I have been a FIFA player for the last 24 hours, the ease at which I could play the football I liked seduced me and I Even went through a period where I thought that I would buy it instead of PES, not any more.
It has to be one of the most boring games ever created, every match is the same, no matter what teams I use, who I play, its like a carbon copy of every other game I played before it. I pass the ball around as much as I like, easily keeping possession, press into the final 3rd, score, miss or get tackled and hold down X to get the ball back(unless they spin around me) and then start the cycle again. Thats it, minute after minute, game after game, Always the same. I played as Leverkusen against Barca on top difficulty and had 70 percent possession in the first half and could attack at will.
Its a total arcade game and as such it is fun for a while but lacks any depth or long term replayability, I am bored after a day!
I never remember games having the same feel in the PES demo. I have dominated first halves in terms of possession and shots and then got ripped apart in the 2nd. I have played games where I find it hard to get the ball out of midfield. I have had games where I cant put passes together and constantly get hit on the break. Games where I keep possession but cant break them down and get beat by a cheeky goal. You are always kept on your toes with PES. I would think is down to the condition arrows and that the teams play differently. I could not tell if the cpu varied its play with the different teams in FIFA because it never had the ball long enough!
It might play OK online but I think there will be exploits again that ruin things. The holding X to get the ball will get abused as it did last year, but then you can always counter this by doing a roulette around the player, I got sick of seeing the CPU do that and there will be greater frequency of it online im sure.
So after 1 day of FIFA I know where my moneys being spent this year, on a game that will keep me busy until the next.