LOL I just lost my fourth ML match in a row, and my coach appears on screen saying "I think we need to go back to the drawing board. I'll tell you why we lost" or something along those lines.
I'll fucking tell you why I lost. I lost because the CPU had eleven men behind the ball, making it impossible to thread any passes into their penalty area without resorting to some stupid-ass formation you see online with six forwards or something. I can't have a balanced formation and tactics because the CPU doesn't allow for it. I work the ball into my penalty area and I have two forwards in there surrounded by 10 or even 11, yes eleven, defending players. That's cringeworthy. Embarrassing.
So, yep, I go 1-0 down because for one attack, my two CB's automatically run left and right creating a massive gaping hole down the middle as their AM runs through towards the penalty area, leaving him an easy shot on goal. It's amazing. He has my defence literally run away from the ball opening up a deserted penalty area for him to walk into, yet the CPU somehow manages to arrange it so that it's own defence sits with a bank of 11 players all tightly linking arms in it's own penalty area.
Oh, and the main reason why I lost, was that I finally found myself just once, with a player through on goal, in the last five minutes. I play the through ball, Shimizu runs diagonally onto the through pass...I move the direction stick to make him run onto the ball, it doesn't respond. He's almost kind of 'stuck' in some kind of rail or locked in an animation and I can't move him across two feet to control a through ball and only have the keeper to beat. So he jogs aimlessly and the ball rolls past him safely to a CPU defender, I yet again lose 1-0 despite having 62% of the ball and, I'd wager, probably 80% of the play taking part within 15-20 yards of their penalty area.
The game in ML against weaker, Div2 opponents felt balanced, but go up a level against so-called 'better' teams, and the game plays like shit. Really bad. I'm not talking about difficulty, or cheating AI, just shit, unrealistic, arcade fast gameplay. The CPU makes the better teams in my ML ping-pong passes at 100mph as if you were playing an exploiter online, there are constantly massive holes in the midfield for you to play the ball around because they're all sitting in their own penalty area, my word it's bad. The CPU seems to have physically dominant players no matter what team it is, with limitless stamina, instant ball control, bizarrely fast turning circles, and amazing vision. Remarkable.
I guess that's my ML campaign in the bin then, I loved it back in Div2, but go up a level and it plays like arcade, high speed trash. Very very similar to playing online, in fact.
Roll on PES2013. I hope it's nothing like this at all. I suppose the straw that broke the camel's back was seeing, in the last minute of the game, a CPU player facing his own goal, have a fast moving ball roll across his body, yet he managed to somehow hit an inch-perfect 50 yard through-ball to a forward with his back-heel, all while facing the wrong way.
Realistic? What a load of bollocks.
I really hope Konami take 2013 back to some kind of realism. There are plenty of context-based physics going on when you are on the ball that are realistic, certainly compared to FIFA, but that doesn't apply to the CPU in this game.
