i think pes 2014 to have the potential of a great simulation of a football game but IMHO has many flaws and drawbacks which tend to make it looking extremely unfinished.
one of these major flaws is the Delayed responsiveness issue aka "Input Lag" issue , that is NOT uncommon issue in gaming industry generally and is NOT a new issue to pes series specifically as it has been already plagued bu this issue in 2010
and i see this issue "Input Lag" issue to be a fatal issue that make any game easily unplayable especially sport games and namely pes
and i wonder how the word "Delayed responsiveness" or "Input Lag" is just mentioned contextually in-between lines while reviewing pes 2014 as on of its cons while i think it should be just on the headline but why???
Input Lag causes the following gameplay inconsistencies in pes 2014 :
1-one touch passing
impossible to perform when receiving the ball from a close teammate "just try to do it in free training"
hard to perform while receiving the ball from a distant teammate unless u press passing button while the ball is still far away from you
2-1st time shooting
the same as passing ,impossible to perform when receiving the ball from a close teammate , and you will just notice your player taking an extra touch on the ball which is quite enough in some situations to make you loose an easy opportunity inside the box
hard to perform 1st time shooting while receiving the ball from a distant teammate unless u press shooting button while the ball is still far away from you
3-Dribbling
Dribbling is the most real-time process in a football game even in real football
u must take the feedback by your eyes and instantly translate what u see into proper reactionary movements for instantly controlling your player to mislead and bypass the defender
but with Input Lag this is very hard while dribbling the CPU ,because these milliseconds delayed responsiveness of your player makes the CPU has advantage over you added to that , the CPU may even reacts directly to you controller input not to your player movement which makes dribbling the CPU even worse
yet this is not the case when playing against human cause both of you having the same milliseconds delay making you suffering while dribbling and ur opponent suffering during defending , but both of you will feel like moving blocks and the game will feel very stiff at times
4-Defending
the same can be applied to defending against the CPU due to the milliseconds input delay that only u r suffering not the CPU
also not the case while playing a human player but will feel some sort of stiffness in one on on situations
5-cursor switching
i believe this is not a separate issue but rather one of the complications of input lag , if i remember well pes 2012 suffered from a player switching issue , where the CPU choose a wrong a player of ur team to switch the cursor to , in pes 2014 the problem takes a new aspect where the CPU may switch the cursor to the proper player of ur team but it just takes an extra time to do that and this issue namely can also make a very good game simply unplayable
in fact this issue together with the menu lagging and frame rate issues make me think that may be the input lag this in pes 2014 not related to the new animations which need to complete cycles before responding to the new input commands to start new cycles but "may be" its relating more to optimization of the new game with its new animation and graphic engines
6-total control
this term is used to describe some previous pes titles but if i can remember well it was never mentioned in any pes 2014 "nor pes 2010" press release and I'm sure it's not a coincident because both titles plagued by one of the most annoying bugs in a football game "Input Lag" which practically makes total control concept simply nonexistent and also not a coincident that both titles were having all new animation systems pes 2010 in-house animation technology "may be the worst pes animations " and a new MASS in pes 2014 thanks to "HAVOK" "as i believe FOX engine is only used graphically in pes 2014 while the animation engine depends mainly on HAVOK animation and physics technology and this new hybrid of HAVOK animations and physical engine with FOX graphical engine with the same old pes AI faulty design results in a great simulator football game with some major flaws and drawbacks like input lag that i hope to be addressed in next year iteration
finally the only way to overcome input lag is to play a lot as the more u play normal matches and training , ur brain will accommodate with this millisecond delay and will compensate for it by trying to anticipate the opponent reactions to give the input commands milliseconds earlier to have a proper outcome in the presence of this delayed responsiveness
i remember many reviewers mentions delayed responsiveness to be one of the issues of pes 2014 but they stated that it's less prominent than in pes 2010 but after spending some time in free training trying the dribbling defending , one touch passing and 1st time shooting , i can comfortably say that input lag in pes 2014 is simply on bar with its counterpart in pes 2010
).
