Its far more of a simulation than pes is
the animations are crazy and many, the keepers themselves are fabulous and the array of shooting on manual is breathtaking.
I agree somewhat with the underlined text. There are more animations and keepers/shooting are balanced with each other, although I think there are too many shots on target and as a result too many keepers getting man of the match every game because they need to save a large percentage of the shots to prevent ridiculous scorelines.
PES goes the other way - because the keepers don't have enough animations or good enough positional logic, they have toned down the shooting accordingly.
I don't agree with the simulation part (the bolded comment). Look at how a player turns/dribbles in FIFA and compare it to a real match. It's about 3 times quicker than real life. Players slaloming from side to side with the outside of their foot with every touch being about a meter wide. That is NOT a simulation.
PES, once again goes too far the other way in some regards. I do believe their underlying philosophy is a lot closer to real football. The midfield play and knocking the ball around/passing is beautiful and for me, miles ahead of FIFA.
In my opinion, "this year we're going for hardcore sim" has actually gone too far.
1) True ball tech means the ball is a separate entity. Yes we can see the ball isn't on a string now but a lot of the time we see the ball go too far ahead of a player with normal dribbling speeds and hence there's a lot of loose balls bouncing around and players winning the ball by just running into each other. Also leads to lag with shooting because the player is still catching up to the ball.
I agree with someone's comment recently that it feels like running speed is either 0 or 1, there's no in between, apart from a speed burst move you can do.
Would be nice to see True Ball Tech fully implemented in shooting so we see real variety in shots and goals. To do this though, they must build the game from the keepers and work backwards. For crying out loud, it's only been the main gripe for the last how many years!
2) Close dribbling speeds, the players turn too slowly and take too many touches to control the ball. I'm happy that they've gone down the simulation route but games should err on the side of being fun to play and whilst I don't want the ridiculous turning speed of FIFA, it seems that PES's turning speeds are even slower than real life. That is not simulation either.
James was right - it feels like a beta or tech demo. Just look at the skill moves. Some of them are like, "hey look at the skill move I just pulled Mr Defender but don't touch me until the animation has completed". Some of them look great though. The passing animations at times have players leaning back to get in position when they wouldn't do so in real life and we still have shooting animations where there is no backlift.
No real faces for so many players until November is a pain but forgiveable since they've told us they're fixing it, but again with massive delays in getting player rosters up to date. Ok, EA Sports might be really speedy because of their ties to FIFA itself but I'm sure Konami don't need a 2 month turnaround!
Even with the faces and animations, wasn't the FOX engine supposed to enable much quicker workflows. If they were going to be this far behind, they truly should have delayed the game until November or December. By then, GTA and FIFA's new shine would have worn off and PES could have blown people away instead of leaving a so so taste in their mouth.
If they wanted to use the early release as a testbed for the new engine and patches for PES 2014 or for PES 2015 then they should have released a widespread beta with proper feedback implemented into a November/December retail code.
I didn't buy FIFA 13 and I don't think I'll buy FIFA 14, but seriously Konami, as much as I love your football philosophy and I want you to succeed, there's no way we should be paying full retail for games each year where it's half complete or modes removed/changed and we're told that it will be fixed next year...or the year after. I'll be keeping my eyes on the forums and Twitter, but I'm happy to wait another year at this rate and play my other games, which cost the same or less than PES and are finished, polished and all round quality.
Excuse the rant - but I needed it
