% attacking.
A lot of CPU cheats have gone from what I've seen so far, which is surprising - I have noticed one or two though (mainly the one where you stab-tackle, your foot hits the ball and knocks it onto the CPU player's leg, and then bounces half-a-foot in-front of him so that he retains possession). Plus the one where it's a waste of time tackling by the sidelines, because you'll nearly always win the ball only to knock it out of play (but that's not the case for the CPU, obviously).
And I still notice the lack of control in certain areas. For example, trying a through-ball down the wing will either be spot-on or go out of play, despite how you aim or press the button. I had a player in a great position, so I pressed through-pass, and the ball goes at such a bad angle that it goes out of play
just before he can reach it. Yes, you can't pass perfectly every time in real life, but you have no control over it being perfect or not, it's the CPU that decides (unless you can get used to the right-analog-stick passing method, which I can't - I'm RAS-challenged).
Plus, the auto-tackling is still there (I didn't mention this too much when I noticed it in PES6 because I thought people would think I'm mad, but I had a conversation with Kevano last night and he's seen it often). What I mean is, you can press the "press" button, and sometimes your player will decide to tackle on his own. Which has led to me giving away penalties, which (when you have your finger
nowhere near the tackle button) is immensely frustrating. Why have you added this "feature" Konami? I can see absolutely no valid reason. But if you've not noticed it before then perhaps you won't notice it in this.
Goalkeepers are a bit weird. 90% of the time they've been great, a good realistic balance between saving shots and missing them. But I've seen them wonder into some awful positions, and let in shots that are going sooooo slooooow that he could have saved it if he walked to the ball. Better than being supermen, I suppose.
Difficulty-wise, if you found PES6 easy, you'll find this even easier. I usually drew 0-0 or 1-1 on PES6, I'm not a God at the game. But on this I won four games in a row from the start, which is unheard of for me.
The biggest problem I've seen so far is the corners. In five or six games, there's been a goal from a corner
every single game. And the shot count for the CPU is always iffy, for example, 20 shots, 12 on target, 1 goal. They seem to have tons of shots, but very, very few go in.
Overall the feel of the game has been improved slightly, it is definitely better than PES6 but not by a huge margin. Again, as it always is with Konami, it's an improvement but it's such a slight, slight improvement. I personally don't think it's worth the money, but if you're a PES fanatic (and a lot of people are) and you want the best modern version available then there's no doubt that this is better than PES6.
There are some nice new animations:
Not too bothered about the other options tbh.
