Romagnoli's PES 2012 Playtest Impressions

romagnoli

romagnoli

Misses Retri
7 August 2004
PES 2012 Playtest Impressions




A big thank you to Adam Bhatti and his family for their hospitality and generosity this weekend, as well as for the opportunity to get some hands on time with the preview code. A big thank you as well to Xaor, for rigorously testing out the referees - though in future I'd rather we weren't on the same team...


These are my opinions based on the same playing conditions as Rodelero. Please remember that 7 hours or so of shared playing time between four people is not really enough to know exactly how the game is going to feel on release, or how the game will hold up after 5 or 6 months of continuous play. All we can do is describe the positives and the negatives, and say how we felt at the end of our time with the game.



Too long, didn't read: Click


Part 1

It was probably around 3 hours into my 6 hour train journey to Manchester, having spent one of those hours parked in a drab and featureless station called Cheddington, that I started to wonder whether this year's PES was going to be worth the effort. As an old-ish lady got off the train parked across the platform, presenting her dog just in front of my window, I thought the trips to and from Guildford to play FIFA have generally been quite straightforward, even when pissed. At which point the dog did exactly that – pissed, right on the train platform. I looked across from my seat and saw that everyone else was watching this too, fully engrossed, thankful that at least something is happening.

The train kicked back into life soon after, sparing us from finding out if the dog-owner would try and up the ante. Two hours late I finally arrived, said my hellos and made my apologies to Adam, Callum of Grade-A.co.uk, and FIFA forum guru Xaor/Rodelero (he of the 12 Enemies of FIFA series of articles and subsequent proposals of marriage from readers). We set off to the plush Bhatti residence and made straight for the games room. With as little mucking about as possible, we booted up Adam's PS3 test kit and got stuck right in.


User Profiles and Team Selection

The first thing you'll notice when you try and start an exhibition match is the player select screen. You're now able to create up to 10 user profiles, to which you can attach control schemes, assistance settings (for passing, player switching, auto-tackling etc), even avatars. From the off it's a cool little touch for those who play multiplayer offline on a regular basis. No official word yet on whether any player W-L-D stats are then attached to those profiles or indeed if your avatar will just be a picture or tie in somehow to BaL/Challenge mode, but if not then that's surely the next step?

About ten minutes later, which was how long it took for our brains to re-adjust to Japanese menu buttons(!), we picked our teams using the new team evaluation stats, which replace the classic hexagon. It uses numerical values along with retro letter grading - A is 90+, B is 80-90, C is 70-80 etc. Displaying grades and numbers at once was pretty cluttered in truth - I'd sooner have the hexagon, or just the numbers. The problem was that it was too small in 2011, with a dodgy glow that completely killed any chance of spotting small-to-medium differences between teams. The answer to that is surely to make it bigger and clearer, not to remove it completely and replace it with this!


The Pre-Match Team Talk

On getting to the game plan screen, we noticed a few key changes. Firstly, the options underneath the formation of each team had changed. Most of the options from last year had been shunted off-screen, and you'd have to deliberately scroll across to reach them.

In their place? Well, instead of editing one game plan and one game plan alone, you can now edit up to four different setups, each with its own slider options and initial formation layout. It later transpires that, during the game, you can use the d-pad (or left stick if that floats your boat) to switch to different strategies on the fly. This would be accompanied by a basic but cool little inset of a manager shouting and waving his arms to communicate instructions - a little touch, but far more emotive and satisfying than the old face button display.

Secondly, when you click on one of the four game plans, you are presented with a new tactical slider popup. In addition to being able to just use whatever combination you want, the new menu gives you several preset tactical options that guide how to get the results you want. By selecting the Quick Counter option, for example, your slider values for player support would be anything between 16 and 20. With the Possession Game your player support and support range would be lower (8-12 I think? Should've jotted it down!) but your defensive line and position switching would be quite high; by contrast the Long Ball game would be faster paced and more expansive but your defence would sit very deep.

Unless I’m mistaken the teams in the game were already set up to be using some of these settings, which will be good news for those of you who were slightly annoyed by how conservative some of the team slider settings were in 2011. That’s not to say they won’t benefit from some further work by great minds such as those at http://www.justpes.com/ but at least the starting point seems improved.

It’s another simple, yet positive addition. By making the tactical options more accessible and giving people guidance on how to get certain tactical results, Konami is encouraging people to get involved with this aspect of the game and get more hands-on with instructing the AI - the result being that they become more aware of what the AI can do and how it behaves. It's subtle but it's PES teaching people about football on a level that Youtube, even highlights shows like Match of the Day, just can't convey. 2011 was very much a sandbox game for budding tacticians, and 2012 has certainly tipped its cap to them.

Best of all it’s good to see PES make moves to bring newcomers up to a higher standard of tactical tweaking, rather than dumb down from the top and lose a hell of a lot of depth in the process.

Owing to time constraints we chose to go the Arsene Wenger route and did away with such nonsense as a plan B, focussing on plan A and preparing our complaints about not playing in the spirit of the game if we weren't allowed to win.

On to picking the starting XI. Player attributes are laid out slightly differently. In PES 2011 they were essentially in one continuous list that you could page through using the shoulder buttons. This year, Konami have looked to split them up into a few areas, grouping speed stats and technical stats into separate tabs and then slapping a letter grade alongside that. A little touch, and time will tell how much it benefits you. I like the premise but technical stats holds everything like passing, shooting, dribbling and technique – I’d like to see a couple more splits because at the moment some of the gradings don’t really make sense.

Into the match we went, the camera hovering over the stadium and the players emerging from the tunnel looking much the same as last year, save for a few glitches with the shading. If we were the types to care about such things then we'd probably have started to worry, with anxious flashbacks to train platforms and dog wee.

But we weren't here to watch the game; we were here to play.
 
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Part 2

Responsiveness & AI

Straight from kick-off the difference was huge.

Huge.


From the first subtle movement of the left stick it was abundantly clear that the game is so much more lithe and alive, both in attack and defence. The game never feels static, as it can do at times in PES 2011. The attackers are constantly probing in their own individual ways and based on your tactics, looking to make options or sneak into space unnoticed. Defenders seem to be making decisions about positioning versus tracking runs all the time. It’s odd but you can kind of get a sense of them communicating as they shift around, because their decision making seems so rational rather than mechanical. That sound over the top, but I think it’s inevitable when you suddenly get your hands on AI that seems a genuine step up rather than a slightly better version of the exact same thing.

Besides which the impact of the zonal defending can’t be understated – NPC teammates automatically contain dribblers, defences clam up when facing dribblers like Messi, defensive midfielders drop into holes as the defence gets pulled wide… A lot of this is true to various degrees in previous football games, but it’s the extent to which everything intertwines and affects everything else that makes it so impressive. Stepping in to help the defence - often using the right stick to pick whoever I want at will rather than sometimes struggle with one of two or three inappropriate choices - you could see your teammates shifting according to your behaviour, plugging gaps if you moved out of position. Again, it really felt so much more aware and primed for action than last year.



I can officially confirm that any previewer or reviewer that dedicates more time to the teammate run trigger systems than the movement already provided to you, is one that hasn’t got a clue. If they happen to just spend the whole preview just talking about that feature, then they’re bloody ignorant.

Speaking of which, don’t worry about the run triggers damaging individuality. They’re too hard to use routinely, and the impact it has is subtle at most. My understanding is that the trick with manual run triggering is not to move the 2nd player for extended periods of time, but to move them in the direction you want them to run and then click again, at which point they sprint thattaway.

But it’s so hard to use meaningfully. 99.9% of all movement on the pitch is going to be AI controlled, is still going to be player-oriented and is going to be more than good enough for even the most extravagant pass and move players among us.



For passing I pretty much just used the medium assistance setting (2 out of 4 with being fully 'manual') and the general feeling in terms of accuracy was pretty much in line with PES 2011. It's more satisfying to pick out 20-30 yard passes now though, because the movement of the ball (as I'm sure you've read dozens of times now) is much more organic and believable. The ball bobbles on the turf, it curls, it changes direction when a spinning ball grips the pitch, it doesn't rocket along the turf and then grip as if it's hit a puddle of treacle. It could do with some more inaccuracy in certain cases but that isn't to say that we didn't hit quite a lot of misplaced balls wide or ahead or behind of targets.

It's important to realise that these changes are not just cosmetic. It contributes almost as much as the AI to completely eradicating the classic cheap goals of 2011. Bold words I know after a day's play. But the biggest problem with the triple tap O was that the ball travelled like a bullet just above the ground, and defenders would take an eternity to react. This just isn't the case anymore. As I said, the ball travels at a lower top speed but with less pitch resistance, which gives the already much more alert defenders (and you with your right stick player switching) a lot more time to react and close off the corridor of uncertainty.

People may worry about the 1-2 spamming and the kick-off lobbed through ball as well, of course. Well the passing accuracy, as I said, is still much the same, but again the speed of the ball itself has changed. It still has zip, but there isnt so much disparity between its speed and the reaction times of the defenders. As Rodelero beamed at the time, interceptions were a huge part of our games, which you certainly couldn't say about your typical PES 2011 match. As for the lobbed through ball - we forgot to try it, but again, the failing was an AI issue. I'd be gobsmacked if the zonal AI hasn't eradicated this exploit by default.


In case I haven't made it clear so far, it’s a lot of fun playing this game, whether in attack or defence, trying to build passing moves when you have so many players keen to give you options, trying to shut up shop and deny the opposition’s better players any space or time to do what they do best. There wasn't a single part of the game that felt like a chore to me - I was always occupied and thinking in defence, and I was always keen to try new things and spread the play in unexpected ways.



La Gambeta

The on-the-ball movement is much more responsive and deliberate, allowing you to carry the ball confidently and work the space you have to good effect. It really brings out the best in technical midfielders by allowing them to really express themselves, touch for touch, and create passing angles that less deft players can't quite conjure. You can also stop dead with the ball, hold R2 (which either performs upper body feints or automated stepovers depending on the ability of the player involved) and then push off again once you've committed the defender.

Each player still feels like they handle differently when carrying the ball. With world class slalom runners it’s an absolute joy to deftly glide around challenges or use crafty R2 dribbling simply to frighten the defender into standing off; but against pressure spammers you should find that dodging challenges to create space, or taking a touch away from them and buying a foul, is meat and drink to less OTT players like Modric or Wilshere.

Further down the pecking order, the very early impression is that it all seems to scale pretty well. We played Wolves v West Brom and Matt Jarvis was clearly the go-to guy for carrying the ball forward - good old fashioned direct running from deep, covering some 30 yards up the pitch, going at the fullback before either laying the ball back or looking to cross the ball in. By contrast Karl Henry felt slovenly and uncultured, and an attempt to see how well Steven Fletcher could run at a defence ended in tears. A Jarvis and a good little CM/AM who can pull off good one touch 10-15 yard passes are going to be first on my MLO and ML list, make no mistake.


My opinion is that the game as a whole is a lot more nimble and welcoming, while still staying true to a lot of what gave 2011 its depth. That’s not to say that some of the top end players aren’t occasionally capable of a bit too much in the way of sudden directional changes or tidy turns, and some may miss the grandad turns that oafish centre backs would do in 2011. I can imagine some people’s initial reaction being one of fear or concern that suddenly the game is this responsive, maybe even saying they prefer the relative restrictiveness of last year. Not me, from my time with it - it’s a very positive step forward for the gameplay as a whole, not least because of the environment in which it is now balanced and how everything else feeds off it. Even if depth were lost in the dribbling by improving response times (and as I’ve said I don’t think any is), the increase in depth in other areas is far greater by comparison. If I do feel things need reining in, I really don't mind if it has to wait until next year, so it can be judged more precisely, rather than risk breaking what we have now.

More to follow...
 
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Part 3!

Under Pressure

The depth resulting from the knock-on effects of this agility is the key. It’s just one of several steps taken by Konami to embrace the pressing game by ensuring you have to think about your actions.


The greatly improved (especially since last year I only saw it once or twice) advantage rule is particularly helpful in this regard, as is the strictness of the mostly wonderful refereeing. It’s a shame that the ref was still a bit dodgy with slide tackle decisions, and that he seemed too eager to let missed standing tackles go inside the box. It’s a nice idea to be a bit more hesitant about penalty decisions but there needs to be a balance. On the plus side at least my team seemed to agree with me, raising both arms to appeal!

And as I said, the man in black is usually spot on and punishes the right things, as he apparently did in the PES 2011 demo (I honestly can't remember now). No more relentless hacking through the back of players online as refs are very quick to give marching orders for such behaviour. Isn't that right, Rod??

It’s not just cards though - a couple of times I knocked a player over and conceded a free kick on the edge of the box just by moving into him with the left stick. It looked properly cool, but more importantly it added to the sense that, yes I still have pressure and try to hound and harass players; but it’s something that I have to use so much more carefully and intelligently than just mashing the pressure buttons.


It leads to one of the things this year's PES seems to have really gone all out to capture - the battle for the ball in tight spaces between two players. Last year, too often the game would force the attacker and defender into running in a straight line, the attacker stumbling and the defender slowly gaining ground before winning the ball. Or of course your player might just run the ball out of touch despite the battle having started some 10 yards back. These sorts of incidents could become repetitive and baffling – your player clearly looked as though he should at least be able to touch the ball diagonally to his side, but his only options would tend to be to pass, turn back on himself or lose the ball. Meanwhile of course the stumbling animation of 2011 has claimed several scalps in its time, such as clear shooting opportunities or certain goals, leading to yelps of frustration and controllers flying across rooms.

The answer, Konami have declared, is to make it possible to dribble while stumbling. This has huge connotations - it means that players like Messi can run at defences and be knocked slightly off balance as he deflects off the challenges of defenders, but still be able to dodge the next challenge as his trailing leg comes forward. It's the sort of thing you see all the time when watching Messi shrug off challenges, and it's very liberating for the more lightweight midfielder like Wilshere or Modric because they can emerge from reckless pressuring with the ball.

It also allows for a lot of incidental touches. Over the course of the weekend I saw a lot of little things like nutmegs or bridges (the ball goes one way, the attacker goes the other). Or Shola Ameobi clumsily chesting a long pass down, a defender moving between him and the ball, Shola reaching a gangly left leg out to knock the ball to the right and just about emerge with the ball – only to run into trouble as the next man was ready and waiting to nick the ball away. I saw Nani emerge from the corner of the pitch having just about weaved out of a double pressure. I saw lone strikers take clever first touches to knock the ball out of the defender's reach and win free kicks in good positions, making something out of what seemed like nothing.


The Final Third

Right then. We’ve toyed with the opposition’s pressure spamming and forced them to think about what they’re doing. We’ve probed at their defence, we’ve created a gap and we’ve got a clear shooting opportunity. We can see the whites of the keepers eyes and we’ve pulled our foot back to let rip. This has traditionally been one of the most exciting parts of PES, the moment when you breathe in sharply and your eyes widen, when defenders are most likely to panic and press slide tackle to try and stop the shot/throw themselves in the way. But WENB said the shooting was very floaty, almost broken, in the early code. How is it now?

Fairly good, is the answer. It has a lot of very welcome improvements. Firstly, the ball curls more, and there are more animations available to apply curl to the ball. Adam showed us a video where his David Silva used a shot fake to buy space (think of the shot fakes as more like the classic PS2 versions but with more available exit directions), cutting inside from the left edge of the D, and because the ball was a bit too central he used the outside of his left foot to aim just wide of the far post. As I said with the passing, the ball clearly curled in the air, but then also gripped the pitch when it bounced and changed direction accordingly. In the ball went, no chance for the keeper. It looked great, as all outside of the foot curlers do. But as a standalone replay it was a great demonstration of the return of the proper shot fake, of the knock-on effects the ball physics has across the game, and how it all accentuates individuality and footedness.

In case outside of the foot shots aren’t enough for you, Konami have returned R2 finesse shots to their former glory. I managed to complete a particularly sweet passing move as Germany by giving the ball to Mesut Özil, who in much the same position as David Silva but with the ball much more on his left. I pressed shoot and then belatedly R2. Özil cocked his leg back for a standard shot, lowered it a bit, lifted it back up again and then dispatched a tasty sidefooted finish in off the inside of the post, curling away from the keeper.

I really do love that readjustment when you leave a beat between button combos - it’s particularly good with R1 or L1 lobs, because the first phase ends up like a shot fake, sending the keeper to ground - see Park’s goal in a recent friendly:

YouTube - Ji Sung Park goal vs New England Revolution

It’s been in PES for years and I’ve always got a big kick out of it.

In a later game I had Vucinic (I think) running across Milan’s defence from right to left, short of passing options but with a narrow gap to shoot through. I powered up a shot and used R2. He hit the ball hard and with whip, about a yard high and wide. It really did look almost vicious compared to last year’s efforts though and left me in no doubt that R2 shooting will be a viable option from range once again.


That said, there were some issues with the general pace of shots, still. It was clearly much improved from what was described in previous builds – I scored an absolute rocket on the half volley with Lucho from the edge of the box – but there were still a fair number of attempts on goal that seemed a bit too timid. You do need soft shots on goal occasionally, of course, if you want to represent different player abilities. But the problem was more that the times when players hit soft shots, as opposed to powerful but high and/or wide shots, didn’t always make sense.

People who were hoping for changes to the lobs will be disappointed. I scored a lot of them last year, and scored one at the weekend, but I wanted them changed because at the moment you can just charge up to full and hit the lob from the edge of the box, and it will stay under the bar 9 times out of 10. I’d add another ten yards onto the maximum distance so that people have to judge the weight. It’s not a major concern, but I thought I’d let people know lobs are much the same.

There were also a few too many bicycle kicks using an animation that reminded me of a goal Marc Overmars scored years back. That’s been fed back I understand.

Safe Hands

Keepers were undeniably the weakest aspect of the game. In fact it was surprising that it took a couple of hours for any mistakes to really emerge. The main problem was that they were diving over timid shots rather than onto them. There were parrying issues as well, also with fairly weak efforts quite close to the keeper.

It's not as though keepers are completely hopeless though - as I said, for the first couple of hours we thought Adam was having us on because some fantastic saves were being pulled out of the bag. Funnily enough when the shots were powerful or quite far away from the keepers they seemed to behave very much as you'd expect.

Obviously I can't make any guarantees as I have nothing to do with coding the game, but personally I'm very confident that keepers will be up to a very good standard by the time the game goes gold. The problems we saw were mostly based on the animation for diving on the ball not having the right ball tracking, and sorting out the parries is likely to be a priority given the quality of experience Konami are already sitting on right now.
 
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Part 4

Man vs Machine

As you can imagine, it's pretty hard to get a 1 v CPU match when you have very limited time with preview code and paid good money and spent a lot of time travelling there. Or watching animals urinate.

But we did manage a token match each. Between the three of us who were visiting Adam, we had a stab at bettering his 7-1 defeat against Barcelona using Marseille, on the new highest difficulty level - Superstar. None of us did quite so badly, sure - though to be fair, he was trying to win and got exposed at the back, whereas we were just trying not to lose by six goals!

I can safely say that some of the play the CPU was coming up with was daunting. Watching someone else on the receiving end of a Messi dribble, or a tiki-taka masterclass from Xavi and Iniesta, knowing that you're going to play next, makes your palms sweat. What was clear to me was that the CPU knew about the new-found agility to the game as well - the midfield was elusive when pressing; one-twos were sharp and often used simply to allow the initiator to get a better angle to attack the pitch; little turns and shoulder drops bought space when it looked like I was going to get a foot in. It was very much a case of me trying to press enough to stop Barca from getting a completely free reign, but not so much that my defence was left in a 1 on 1 situation against Messi, or that the wide men could sprint into space. In one of the games I noticed the pressing did get a bit reckless, and the score ended up pretty comprehensive.

A particularly nice 1-2 saw Xavi pass 5 yards diagonally forward to an advanced Busquets and then run in much the same direction. The ball was bobbling, as it does whether passing along the ground or dribbling. Busquets, with a defender at his back flicked the ball up off the ground without really changing the direction, and Xavi burst onto it to continue the attack. It was simple, it was one-touch, but it was that right mix of extravagant and effective that has you hitting pause and replaying CPU passing moves.

I'm sure that given time with the game plenty of people will be able to master Superstar. I can completely see why Adam would have been on the end of a hiding - the CPU had phases of taking things easy and passing around the back for ages against us, and Ad was quick to point out that Barca scored pretty much every shot on target against him while Rod had something like 11 shots against and 2 goals conceded (I should've written the actual numbers down in hindsight). But that said I thought I had a decent crack of the whip, controlling the game for spells simply by playing conservatively and defending very carefully for 89 minutes. I lost in the end to a last minute brainfart, where injury time had run out and I was expecting the whistle to blow for full time as Barcelona moved out of their penalty area. I was even trying desperately to commit a foul just to regroup (for shame), but I couldn't get near the buggers. In the end David Villa absolutely tore me a new one with some outrageous sidestepping into the box, and I panicked and hit slide tackle. Penalty. Goal. 2-1. Balls.

The conclusion we took away from this one game each was that, yes we were getting ripped at times, but it felt proportionate and plausible. It didn't feel like there was any cheating going on, or like the CPU ramping up its abilities in order to win; it felt like it was Barcelona giving us a serious going over. That's all you can ask when it comes to making a very hard difficulty setting, IMO, and I really hope this difficulty scales well when you play against Stoke on a cold Tuesday night. It'd be a shame if West Brom turned out to be just as effective and the real determinant was the difficulty. But the only game we played was against Barca. This might be something to ask Lami to try, in fact.


The Beautiful Game?

With the main points about the gameplay typed up within / slightly beyond reason, I thought I'd fit in a couple of lines about the graphics and animations. Yes the graphics are pretty weak from a distance, and it's high time Konami actually stepped things up a gear or two to meet the standard of most next-gen games. Yes the animations are still behind FIFA's as far as transitions and quantity of options are concerned. No the physical interactions aren't as varied as an unscripted, procedural physics engine.

But these tend to be things you notice more when other people are playing (and even then there are still very cool animations peppered about the place ranging from cushioned outside-foot volleys to players appealing for fouls, and some of the collisions and buffeting animations are surprisingly authentic to the nature of the impact). When you're actually playing, except in very extreme cases you simply don't notice any deficiencies. I was completely absorbed by the football match that was unfolding, and the only movement that really mattered to me was the movement of players in my peripheral vision trying to create space - not how perfectly their limbs transitioned from one movement to the next.


PES and The Ever Evolving Game Of Football

Over the past ten years, since PES's studs first clacked their way out of the tunnel and onto the hallowed turf of the PS2, we have seen a marked shift in tactics and in the sorts of players you find on the world's most fearsome teamsheets. Ten years ago, a midfield general was essential - now they are few and far between. The Makelele role was the Patrick Vieira role - a domineering, box to box player who could stamp his authority on a game, sometimes literally. As a result the 'classic number 10' that has always tugged at fans' heart strings would often find himself free to do as he pleases between the opposition midfield and the back four. Andrea Pirlo had moved to Milan after struggling to make a name for himself at Inter and finding himself loaned out to Brescia for a handful of games - it was another two years before Ancelotti thought to move him into the deep lying playmaker position, or the Pierlo role as it's likely to be known for a few years yet.

Most of all, football is played at a higher tempo across Europe, with pressing games, four-tier formations and larger/stronger squads allowing for players to cover larger distances per match, and attackers have become more multi-purpose, more technical and more eager to switch positions off the ball.

PES 2012 certainly handles the older styles of player well, but it seems to be the first football game in a long while to really address the modern evolutions across several areas at once. The improved AI for everyone on the pitch (giving keepers the benefit of the doubt!) and the agility and empowerment of technical, wiry players combine with the improved mental and physical agility of defensive units to replace the disporportionate gap in effectiveness between a great dribbler and a speed merchant, or the need for the catchup bug, or the unreactive defenders when called upon for interceptions. It's a great example of making changes that all have to go in at once in order to work, and the result being more than the sum of its parts.



Eurogamer of all sites put it very well when they described how the football in PES 2012 always feels on the edge of control, rather than being too sedate or too hectic. That's why it's so fun for me as a football sim enthusiast - because the gameplay is on a knife edge in so many important parts of today's version of the sport, it is easy to then tip the balance towards being more controlled and safe, or towards the higher tempo and the risk of losing control.


Remaining Worries

There are only a handful of concerns, or at least things that could do with feeding back to Konami. Ones I haven't covered include moments where a player seems to slow his run to let the ball run into his path, which can lead to being tackled. It only happened a few times but it needs eradicating. Sometimes passes seemed to override what I requested and go short to another target, which I imagine is being sorted as we speak if it hasn't already, but is worth pointing out.

The stamina system seems much the same to me, possibly with greater speed reductions as stamina decreases? People who were hoping for big changes here may be disappointed. But the thing is that as far as I understand it, people were looking to stamina to greatly reduce people's ability to run around and chase the ball; it should be more subtle than some of the things I saw people wanted, while affecting work rate only when you get to the very lowest levels. Also the main reason people wanted it was to stop people pressure spamming for 90 minutes, but you're going to find that these people will suffer via other means. Making drastic changes to a game that already has drastic changes to the amount of running players do probably isn't wise and is best saved for next year.

Another issue is the right stick switching, which is hugely liberating but could do with a bit of refining as it can struggle when trying to jump through crowded areas.

Online deserves a thought as well. All this responsiveness will count for nothing if the online experience can't keep up. Defending as a unit and keeping up with Messis and Ronaldos will be exponentially harder if you're a couple of yards behind the pace. This is partly why I'm trying to caveat my praise of the dribbling - it feels great offline when playing for a day, but making a call on how this will feel over a year, particularly against the D1 MLO lot, is way beyond what Rod and I can really try and call at this stage.


Closing Thoughts

Other than those, and points I've covered across this write-up, I have to say I was very happy with what I saw and was sad to leave. The most important thing for me is that, even though we all know certain quirks and flaws will crop up over the course of extended play time, what matters is that PES continues to make big strides forward. To switch sports for a moment, we don't need every single aspect of PES to hit a hole in one. We just need them to get on the green, 10 ft or less from the pin, so that next year they can sink an easy putt.


Whatever your feelings about the game when you actually play it rather than read overly long previews, it doesn't matter if 2012 doesn't end up being flawless. Expect a 10/10 from any game and you'll almost always be disappointed. But the closer something gets to a 10, the smaller the changes you need to reach perfection become, and the better each year's play gets as we try to get there.



Jeez. That'll do, won't it?
 
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Top read, really glad theyre forcing the pressure slags to think before charging in. Look forward to the rest.
 
romagnoli said:
From the first subtle movement of the left stick it was abundantly clear that the game is so much more lithe and alive, both in attack and defence. The game never feels static, as it can do at times in PES 2011. The attackers are constantly probing in their own individual ways and based on your tactics, looking to make options or sneak into space unnoticed. Defenders seem to be making decisions about positioning versus tracking runs all the time. It’s odd but you can kind of get a sense of them communicating as they shift around, because their decision making seems so rational rather than mechanical.

Again, it really felt so much more aware and primed for action than last year.
Click to expand...
This all sounds very encouraging. One of the things that put me off 2011 was illogical off-the-ball movement, the static feeling, the sense that the AI was really not sufficiently aware of each other, of space, of spacing. Rarely anticipating or being alert to opportunities.

Combine that with Superstar difficulty and the option for lower pass assistance, and I'm intrigued.
 
For those worried about the impressions being very positive, I'm going to cover more issues later on. It's still going to be positive overall, mind you...
 
Oh dammit, I was seriously getting into that Rom. It's like someone ripping the last few pages out of the 'Whodunnit' novel after gaining comfort in the local library. :CONFUSE:

Brilliant, truly brilliant insight and writing skills Rom, cant wait for the next chapter. Incredible.
 
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Good read up to now. Eagerly waiting to see what made you think again on that pissing dog, as up to now things seem very positive. You can take as much time as you want writing if the end product is as detailed as it's been those introductory parts (it's only the introduction.... right?).
 
Just finished reading it.You have some writing skills Rom, very precise and detailed review.Thank you very much
 
It looks like they chose the right direction with 2011 and take last year to improve it. Much more like PS2 days.

Just one question: Did you noticed if in game plan menu is (or is not) there any undo option?
 
drekkard said:
Good read up to now. Eagerly waiting to see what made you think again on that pissing dog, as up to now things seem very positive. You can take as much time as you want writing if the end product is as detailed as it's been those introductory parts (it's only the introduction.... right?).
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It's 2/3 of the way through tbh. I've essentially just got whatever I can fit into part 3 and then all of part 4 to go.

There's only so much you can hope to put in an article, there's always going to be something else you've missed. I've still got shooting and keepers to do for a start! I've spent too much time trying to cover absolutely everything IMO; I should've stuck to explaining why things change how the game plays, like the bit about battling for the ball or making the pressing game count.
 
Fantastic read! The best "preview" or impressions I've read. Really looking forward to the next part!!!

One quick question that hopefully will be covered in the next chapter as you go more into the shooting aspect, but what about first time touches? Is it actually possibly to do a first time clearance from defence this time around?
 
MadmaxG79 said:
Fantastic read! The best "preview" or impressions I've read. Really looking forward to the next part!!!

One quick question that hopefully will be covered in the next chapter as you go more into the shooting aspect, but what about first time touches? Is it actually possibly to do a first time clearance from defence this time around?
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Thanks mate. I prefer Rod's tbh! Much less faffing around.

I can answer that now - you can pass or clear first time now. No idea why you couldn't in 2011 to be honest - it was a silly idea.
 
hey rom a quick question, are the Agility and Shot Technique stats still in the game? because from what i've seen on those leaked sets of lamaprd and wilshere they were missing.

also where those sets fully completed or they where missing some stats?

could you post a few complete sets of some playees so that the editing community could get a better insight in it

and the last question, if your not permited to post full stats could you atleast put an empty set without numbers and also could you name the full list of player cards?

thx in advace and great review.
 
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romagnoli said:
Thanks mate. I prefer Rod's tbh! Much less faffing around.

I can answer that now - you can pass or clear first time now. No idea why you couldn't in 2011 to be honest - it was a silly idea.
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Thanks for the swift reply - I'm glad they changed it.

And I prefer the in depth approach of your article, gives me a much better insight into the whole gameplay aspect, so thx for that!
 
Another great preview.

Quick q. Have automated kick offs been removed now?
 
Nargh, still concerned about the passing assistance, I predict a right pinball fest if the default is 4/4.
 
romagnoli said:
It's 2/3 of the way through tbh. I've essentially just got whatever I can fit into part 3 and then all of part 4 to go.

There's only so much you can hope to put in an article, there's always going to be something else you've missed. I've still got shooting and keepers to do for a start! I've spent too much time trying to cover absolutely everything IMO; I should've stuck to explaining why things change how the game plays, like the bit about battling for the ball or making the pressing game count.
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Maybe I forgot to put a smiley in mi initial post! I used "introductory" as a jape, due to the long posts. It was meant to be appraisal! I know it's impossible to write down everything, you could spend whole nights writing and you would still have the "I forgot about that!" feeling.

I'm really interested in where the bad things will start to pour, as I usually share a lot of your views in both Fifa and PES threads.
 
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