Righto, first post and my thoughts on PES 2014
- played real footy all my life
- played PES a handful of times
- played FIFA (PS3) since '10
One word, Awesome! ( a few issues but nothing insurmountable). There's just so much soul in this game, I really feel like it's the best footy game I've ever played (well apart from sensible soccer).
Observations
The movement/animations of the players is so real, things you do in a real game like drop your centre of gravity & accelerate off past your opponent is honoured well here with the new FOX engine.
Played with the OF but deleted it straight away 'cos it definitely slowed things down. (a little miffed I have to play as Man Blue but c'est la vie)
Enjoying scoring in various ways but there's no pleasurable THWOCK sound when I shoot - please tweak this K team!
Don't care too much about online play but I'm guessing from the comments that KONAMI didn't invest enough in there game network stack and/or server (data centre) capacity to handle the load - aw well.
Menus are awful. I don't expect to see a mouse cursor in a console game, especially of the faux-3D variety reminiscent of an old C64 game Remove mouse cursor and tweak the the button press/move contrast throughout the UI - maybe look to the PS3 store for tips??
Remove 'Establishing Connection' words - a spinning progress circle is enough - we get it.
Too many buttons to press when navigating the interface. I don't need a confirmation prompt after every choice.
Please remove the automatic playing of the interactive replay - The first 1 or 2 replays are good enough with great angles...etc without having the need to watch a 3rd and escape out of it (time consuming!)
Squished up fonts in some info screens just make the game look amateurish. Also that shiny beveled frame on text boxes look like the backgrounds in old silent movies - bit shit but only my opinion
If the current PS3 can't handle 'manifesting' 22 little Metal Gear Solid dudes on the field with all the accompanying physics/AI computations necessary then maybe reduce the graphical fidelity a bit? - I dunno... maybe there's a dev game slider or something they can dial down a notch? (specially crowds & uber close-ups of players)
I think on current consoles fixed to 1280 720p 60FPS there are always going to be 'jaggies' so focus on a silky smooth playing experience rather than taxing the system by showing off the shiny new engine. I'm already salivating over what the next-gen PS4 and PES2014 will be able to do!
Maybe I'm a village idiot but how I sub players during a game?
I find defending, either 1 on 1 or group pressing lacking a bit of oomph - maybe a design decision (or I'm just crap) but my selected defender almost seems uninterested in pressuring the guy on the ball.
End Thoughts
I'm coming from the mindset of just wanting to be able to enjoy a smooth gameplay experience which focuses on the FUN - I think Konami are in the right place judging from this outing...
All in all, I really like PES 2014. Hell, most of my quibbles aren't even to do with the core gameplay FIFA is more polished but PES2014 has nailed the fun quotient! Now that I have had a taste I doubt I could go back to FIFA as it just seems so 'flat' and 'lifeless'.
KONAMI - you rag-tag bunch of beautiful bast*rds, keep up the good work but fix all the problems please
V