CalcioCalabrese
Weekend warrior
See, I actually agree with a lot of the complaints about this game. The teammate AI does seem to have been dumbed down from the demos, and I think it's pretty obvious to all of us now that Konami have tried to "shield" the dodgy keepers by slightly nerfing the shots and massively increasing the AI shot blocking - that's OK in principle (shooting was too easy in the demo), but it's been overdone, I think. The pace of the game is all wrong: not just the game speed itself, but the balance between speed of the ball, speed of sprinting, speed of trapping, speed of closing down and speed of dribbling. No amount of tweaking to the overall speed settings will produce a realistic pace and flow, because of the huge disparity between those things. Lots of old PES 2011 crap that's sneaked back in for final code, too. Thanks. Pretty gutting to have these things removed at last, then promptly reinstated - what a tease.
BUT............ I reckon these things really only matter in single player, or (presumably) in MLO and general lobby matches. The last few nights I've been playing online against proper, grown-up players, with everyone using small-to-medium-sized teams and - crucially - zero pass assistance. It's a completely different game - I can still see plenty of small annoyances, but so far no major ones at all (which is incredible after PES2011, so often a nightmare online), and rather than being a sped-up "arcadey" disappointment, PES2012 is looking like the best and most brutally realistic football game I've ever played.
Online seems to play at something like -1 speed offline, for me - what makes it fast for others must be the ping-pong passing and the superstar teams. This is something else, a slow paced, tactical battle of wits where scoring more than 2 goals in a game means you've absolutely played your arse off. Suddenly, like real football, it's not just about what players are doing right, it's also about mistakes; not every pass comes off, moves often break down, and you find yourself feeding off errors, looking for weaknesses. It's the great thing about zero assistance, you can play incredible visionary passes way beyond anything possible on 1-bar assistance, let alone 5, but you also misplace as many passes as your team would in real life. (At least.) Anything other than a simple pass carries an element of risk, but you need a moment of real invention to create a scoring chance - and to win the game you have to balance those two factors. Occasionally you just get lucky, of course, but that's football.
So anyway, offline: good but horribly flawed. Online in the fully-assisted bear pit: Christ alone knows. Online on zero passing assistance, using sensibly-sized teams and attempting to play realistically: best PES ever, I'd say.
I played a friendly against someone last night online and I used 2 bar assistance but noticed I could not hold possession as well as him and asked him....he told me he was using full assistance because it helped with the lag in MLO. It makes a big difference I have to admit. Is there a way to lock the assistance settings in online friendlies/ranked matches, like a filter?
Don't really agree with the shooting and blocks though. I noticed a LOT more shots being blocked in the demo and now I think the shooting is better. Less shots on target but not unrealistically - just right.