In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

[TX117]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

Nearly two weeks after release, and I'm still not sure how I feel. On the one hand, the CPU plays a smart, varied game that's a joy to behold. Unfortunately though that's where the 'joy" ends. Master League is laughable, unplayable even with 10-9 score lines, archaic menus, terrible transfer logic, pathetic commentary, and a dearth of licenses, that completely destroys any sense of immersion, and that's saying nothing about the complete lack of the Bundesliga which is arguably the greatest league in the world. BAL? Same problems. Online play? Awful. Physics? Yeah, awful. Season mode? Champions League? Everything is bogged down by poor design. So basically what we have is a great game of exhibition football. Yet somehow this game is getting insanely high reviews including the one here. Now I'm all for great gameplay, and I really do appreciate the strides that PES has made this year, but until they get it together and step it up everywhere else the game will remain second rate.

Would you recommend I wait till I can find it for a cheaper price? I already have FIFA and still want to keep it for online play but I really enjoy playing the CPU more in PES(from the demo at least)..I can't stand the bland,repetitive AI of FIFA.

[orion523]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

Again you're unable to provide a clear answer about the physics system. "Just archaic", what does that mean? After a week with the game I have seen a fantastic variety in goals and chances. You say gameplay is fantastic. Gameplay includes the physics system.
I don't want to defend PES 15 and especially KONAMI. You know I have provided a great set of sliders for the modded pc version of FIFA 15 but I feel it's time to get the facts right. PES 15 is more football than FIFA 15.

OK I'll spell it out. There is no foot planting, no step based locomotion, no inertia. When you go to pass/shoot the ball the position of your player matters not, the ball still goes where you want it to. Same with cutting and running. As for the ball, it remains tied to the players, its not its own entity with its own physics. There are no dipping, swerving, or knuckled shots. Passing, same deal. And that's just the physics. There are other issues as well on the pitch. Fouls are few and far between, the CPU tends to dribble excessively when it's near the 18 yard box, on the defensive end the flanks are defended at the expense of the middle of the field, I can go on, but I won't I'm not going to troll the thread. My point is PES is not worthy of the review scores it's received. The reviewers and fan boys are looking at the game through rose colored glasses, why" I don't know, nostalgia I guess. PES does ONE thing well, ONE. We all know what that is. Maybe that can carry the day for some, and that's great, it doesn't do it for me. And with that, I am out.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

You can shoot knuckle shots.

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It's alright though. It takes time to learn a new control scheme. Lots of the motions are completely different than FIFA. More difficult to pull off. I prefer it that way.

I will say that PES practice skill game is alright, but it should go much deeper. The controls are very deep and different.

I am glad that we have two good games to choose from. Different strokes for different folks. Competition is good, without PES, FIFA wouldn't have improved so much in the past five years, and FIFA has also pushed the Konami developers this year. Everyone wins in the end. Be happy and enjoy your game of choice.

[Battman]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

OK I'll spell it out. There is no foot planting, no step based locomotion, no inertia. When you go to pass/shoot the ball the position of your player matters not, the ball still goes where you want it to.

Not that I do not accept different opinions. But especially the second part of this sentence is simply not true and makes me wonder how many games you really played. If you shoot from the right side with a right footed player you see the appropriate result.
The collision detection, imo part of the physics engine, is much better in PES. In FIFA you have tons of stupid collisions between your own players. This is not the case in PES.
PES has a lot of weaknesses and the rating of 8 in OS is fair, maybe too high. But the FIFA rating of 9 and the love this game gets is beyond me. On the pitch FIFA is just plain awful. I could give you ( and already have given in other threads) a dozen of examples what FIFA does awfully wrong year in and out. Off the pitch it is much better than PES. But where are games decided? On or off the pitch?

[Battman]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

As for the ball, it remains tied to the players, its not its own entity with its own physics. There are no dipping, swerving, or knuckled shots. Passing, same deal. And that's just the physics.

How do you play long high balls into the gap in FIFA?
Either you press the high ball button and (with all aims off) the ball will be too long as it has no (back)spin (or the keeper goes 25 meters out and gets the ball before you can touch it. Because in FIFA even the worst keeper has Manuel Neuer-like skills.). Or you play a high through ball (triangle +L1) which is too slow and too high and therefore not usable as a real through ball. In PES you can actually play good high passes into the gap. FIFA improved the ball physics so that shootings feels better than ever before in this series. But PES still feels better.

[half-fast]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

When you go to pass/shoot the ball the position of your player matters not, the ball still goes where you want it to. Same with cutting and running. As for the ball, it remains tied to the players, its not its own entity with its own physics. There are no dipping, swerving, or knuckled shots. Passing, same deal. And that's just the physics. There are other issues as well on the pitch. Fouls are few and far between, :

I can see a lot of your points and agree, but the bit about shooting and passing is wrong. You can hit a varied amount of shots in PES, and they look great. I do like shooting in FIFA a little better, but passing ...... passing is better in PES hands down. Bent passes are my favourite, something I cant achieve very well in FIFA.

[xicpanad]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

OK I'll spell it out. There is no foot planting, no step based locomotion, no inertia. When you go to pass/shoot the ball the position of your player matters not, the ball still goes where you want it to. Same with cutting and running. As for the ball, it remains tied to the players, its not its own entity with its own physics. There are no dipping, swerving, or knuckled shots. Passing, same deal. And that's just the physics. There are other issues as well on the pitch. Fouls are few and far between, the CPU tends to dribble excessively when it's near the 18 yard box, on the defensive end the flanks are defended at the expense of the middle of the field, I can go on, but I won't I'm not going to troll the thread. My point is PES is not worthy of the review scores it's received. The reviewers and fan boys are looking at the game through rose colored glasses, why" I don't know, nostalgia I guess. PES does ONE thing well, ONE. We all know what that is. Maybe that can carry the day for some, and that's great, it doesn't do it for me. And with that, I am out.

Ah come on Orion. I understand what your saying but somethings seem to show you still haven´t got the hang of everything in the game.
I´ve seen lots of swerve in pretty much every shot I´ve done, and it´s quite contextual. Try to run in a direction full sprint and shoot the other. Usually shot does swerve. I wish I had saved a shot I made this morning. Ball was falling and as soon as she bounced the grass, my player shoots. It was a beautifull effect as the ball rised fast and described an amazing diping curve, totally beating the keeper but it went wide, with the keeper just staring.

There´s alot of variation and somethings take time to show up. Don´t mean to judge your opinion as I actually agree with some things you´ve said, but I also think that the bad things are making you forget the good ones.

[orion523]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

I can see a lot of your points and agree, but the bit about shooting and passing is wrong. You can hit a varied amount of shots in PES, and they look great. I do like shooting in FIFA a little better, but passing ...... passing is better in PES hands down. Bent passes are my favourite, something I cant achieve very well in FIFA.

Your not getting what I'm saying, the shots aren't physics based, so while there may be say knuckle shots in the game, they're random and have nothing to do with the way the ball was hit, just who hits it, and the dice roll.

[half-fast]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

Your not getting what I'm saying, the shots aren't physics based, so while there may be say knuckle shots in the game, they're random and have nothing to do with the way the ball was hit, just who hits it, and the dice roll.

You're right, I did miss the point - my apologies.

This could be true. How have you come to that conclusion - observation, reading the code? ...

Also, I'm not sure how much it matters when I see EA manipulating their physics to give the bounces they want. Until I see true physics without manipulation for difficulty adjustment, I only care what looks/plays the best.

[orion523]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

Ah come on Orion. I understand what your saying but somethings seem to show you still haven´t got the hang of everything in the game.
I´ve seen lots of swerve in pretty much every shot I´ve done, and it´s quite contextual. Try to run in a direction full sprint and shoot the other. Usually shot does swerve. I wish I had saved a shot I made this morning. Ball was falling and as soon as she bounced the grass, my player shoots. It was a beautifull effect as the ball rised fast and described an amazing diping curve, totally beating the keeper but it went wide, with the keeper just staring.

There´s alot of variation and somethings take time to show up. Don´t mean to judge your opinion as I actually agree with some things you´ve said, but I also think that the bad things are making you forget the good ones.

Read the comment above. And remember, I do like the game, it is great fun on the pitch, I don't and never did deny that.

[mjm76]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

I can see a lot of your points and agree, but the bit about shooting and passing is wrong. You can hit a varied amount of shots in PES, and they look great. I do like shooting in FIFA a little better, but passing ...... passing is better in PES hands down. Bent passes are my favourite, something I cant achieve very well in FIFA.

How do you do "Bent passes"?
I must have missed that in the help sections and training????
Thanks

[bjackets]

I can't play Fifa since playing PES. Outside of the Presentation, it is just plain stale. The player models have always seemed to small to me as well in Fifa. And the lack of control with the player you are controlling on defense is too pronounced. There aren't enough small movement animations on D which causes you to over run your angles to stay in front of your man. Now PES does have an issue with analog 8 directional control still being noticeable and there is the feeling of playing on these 8 rails. When you download the digital copy that feeling is hardly noticeable with the 2 teams you can play with while the download is completing, but for whatever reason it returns when the full game is finished downloading. I'm guessing this isn't what they intended. After playing Fifa that is the hardest part for me to accept. The other problem with Fifa and all EA sports games is that they basically program them all the same way. They use the same formula. All teams play the same but they just have different uniforms. Speed is always the most important attribute and none of the others have much impact. I think most people that like 2K, PES, etc enjoy them because an effort has been made to provide variety instead of the same canned coding that has gone on for years without any effort to provide more depth. Depth leads to variety which in turn gives the product longevity. I thought the review was on point. You aren't reviewing PES for fluff and conversely you aren't reviewing EA games for depth of gameplay. The companies have very different approaches to what they are trying to accomplish when making games.

[kashik]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

Speaking of the 8 directional control and the feeling on being on rails...

I don't actually feel the 8 directional control or your feeling that the intro game is diffeerent from the full game. I think what I'm feeling is more genuine, but can sometimes feel weird since Fifa is overly smooth. I begun to notice that the choppiness in the movement in PES seemed to correspond with foot placement and change of directions. Sometimes movements could be smooth, but other times jarring if the player was making a change of direction... Which I think is natural. if you think about your own movements as you dribble the ball, small movements to the sides can be smooth but change of directions or more drastic movements are not. Now I may be giving too much credit here, but so far I'm under this impression and quite like it as it seems natural.

As for the on rails feeling... Absolutely. Like when running to a through ball, loose ball, or holding x to close down on an attacker, the player is definitely locked in. To be fair, Fifa is very much the same way in through balls and loose balls. I would like to see this improved in both games... Maybe it could be an assist that could be turned down.

[xicpanad]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

Well I was a bit sceptic about this game but because I was playing the demo so many times, I bought it. At the beginning I played a couple friendlies and custom cups and started to think I did a bad choice, since I enjoyed fifa so much, and I was really immersed in its manager mode. But something kept me closer to PES everytime I wanted to play a soccer game.
Fifa´s replays are just so awesome at times, like real life, but feeling this PES in the midfield, passing short or long passes, its just amazing all the time. And the radomness of all things we do, its just almost overwhelming.

At first shots looked too easy and repetitive, but the more I play, the more variation I see. And also, people (me included) used to say on older PES´s, that buildups were varied, but only to realise it wasn´t after a good amount of games. But on this year´s edition, I have never, ever done the same play twice. Not because I don´t want to, but because the way the match flows simply makes me look for diferent chances in every minute. When we realise, we just had a match with lots of variation and totally diferent from the previous one. I´m really enjoying this one and getting the hang of it.

[nunogomes]

Re: In PES 2015, The Old Magic is Back on the Pitch (XB1/PS4 Review)

Your not getting what I'm saying, the shots aren't physics based, so while there may be say knuckle shots in the game, they're random and have nothing to do with the way the ball was hit, just who hits it, and the dice roll.

There is a special hability that some players have (C. Ronaldo for example) called Knucke Shot, and only these players can hit them consistently (if you time it correctly).

The ones who don´t have these special hability, have a much smaller time window AND the probability of the shot being well taken his much lower.