Well I thought it might have been a placebo effect and so it's proven to be....
Just played tonight and the same old problems resurface after a few games. Both of this year's titles are so fucked up beyond comprehension that I'm giving up on both for this year.
How is it possible, on BOTH PES and FIFA, for me to be able to comfortably win against the top teams yet struggle in the most dire, boring matches possible against the weaker teams? Both titles are massively unbalanced.
I just played as Spurs vs Toulouse, and the AI set out an utterly, utterly ridiculous formation after just a few minutes whereby I paused the game, with Modric on the ball on the halfway line, and could see there were no AI players within 30 yards of him. The AI had, including the keeper, TEN players all standing in a line across the penalty area. TEN. After 10 minutes of play. The game was impossible. No Spurs player could seem to control the ball without taking loads of slow touches, even using R2, and the ball just appeared to magnetically switch over to the AI player's foot whenever he got near my man with the ball. Surprise surprise I conceded a soft goal from a corner, and that was that. If you work the ball into the AI's final third, you'd literally be hounded out by a wall of 10 players against 3 or 4 attackers at most, and non of whom make any decent runs. All you can do is make them do a forward run when you pass the ball, which just results in them running in a straight line like a robot until they're in an offside position. The AI is a joke.
Previously, I somehow got tonked 4-1 by Roda. I had all the possession, the AI sat ridiculously deep, 4 breakaways, 4 goals. Bottom line is when the AI decides it's going to be 'tough', it seems to be able to make even the weakest teams be able to intercept almost any pass, it just takes the ball off you whether you're shielding it or not, it's a joke. I can't believe it's 2011 and the situation with football and videogames is that only two companies have a total monopoly on the sport, and both are somehow fucking up their own franchises with every year.
So, erm, no, the patch really doesn't make a difference. My games last night were enjoyable, my games tonight were less fun than having a tooth pulled out. I couldn't manufacture a single shot at goal against a 10 man defence who steamrollered into tackles, hounded you on the ball with up to FOUR players, and seemed to make your much better rated players have worse control.
Both games this year really are total bollocks. If you compare how other genres have progressed in the last 10 years, it's astonishing how much of a mess these two companies are making of representing the sport. There are so many better games out there that I"m not going to give these two my money any more until someone produces something far, far better.
Compare a FPS from 10 years ago with the likes of Killzone 3 or Bad Company 2. Compare other sports titles, like 2K's NBA2K series or Top Spin etc. Or look at how racing games have evolved from basic racers to the likes of Gran Turismo 5. Compare how platform games have evolved into the likes of Drake's Fortune 2 and Little Big Planet.
Most of these games now come with full 3D support, complex online modes without massive exploits, atmosphere, top graphics, better and improving AI, tweaks to controls, more options, even support for PS Move or Kinect. Yet, fans of PES and FIFA are still asking for basic details like shirts getting dirty, proper animations, more choice of nets, stadiums, kit options, weather, cursors that don't take on a life of their own, keepers that actually try to save shots, or better audio than the awful mess PES turns out year after year, and some sense of atmosphere. FIFA can't even get the crowds chanting for the right teams (fancy playing as Arsenal and having your fans chant "we love you Fulham"?), whereas PES sounds empty and repetitive. And most importantly, both games still can't develop any kind of decent defensive AI that doesn't rule by making it's defenders into bionic supermen. And it can't do anything other than sit back, artificially restrict you from attacking, then hit you on the break with the same types of goals over and over again. But even graphically speaking, FIFA can't seem to escape making all the game's players look like glazed zombies, whereas PES just can't seem to stop making games now where players run in some bizarre robotic way.
Both games still use the same cheap AI routines to stop you winning that games used well over 10 years ago. Sure, the games now are technically 'better', but I don't remember ever being so dissatisfied with football games back then, nor do I experience any real problems with any other game I own on current gen hardware. It's as if both companies have introduces a whole load of new stuff over the recent years, but it gets overpowered by the AI routines recycled from years ago. Both are technically more sophisticated than before, yet, somehow, both of these football games absolutely drive me up the wall sometimes. They're just not fun anymore. The same can't be said for the rest of the industry right now.
EA have recently all but admitted the game is aimed towards the casual, throwaway market, which you'd kind of expect, whereas I've never understood how Konami have never been able to produce a single PES game that didn't include a new feature by unnecessarily taking out other cool, favourite, features. They don't even appear to be getting anywhere near making the ball move in a realistic way these days. Someone like 2K needs to do for football games what they've done for other sports titles, and give these two companies a massive kick up the arse. Sigh. Rant over.