appreciation thread for pes 14?
thank you konami for making worst PES game ever
I can get that PES 2014 is not for everyone, but there was a lot of intent behind PES 2014, and is probably the most simulation one of all the PES. The game was out unpolished, there's no doubt about it, needed at least another development year, and instead they should have made the move they made with PES 2020/2021, where PES 2021 was completely a season patch of PES 2020. Had they made that with PES 2014, and had they made a PES 2015, or even a 2016 with a completely polished game, and we would be talking probably about the best football simulation game ever.
However, PES 2014 came out in 2013 as the first game made under an engine developed EXCLUSIVELY for MGS V (where do you think that the name comes from? Name of Fox Engine comes from Fox Hound, the undercover agency featured in MG Series) and trying to be a ground breaking game. The project was way too ambitious for an anual release, and clearly it showed how genious Hideo Kojima was even when making a Football Game, cause for real, this game has some ideas and concepts that even while indeed not so well polished, where completely ambitious and actually undercooked.
I repeat, a Football game under the Fox Engine is something that should have been released after MGS V, which was released 2015, meaning it should have been PES 2016 or 2017 in order to have a decent game in that engine. In fact, peak Fox Engine PES are PES 2021 and PES 2017. Why? Because with PES 2017 they finally got the grip of the engine and was the polishment of PES 2015 style of control (since later with PES 2018 and 2019 is when scripting started appearing much more masively even when it had been present already since at least PES 2014).
Later in 2019 with PES 2020 they made the return to PES 2014 control style (with right stick flicks and such) but way more polished, with many more interim animations and better animation blending, and still though, animations where not as much realistic as PES 2014. But there was still a lot of weight into those animations.
It was with PES 2021 that they made probably the perfect basis for later modding by the community cause it is undoubtly the best PES made in terms of controls, mechanics over the pitch, animations, etc. It is probably not the most revolutionary PES ever made, but is undoubtly the most evolutionary PES ever made, and while it has some flaws in terms of pace and pace change that impede it to be more realistic, there's no doubt that is the best basis for a Football simulation made for the community.
PES 2021 is the closest thing we have to a Football Simulator, and it's not a casuality that it builds over several of the things seen with PES 2014. They decided to try to make back something similar to what they had done with PES 2014 back in the days, but the fact they had already broken terms with Hideo Kojima and was not in contact with Konami anymore (and is not only HK, is his whole team, ofc), which was the men and team that had the whole knowledge over the engine. You can see this on how they cut a lot of content from PES 2021, like the morale system (which was included in the physical form already) or simply the varycenter concept that in PES 2021 seems to be either gone or not so fleshed out.
Things like ball fighting, which was indeed a bit too long animation where you were locked in, but also had a lot of detail into it and felt like a minigame, or other things like the animations kicked in by the own varycenter system, are things that if HK team was on charge in PES 2021, having fleshed out much more the Fox Engine, would have been much better worked out. And how do I know that? Simply. Imagine all the ideas behind Death Stranding movement system, put into a football game. That's what he had started doing with PES 2014, and if he was still with Konami and him or part of his team still were in charge of development of later PES, we would have gotten a much better PES.
And where do I want to get with all these? To the fact that there's motives to have a PES 2014 appreciation thread. Worst or best is completely subjective. For example, I do think that while very well polished, PES 2013 is one of the most overvalued games of the franchise, and PES 2015 is for me quite worse probably than PES 2014. PES 2016 and 2017 are ok, but they are not, IMHO, so much rich in concepts as 2014 or later 2020 and 2021. Much more arcady, and for me PES 2021 does good the concept of right stick dribbling, unlike FIFA. Much more intuitive moves related to where you move the ball towards, and that you have to pull of more in syncrony with general timing of the match, rather than just do random combination of movements that give overpowered moves that render the defense useless.
PES 2014 brought to the table the concept of using right stick to move the ball towards certain direction and play with momentum of the defender, rather than simply make a random movement with the ball. Now, don't get me wrong, I also like some of the movements you can do in FIFA, and would add them maybe to PES (without making the defender go completely idiot) and I like the concept that certain movements make the defender have certain difficulties to follow you up depending on their stats, but all this based in a physic base. Again, all this was brought to the table by PES 2014. It was a highly conceptual game that essentially, brought to the franchise a next level of seeing football and how the playability of a PES should be like. And that is something to be appreciated. Sure, it wasn't the most polished game. Generally conceptual games are not. You have to WORK OVER THOSE CONCEPTS. Something that Konami refused doing until 5 years later. We had PES 2015-2019, this is 5 titles, working with the previous control scheme, Konami decided to play safe instead of building over the concepts of PES 2014, like they did 5 years later. If they did with PES 2015 what they've done with PES 2020, or had already started it at least 2 titles before with PES 2018, we would have skipped two titles in the franchise that, at least for me, give nothing new to the saga (except a higher use of script, as I said before, that would continue on PES 2020-21), and god knows where PES would have gotten before changing into UE. Probably they would have polished much more the concept behind PES 2020-21 and would have carried much more into eFootball, making it a better game than what it is now.
So no, PES 2014 was not a mistake. The mistake was going back into PES 2015 arcady style, in first term, and specially, continuing with it for so much time instead of going back to PES 2014 concepts much before. They should have continue with what they made in PES 2014, and build 2015 over it, they should have had better terms with Hideo Kojima and his team, instead of fucking things up for so long. But Konami as a company has taken a really bad way since the beginning of 10's decade, when the whole nipon industry when down. And probably, they were one of the worst exponents of it. They became fearfull, not daring to innovate, very conservative, and undoubtly that wasn't good for any of the franchises. And while other companies recovered a bit from it, for Konami it was way too late. Indeed, they tried to come back with PES 2020 and 21 to innovatives concepts of more than 5 years before, but it was too late, and in the way they also lost a lot of their sagas, like Castlevania, MG, and many others, that stayed uncontinued.
So yes, I think PES 2014 deserves an appreciation thread. It was the last time that Konami dared to try something revolutionary. It was the last spark of the childhood of many of us. It was the last spark of the old industry of videogames, at least to what football games refers. The last time someone dared to make something different. Only for that, this game deserves an appreciation thread.
