Often when talking about football games, you find yourself explaining how matches tend to pan out. About which areas the game focussed. Is this year’s PES about retaining possession? Neat interplay? Pace? Power? Through-balls? Wing-play?
The brilliant thing about PES 2016 is that it can be about all of those things and none of them. The football here is unpredictable and undefinable. Matches take on their own personality, depending on who is playing, both on the pitch and behind the controller. You are given enough control and room for expression that you don’t need to conform to best practice. Instead you need to play to your and your team’s strengths, negating the opponent’s and managing the tempo of a game.
If you are a less glamourous team with limited talents, maybe you’ll resort to long balls towards your hefty number nine, roughing it up in the midfield and disrupting the flow of more illustrious opposition. If you’re technically more gifted, you’ll stretch opponents with neat passing and dribbling to tire them out. It works both ways, if you’re up against an average team with a superstar winger, you can double up defence and cut off supply lines, crowd out loan strikers, or pack the defence against a fearsome forward line. Tactics and game management have never been as important in a football game and, whatever approach you take, PES 2016 is always a pleasure to play. Consistently surprising and constantly thrilling.
Explaining why it’s so good is tricky not because its mechanics aren’t transparent, quite the opposite, but because PES is made up of dozens of technical triumphs. Nothing so exciting it can go on the back of the box, but a cumulative effort that makes everything tick on the pitch. If you have to zone in on anything specific, though, it is the physics and AI. Everything feels entirely independent and dynamic. A potentially risky strategy given that open-ended physics can often result in comical, head-over-heels disasters, but here it feels natural and ‘correct’.
Jostling for the ball is as much about positioning yourself as it is about timing your button presses, with players able to shuffle away from minimal contact. The ball, meanwhile, bobbles convincingly off knees and ankles when players come together. You need to be smart about charging into challenges as you have no idea where that ball could end up if you’re simply clattering into an opponent. Instead it’s about watching and manoeuvring, waiting for a heavy touch and moving your body in to nick the ball away clean.
It’s not just in the midfield scraps either. Shots can cannon anywhere, even if it’s smacking off the bar and then in off the back of the keeper’s head. Passes need to be shaped and considered. Crosses can cause chaos, with defenders able to nudge forwards trying to attack the ball to knock them off balance, but attackers free to move into open space. There are no elastic bands tying markers to your striker, or gravitational pull towards the goalkeeper. And if there is any sneaky automation in place to balance out attack and defence, it is brilliantly obfuscated.
The feeling, then, is one of complete control mixed with the clobbering chaos of football itself. You can’t account for unlucky bounces, but everything else feels under your influence, aided by a simple control system. The input delay on some passes from last year’s game has also been eradicated. This gives an excellent sense of moment-to-moment rhythm, with each individual battle having its own character. This is bolstered by players’ having their own identity. While PES Productions puts the expected focus on superstars playing like their real-life counterparts (football fans will recognise Arjen Robben’s spring-heeled zip or Cristiano Ronaldo’s preening lope from a mile off), the individuality extends to each player’s skill-set. You have to consider what type of player you are using or facing up to across the whole pitch. You know you’re unlikely to win an aerial duel or battle of strength with Vincent Kompany, but maybe you can take advantage of his average pace and tendency to step up early to nip the ball around him. Players like Ronaldo, Messi and Neymar seem to have the ball surgically attached to their feet which, like in reality, make them almost unplayable. But you need to figure them out as best you can, doubling-up and even dabbling in the dark arts of tactical fouling.
So At least , if you wanna spend some bucks for PES , better buy FIFA ! Why ? You will read in the next post
So At least , if you wanna spend some bucks for PES , better buy FIFA ! Why ? You will read in the next post
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