Ok, now there are lots of pages praising the demo. I tried it friday, but didn't want to write something unitl I had played it thoroughly. I must admit I was really really excited by the positive comments about it. But the thing is I am quite disappointed and I can't see the great game you are all playing. First of all, I summarize all the good things about it:
- Animations: They were very good in fifa 08, but now there are more and better animations. Thumbs up!
- Responsiveness: When people talk about reaction times, I assume they talk about button responsiveness. Reaction times in this game are overdone and very unrealistic (more later) but responsiveness of the controls is very good.
- Passing/Crossing: Long passes are better than ever and an actual threat. Crosses seem to be more easy to control even in full manual settings.
- Shooting: No more "finesse" easy shots from outisde the area is the main thing here for me. More about shooting in the negatives list.
- Weather: it's in the game. We're still to see the different ways in which affect the gameplay.
Now for the negatives. I'm really disappointed about all these things:
- Gameplay: They have broken gameplay in my oppinion. You can run and dribble all around, there's no skill involved in dribbling, tricks are supereasy to do, through passing is too effective and it's not necessary at all to build up play. I've played CPU & Humans (some of my friends don't fit in "human" category) and this game will turn into a scoring fest. I score 3 or more goals evey time I want, being the cpu or humans. The game is too unbalanced towards offensive game. Also, there is too much space between lines in the teams. You pass to your striker and he's only challenged by the full back, I don't see the density of players I liked in fifa 08 and my feeling is just that, players receive and have too much space around them in every situation.
- Physics: Ball physics are good, but body challenges are dramatically missing. There's almost no contact. You can't pressure your opponent, you simply tackle or run behind your opponent. When a big full back is about to be run by a fast player, you can't play the physical contact at all, you can't push from behind, when you press "tackle" button, your player can be 1 inch off the opponent and do nothing (dribbling is too easy even in small spaces). Maybe you don't win the ball, but AT LEAST by positioning in front of a player you should be a threat to his possession. In this demo, it's uber easy to go throught defenders unchallenged.
- Pace: Definitely too fast. Mainly because the combination of different factors: players can run too much, absolut lack of physical contact, too fast reactions and perfect-passing.
- Positioning: Players were perfect in position in fifa 08, now they're quite dumb. Playing the cpu, you simply pass around and finally find the winger free. It's SUPER easy to break defenses and find holes. There's not much skill involved. That's been one of my biggest disappointments with the game.
- Passing: Too precise. Even if the target is 30 meters away or between opponents, you simply press "pass" and it's done. It deeply affects gameplay in a bad way, because not much skill is involved. Passing from your full back to your striker is too easy. Oh, and thet'es still too much scripting in the passing routines, even in full manual.
- Shooting: Too easy to score screamers. Most shots are dangerous even if you were unbalanced, moving or so... Fiufa 08 was more punishing with this details and I liked how the ball could go really off target (even to the corner flag) if you were unbalanced or with a player with low shooting stats. The shooting in this game reminds me a lot of the one in pes6.
- Difficulty: People often talk about difficulty in general. There's 2 different things: difficulty of the gameplay and AI. The AI in this game is similar to fifsa 08 with a few tweaks. CPU now can do long passes, miss some passes, have some loose balls, etc... But the difficulty of gameplay realtes to how difficult is to do what you want in the game. In fifa, difficulty was high (also because of some control problems) but it felt rewarding. In Euro, difficulty is very very low. Even if you play against a friend, you can pass, pass and shoot as you want. I don't get all the people talking about how difficult is to score. I (and my friends) score lots of goals evey time. Sometimes we don't score, but the experience is very similar to pes6 in terms of goals scored. There's something I specifically dislike, and it's the "star" players. I hate when in a game a star player is like a superhero able to score from everywhere and running through everybody. This game is like that. Henry or Anelka can do what they want, almost unstoppable. I hate when people says 2now I can feel Henry moving like the real Henry". That's bullshit. What they want is simply a superplayer that scores a lot, snhoots screamers from 30 meters and is faster than anyone. But reality is NOT like that, star players can don this things once every 10 attempts, to say something. Even the best player in the world has more chances to fail than to succeed. So, I don't like the fact that you play Henry or Anelka and shoot from outside the area and most of the times the ball goes to target independantly oof your position, defenders, balance, etc... It's overdone in my oppinion.
Finally, mention the many graphical glitches and bugs. But it's a demo and they can improve that.
CONCLUSION: I think this is the game all pes fans were waiting pes 2008 to be. Even me. It's a fun game about football. Of course reaction times and responsiveness was a problem in fifa 08, but in Euro, I think they've overdone it and I don't like how the game requires less skill to play. You can simply pass, pass and shoot. I think it's a step back in terms of simulation and I really hope fifa 09 turns to be slower, more difficult, more based on skill, even if it's not as fun as this one.
lol