Jamez - You won't find me arguing that the sound is decent, let alone good. I prefer the reaction to goals in PES, but otherwise it's a clean sweep in EA's favour.
Best football game for sound was WC2010. No-brainer. Even if you hate vuvuzelas, the sound was frighteningly convincing at times, simply cos they could use genuine audio samples, rather than faking it.
That in bold - it's the one thing regards sound they get right. Not so much the sound/commentary itself, but the reaction and timing.
I would tend to agree with you regards WC2010 being the best in this generation of football games. I have fond memories of ISS Pro 98 and how that game had a nice diverse mix of instrumental flavour added to crowd atmosphere. I always remember Saudi Arabia having that mad instrument playing in the crowd or the Netherlands having their band playing. It was obviously crude by today's standards, but it worked. Man, I would love PES to have a classic match mode that is similar to NBA2K12's ''greatest'' feature, where the look and presentation mirrors the era in question. imagine being able to play Brazil v. Italy in a 1982 presentation stylee that captures perfectly the broadcast look and sound from that match.
Been playing a ton of NBA2K12 the past week and there is so much to be learned from that game beyond the obvious technical assets. The sound in that game is frankly astonishing, both in terms of crowd atmosphere/reaction and commentary. For all that EA have made progress with their commentary it is still miles behind what 2K achieve with their game.
It borders on voodoo how the crowd react to everything and along with it, how the atmosphere reaches fever pitch in the final minutes of a close game, or how a home crowd go awfully quiet if their team is being subject to a severe beating. Even their reaction to free-throws, blocks or turnovers seems dynamic to how the game is poised.
The commentary really steals the show however. They have a three man game commentary team, a ''presenter'' and even a court-side reporter who relays back what she has heard the coaches say during the game along with commenting on what they said in pre-game interviews. The game commentary is seemless and at least gives the impression of being limitless. They started talking at length about corporate sponsorship potentially appearing on jerseys in one game, only for me to score a sprite-cam worthy dunk in which they gave out a collective ''Wow!'' talking about the dunk itself, the player who scored it and how rare it was for him to do so, before going back to discussing sponsorship.
Obviously, with the NBA consisting of only 30 teams, the developers can probably have more scope regards detailed, natural sounding commentary but even if PES' commentary for CL games (they really should do something similar to NBA2k12's NBA Today with CL)could do something similar it would be welcome.
I'm going to be posting a fairly comprehensive breakdown of how 2K sports efforts with the NBA2K should be taken note of in the next week or so. Like I say, it is more than just technical solutions Konami should be taking note of from these games. Oddly, I think PES is closer to NBA2K12 in some areas than FIFA is to the point you would swear Konami have taken some inspiration from what 2K do. Here's hoping if that is the case they look to take further inspiration in future.
