To see just how it can affect the experience as whole, load up the (improved and now utterly compulsive) Become A Legend mode. I can only presume that the issue stems from the new engine, and while it’s not a disaster – slick, one-touch passing moves are unaffected, because the command is queued and executed before the ball reaches the player – it sadly scuppers any claim new PES can have to the all-time top spot. Such a delay runs counter to the core PES experience – PES 2013’s passing is the best in any football game, and if it was the same here then 2015 would be untouchable. It’s not as bad as say, FIFA 97, where jabbing pass had all the immediate effect of sending a letter to the local council complaining about Ewoks – but it is a problem. The aforementioned agony, however, comes from the fact that PES’ passing – always one of the jewels in its stupid crown logo – now sometimes comes with a noticeable delay between pressing the button and the player actually releasing the ball.
#Pes 4 updated 2015 plus#
In two-player vs CPU games, where the space on the pitch plus the runs and abilities of your players can be exploited to its fullest, PES 2015 strides past FIFA and many of its own predecessors with ease. Goalkeeping animations also add to the goals you score, especially when you use their position and momentum against them.įrankly, all of this stuff is superb. Your attacking options are bolstered by good teammate AI, which frequently finds space without having to be told, and is made all the more satisfying thanks to defensive equivalents which aren’t totally braindead. Opposition strikers are too reliant on chipping the keeper should you move him out for one-on-ones, but on the whole it’s responsive, satisfying, and in some cases, utterly unpredictable, leading to realistically-deflected goals or jump-from-the sofa first-timers. Finishing can be deliriously satisfying, from bar-crunching long-rangers to goalkeeper fake-outs that Messi would be proud of. There are mechanics here that are potentially the best they’ve ever been. Chris Smalling, well, you get the picture. Van Persie’s quick turns and expansive takes tell you he’s lethal even with his back to goal. Ronaldo’s first touch and short, explosive, almost pecking strides tell you he’s a player to be reckoned with.
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Getting round players isn’t easy, but it is fair and clear in its rules, and crucially your on-screen avatars communicate their abilities within seconds of receiving the ball. Whereas that title has made strides in its dribbling – not just relying on the right stick anymore to beat a man, and seemingly reducing the size of opposition player’s hit boxes from Buckingham Palace to something more realistic – there’s still nothing to touch PES’ feeling of momentum and the importance it places on body shape. The engine as a whole is superior to FIFA in other ways. It doesn’t feel like you’re wrestling for control all the time anymore. The game in general is faster, more responsive, and simply more satisfying. Those problems have been largely mitigated here. The MGS-powering framework showed immense promise last year, and then buried it in a string of overly-elaborate animations which meant you spent more time watching players get in and out of body positions than the average porn director. Other changes are just as notable, not least to the previously rather lacklustre implementation of the Fox engine. Overall it’s much, much better, even if the tactics menu, which still uses the on screen cursor, is terrible and needs sorting ASAP. The menus are clear and easy to navigate, presumably due to the input of the western team. Some enhancements are immediately obvious, such as the revamped front end that now resembles EA’s slick tiles, as opposed to last year’s pointer-based exercise in slow suicide.
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If ever there was a time to reassert critical (if not commercial) superiority, it’s now. It is right to be confident, if not cocky: FIFA is stagnating, and vast improvements have been made by the teams from Japan and Windsor.
#Pes 4 updated 2015 series#
This is the first year in a long time that Konami seems to have supreme confidence in its product, a pomp not seen since the PS2 era (or the rather embarrassing PES ‘crown’ logo redesign incident of the late 2000s, notable for occurring when the series was utterly in the doldrums). That Konami’s latest misses its target, preventing it from being one of, if not the best, football games of all time, is just as agonising as that infamous extra-time blunder, and nearly as perplexing. PES 2015, like Gazza in Euro 96, is inches away from greatness.