Re: PES 2009 News, Discussion and Rumours
Good morning everyone.
Nice news there, about the online. Good to hear that the 2 vs 2 is back.
@drekkard:
I'd really like to counter argument your argument on the game and graphics engine, because I believe that you have some pretty strong reasoning going on there. However, I'm not sure I got all that you were trying to say, so let me try, ok?
You mention that game engine is different than graphics engine. That is true, indeed, no argument about it.
You mention that FIFA rebuilt its game engine for next-gen, which I may agree. I wasn't that knowledgeable in the later iterations of the FIFA series in the PS2.
However, if you state that the game engine and the graphics engine are two worlds apart, why do you state so firmly that Konami has kept the same engine for PES2009 or is keeping the same engine for PES2010? What is your reasoning? I can easily defend the other theory, that Konami is indeed trying to revamp the game engine, while trying to keep the good things from the past.
Why?
First: I'm not sure about the source for this one, but I do know that it has been said earlier in this thread that the shooting has been changed from previous versions, and people looking to shoot like in previous games will be unsuccessful. To be fair, this doesn't mean that it's not "left, right, center", but it's not fair to say that it's just like that. Furthermore, on a personal note, I don't believe that the PES shooting engine is really that limited, but that's, once again, my personal opinion. When I shoot in PES, I aim towards the place I want to put the ball in, I try to pick the right height to give the ball, and it's just like playing football: I don't always hit the place where I aim the ball to, and I'd feel it would be pretty unrealistic if we were back to the FIFA98 days where the ball would go with pinpoint precision towards where I shot, no matter which player it was, which foot he was using, the relative position of the player to the goal, the other players in his surroundings, etc. I mean, most of the time that good strikers in real games shoot the ball wide or to the hands of the keeper, you can't seriously be thinking that they wanted to shoot to where the ball went

But, once again, I respect your will to have a different shooting scheme.
Second, the german article says a few interesting things about the "game engine" in PES2009.
The players now react faster to your orders and have improved in controlling and handling the ball.
(...)
Positional play and aggressiveness on normal difficulty are already shockingly well developed.
(...)
In PES 2009 the AI recognizes when you want to play a pass and either passes the ball directly or not at all.
(...)
Only too well that you can use the new AI-cleverness for own benefit thanks to the new manual controls.
(...)
Rainy weather has a deep impact on your players anyway: even your star-players make unfamiliar misplays, shots race even more unpredictable towards the keeper and when passing you have to calculate on higher rubbing.
You may argue that it is not a complete new engine, rebuilt from scratch, but you may be trying to make an unreasonable parallel. FIFA had to do it from scratch because their engine was pretty crap, so to say (no offense intended). PES had a good engine, built from the ground up, from the start. Sure, it may not have evolved the way everyone wanted, and it may have had some evolutions that do look like backsteps, but what I mean to ask is: what is it that you want the game engine to have, that cannot be inserted into the current game engine, or change the current game engine to support it?

Honest, I'm not sure that there's many things that fit that category.
We are talking game engines here - and I really appreciate that you made that distinction, because I'm not sure that 90% of the people that come here ranting about the engine do understand that difference. People look at the pictures and say "Oh no! It's the same engine! PES will rot in the used games bin down at gamestop! Fifa rocks!".
Now, contrary to popular belief, I do believe that the code that Konami maintains is not that much of a spider-web, but just a well-built metropolis, and as such, it suffers from the fact that its engine is already very big.
The truth behind this is that last year - and you can call me a liar because I can't find the source of this argument too - Seabass had been experimenting with 360º movement, and had scrapped it at the time because the AI wasn't ready for it. So he is trying to do something to the game engine. About manual passing and such, I can accept that you'd like it to be completely 360º, but hey, someday maybe we'll get there.
Honestly, I feel I have already typed too much on this discussion. I can see where you're coming from, and I do respect it.
TikTikTikTikTik said:
You only have to look at the majority of responses from last year and this year (premature but still far more negative then previous years in the ps2 generation) and the common factor is a hope that they will get it right and get back to their old level. Its no longer a case where its "this game is so good, amazing, ect". Its a hope that they can get that level back, and I consider that part of the loyalty / generational popularity I described earlier.
I partly agree with this statement, even though their "old level" is just a couple of years old, and to be precise, 2 games away

It's as much a case of "no longer being great" as it is "it has been great for 10 years, and this year was a misstep".
On a personal note, last night I booted up PES2008 - I've been playing PES6 for the last weeks - and it feels like a really crippled game. Not exactly "bad" per se, but really, really limited. I had the feeling that they started working on this with a code base between PES4/5, because PES2008 next gen has no bearing whatsoever to PES6, honestly. It's not even a case of it being a "spoiled PES6", honest. Try to play it for yourselves, and "feel" the difference.
My personal take - which is worth as much as a raindrop in a lake? The PSP's first version of PES - PES5 - was a terrible, horrible game. I'm not sure of whether or not they had a different team working on it, but it felt really wrong. Seabass admitted it afterwards, and PES6 came out better...
...I'm hoping that PES2009 will feel much better while controlling the game, and that that's what the german mag is referring to.
On a lighter note,
@TurkMania:
Konami just confirmed for online, not only the spectator mode, but also the steward mode.
While in spectator mode you can insult other spectators and players on field. You will be rated by their reactions on the field, as well as the broken limbs from other spectators.
The steward mode will be a totally new mode for PES2009 - answering to TikTikTik's "no new modes here" - and will have you trying to control mobs and arresting the spectators.
Seabass himself is saying that this is a true next-gen mode.
There's a small picture after the jump.
Sorry for messing with your hopes, no news whatsoever on either of those modes yet
Best regards, and have a nice day!
Paulo Tavares