I'm desperately anticipating PES2012, as 2011 is becoming (well, it's long since become) almost unplayable.
My gripes with it are innumerable and possibly petty, but I can't bear to play it sometimes.
Some random grievances...
You quite simply have no option but to pass. If you try and dribble for more than a few moments you're invariably caught and nudged off of the ball with ease (often by a player of vastly inferior speed and body balance). Moreover, if you have a player with great agility, obviously you try to use it to your advantage. So you'll run one way, get the defender sprinting alongside you, then turn back, leaving them to take a few moments to stop before having to turn themselves and re-accelerate to catch you. In PES2011 however, the very [i[instant[/i] you press to turn, the defender stops, as though when you pressed R2 to stop, you were controlling them, as well as your own player. Often by the time you've actually turned around, they've already stopped, turned, started running again, and waiting for you. Coupled with their ability to slide along the ground on the soles of their feet, often several yards, and to have the ball magnetically bonded to their feet (they often nudge it away from you without even touching it have you all noticed?), dribbling is almost impossible and almost always infuriatingly unfair.
Another gripe - given our only option then is to pass, why is there a bizarre physics at play here too? Sometimes I'll pass to a teammate with his back turned to a defender, thus shielding the ball to control it, yet still the defender can somehow touch the ball through my player's body, forcing him to miscontrol it and thus lose possession. This is absolutely maddening. The game forces you to pass constantly with its alien AI abilities of instant-stopping and catching, yet then when you pass, the AI can still win the ball even when you deliberately use a player's body to shield the ball.
A sidenote - despite the fact that all it takes for the AI to run you off the ball is an absolutely minimal level of contact, nudging you off the ball, the same is not true when you are defending. Often the opposition will withstand the pressure of upto three of my players and still be able to make a pass. When I try the same, even under pressure from one defender, let alone three, I either jerk through space, slightly to the side, thus missing the ball completely, or I can only play a feeble, pathetically weak pass that trickles about a yard ahead. This is ridiculous. In real life, someone merely standing beside you does not whatsoever prevent you from making a pass with a competent amount of pace.
Moreover, the defenders run so close to your players, so close their legs are often interwining (or rather, passing through one another, as is possible in this bizarre realm). If a defender ran that close in real life the man in possession would undoubtedly be fouled.
The same absurd 'weak-pass-when-under-the-slightest-amount-of-pressure' effect is found with shooting too. This time however, when under any pressure, even a defender standing behind you, the ball doesn't roll away weakly as it does with passes, rather, it floats up in a feeble arc to be easily caught by even the worst of goalkeepers.
In some unrelated moaning, the opposition AI often exhibit some truly bizarre anomalies. Stoke for instace. They have the tactic that dictates that they play long balls forward. A side effect of this however, is that they ping long passes around all areas of the pitch. This is fine that they should attempt to do so, but Stoke are not renowned for their footballing quality. Yet, the other day, I was pressuring a full back on the right wing, deep in his own half. He was facing the touchline on the right side and then, in one swivelling motion, he spun on the spot and smashed a long pass forward and to the opposite wing, probably about a 60 yard pass I mean, and it lands right at his teammates feet. It was a serious WTF moment. I then looked at the players long pass stats, absolutely baffled as to how he could have done that. Long pass accuracy 72, long pass speed 68. HOW is that sufficient to play passes like that.
Mentioning the swivelling, I absolutely hate the opposition AI's ability to clear any pass, whether the ball is still or moving, even when they themselves are running, with an instant 180 degree swivel on the spot clearance. It's ridiculous. In real life you'd play these difficult through balls forcing the defender to run and thus have an incredibly difficult time trying to defend. In PES2011 however, these passes, designed to trouble defenders, are no problem whatsoever because they have this inhuman ability.
One more. When teams play long balls, the target man, whoever it is, has another inhuman ability - they can flick on literally any pass. No matter which direction the ball is travelling, they go into this absurd animation (I'm sure you've seen it) where they lift their leg and sort of swing it horizontally, sending the ball in any angle, even directly behind them. This completely irrealistic tendency is made all the worse by the fact that your defender will just stand and squat slightly by their side, making no effort to trouble them or win the ball. Even if you super cancel and jump for the header, the opposition will enter into a series of pinpoint headers, pinballing around with astounding accuracy. The exact opposite of reality where headers from long balls are often inaccurate, and almost never exactly to a teammate. Nor in real life do attackers win the lions share of these aerial battles. Teams like Stoke play countless long balls, in the hope of just a few being won by the attackers in order to create goal-scoring opportunities. Defenders invariably win these types of pass, yet the opposite is true in PES2011.
Phew... Sorry for the shocking length and rage there - I only intended to mention a few things, but the ball got rolling and my frustration with this game snowballed into that mega-post.
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Very bad representation of dribbling.
the field is wide enough
Not good. Thats only happened to me once with a Champions League game vs Basel, they had 2 shots all game and i had 30 but could score. Realized though i was panicking when shooting and i need to use the R1 short chip when 1 on 1 more like Jimmy does.
