PES 2012 is nearly there to offer an addictive gameplay, it's small things that hinder it from reaching its potential so I'm curious what PES 2013 can achieve with this current engine.
Been playing and enjoying PES 2012, ok, let's say most of the time enjoying it, with phases of pure hate and frustration.
I don't mind losing to the CPU when the goals happen due to good play by the CPU, but when goals happen due to bugs and cheatings, my blood boils. On the other side I don't mind having no good goal-opportunities when it happens due to a good defense by the CPU and me using a wrong tactic. But if opportunies get prevented due to bugs or cheatings my blood boils again.
These hate/frustration-causes need to be reduced and the game could be awesome, despite the bad graphics and limited animations:
1. Playerswitching: This is the biggest trouble-maker of all, cause when the cursor is not on the player you wish to control, he will stay pretty much apathic and uninterested in the game happening. So you need to take control in order to make them make what you plan them to do, which is ok... After all I want to play the game and not watch the CPU do everything for me. But if the game doesn't let you control the player you want to control, that is a big problem.
And that's what happens numerous times, the game hinders me to get control of the player I want to control:
a) I make a pass to someone near me, I even use LT to make a manual pass, give the right power so that the ball doesn't get pushed too far, everything is perfect and then the game decides that the recipient of the pass should be a player far away who happens to be on the same imaginary line of the rolling ball and that far away player comes back to collect the ball. Even manually selecting the nearer player to get to the ball doesn't stop the far-away player from stubbornly trying to get the ball. Not only the far-away-player is then missing up front, destroying the whole structure of the attack-plan, but he is also disturbing the other player trying to get the ball.
b) I'm under pressure, the CPU attacks and shoots, the ball gets reflected from the goalkeeper, one of my defender shoots the ball high and away to the middle of the pitch, one of my midfield-players is following the ball while in the air and is nearly there where the ball would land, he is unchallenged and can easily get the ball. What happens? Shortly before he reaches the landing-spot, the game decides to change the cursor from him to one of the strikers up front and let him come back for the ball, the striker who is covered by three defenders and who is three times as far away from the landing-spot as the midfielder... of course the defenders get to the ball first
c) In certain pivotal moments in defense I can't select certain players no matter what I do.
2. Rebounds: The ball gets reflected on the goalkeeper or on the goal-posts and in 9/10 cases the ball somehow gets into the feet of the opponent's strikers.
3. Goalkeeper: He is better now after patch 1.03/1.06, but he is still awful against low shots from far, especially when they are directed into the corners of the goals. It doesn't matter how good or strong the shot was, it can be a slow rolling ball, the goalkeeper will let it in
.
4. Rails: The players move half the time on rails, this is no secret and I have nothing against it, it leads after all to a more concentrated movements. But there are situations, where you think, that player of yours shouldn't run in that angle or shouldn't pressure in that situation and way, cause it would only lead to a disadvantage. What you want is control of the player's movement, even those on-rail-movements. When selecting a player, I want to be able to change the angle of the railed-run or the speed of it or make him stop it. Stopping can be done using super-cancel, but changing the angle of the rail, the speed of the run, pressure... is not possible.
5. Ball-physics: I want to see the ball being designed to be an independent entity, that follows realistic physics and not being instrumentalised to serve cheating-scripting like it currently is.
6. Pressuring: The CPU is pressuring like crazy with two players on every ball-controlling player. High and concentrated double-pressure is a tactic that is used in real-life-football, but in real life it has a price-tag in the form of reduced stamina and higher fatigue. In the game it has no such punishment and so the CPU can use it for 90 minutes without problems. A realistic realtime twotiered stamina/fatigue-system could fix this, and this feature already exists in the Wii-version, but strangely in the PS3/xbox360/PC-versions it's completely missing.
Verdict:
If these things were fixed and implemented in PES 2013, it could be an awesome game despite the outdated graphics and animation.
