Well... tonight I played as Napoli v Udinese, and it was the most boring football match I've ever seen - like some sort of parody of a bad Serie A game. Won 1-0 with an early 25-yard rocket from Marek Hamsik, which was the only highlight. I was away from home, so I altered the playing style to drop very deep and defend... and the AI had nothing. Good fun, because I like this sort of thing in computer games (if you never get matches like this, it's not a good football sim) but quite a grind, especially as I play 30 minute games.
Then I was Monaco at home to PSG, and got humped 3-1. Park Chu-Young put in the most anonymous performance I've ever seen from a centre forward, and most of the game was spent watching the ball bounce off crowds of computer-controlled zombies who seemed to have forgotten they were supposed to be playing football. Really shockingly poor play from both sides, and frustrating for me because it wasn't the sort of poor play you might see in an actual match, it looked like silly computer game crapness. Ridiculous inertia on the players, strange movements by the players I wasn't controlling, lousy reactions, millions of through balls rolling past the brainless backline, who then turn and save the day with some artificially turbo-charged tracking back, utterly laughable "collisions" (and even worse collision animations), passes and shots spooning off at an angle which bears no resemblance to the player's body shape. All the stuff that's bad in this game writ large. Stadium looked nice, mind.
So I resorted to playing as Barcelona, and it started to look like football again. I mean it REALLY started to look like football - proper Barcelona-style football. This was the first game I've played where I got that old PES "wow" feeling, just a shame I had to play as the best team in the world to get it. I put the other controller on Coach Mode and set up Milan to sit very deep and play quick balls out for Robinho on the counter, and sure enough the whole game was about me trying to break them down, then every five minutes Pique having to dash out to usher Robinho off the ball then stride forward to start up the passing again. I'd set Barca to play very close together, and luckily they all have good enough first touch to do that interpassing in tight spaces (tried the same thing with Napoli and the result looked like throwing a football at a wall). Managed to get Messi going properly. Xavi made two goals by playing PRECISELY the pass I intended. All good stuff.
In short... I think I'm too crap to enjoy this game properly yet. When I get good enough to play as an "ordinary" team as naturally as I can with Barcelona - by which I mean getting the players to do what I ask them, not necessarily playing Barca-like football - then I'll be happy. Until then, I'm still finding it frustrating.
Said it before and I'll say it again, it's no wonder most of the world prefers FIFA, which is so smooth and beautiful and satisfying... until you realise it has the depth of a poppadom, but most people never do because most people aren't as crazily hardcore about football gaming as some of us here. The problem with this version of PES is that its faults are at their most obvious when you're playing badly. And this is probably the easiest version of PES to play badly. You really do have to stick with it, and unless you've got the faith to do that, you'll see it at its worst. No wonder it got so many low-score reviews, and no wonder there are so many people in damp corners of the internet saying "LOL i played pes demo an its SHIT, fifa rulez". If you look at it from the point of view of a casual gamer, they've got a point.
Marketing by konami has been shit this year
thats much.. top player ? does that happen most of your game mate ?
