Latest Playtest Impressions by Dougiedonut
Posted by dougiedonut in PES 2009 News on Sun 30 Aug 2009
OK, as promised, I’ve put together my impressions of the build we got to play. Here goes…
General Impressions
I felt the game was a little faster than when I got to play it a while back at around the 50% complete mark. This wasn’t a bad thing, as the pace of play was still relatively slower than pes2009. Personally I’d have liked it a tad slower, as earlier, but i’m probably being over picky there.
We were told that this version was the same one that has been seen by the WENB boys (Big shout out to Adam and Suff!), so it was around the 70% mark.
The general look and feel of the matches was very impressive. You instantly get the feel that this is PES. I don’t want to keep going on about the graphics, as you’ve probably heard enough from various sources about how stunning the game looks, but the game looks STUNNING!
PES players are not graphics whores by nature, but the facelift the visuals has really enhances the whole gaming experience.
Match day atmosphere feels very good. The crowd noises are great. We only played on a standard LCD screen with stereo speakers, so weren’t able to comment on surround sound capabilities of the game. As Francis mentioned, there is a noticeable difference in cheers when home/away teams score, but I think we haven’t benefitted from hearing it on surround sound properly.
Again I was expecting to be able to hear away players being booed, and other little nuances like that, but they weren’t present in this build.
Unfortunately contrary to what Francis reported, crowd chants are still present. I played as Liverpool, and could still hear the world famous (not!) “Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool” chant that Konami has incorporated. It wasn’t as prominent as in PES2009 audibly, but it’s there and is enough to make me shudder. I’m really hoping that Konami ditch crowd chants for specific teams and concentrate on crowd dynamics matching the action on the pitch, so fingers crossed Konami do this for us. The ability to import team chants would take care of individuals who prefer to hear them in my opinion.
In this playtest, my main focus was on gameplay, and not on the various modes of play. I had a very brief look at the master league mode, and this time round you will need to either read the manual, or pay attention to the on screen help to get you into action. Which is very refreshing and a very welcome challenge which I think many of us will enjoy. Master League now has the revamp that we’ve been screaming out for.
I played on both the PS3 and 360 versions of the game. There are currently differences between them graphically and possibly a little in the game play too. Currently the 360 version seems to have a bit more polish to it as Francis mentioned. I don’t want to start a flame war on which version is going to be better or anything like that. I fully expect both versions to be pretty much identical come launch.
360 control
Now that we have 360 control we need to understand what it is in PES. First I can clear up that the PS3 dpad has 16 way control and the 360 dpad has 8 way control. I’m being told this difference is due to hardware limitations and should not be attributed to Konami.
Anyway the left analogue sticks have full 360 control. What this means for the control system is that when you are not in control of the ball you have full control of how players move. This freedom may come as a shock to some people. Because we’ve been used to the players pretty much knowing where to expect the ball, automatically having total control of where you position players can be a bit of a shock. Some people may complain initially that the ball didn’t go straight to a player’s feet, or that they moved away from the ball when they were receiving a pass. These are the sorts of things you are going to have to learn to do, as you would in the real game. The game is less on rails, and the onus is on you to control your players and move them as you see fit.
Well, now everyone should expect to get reacquainted with how to play the game. Yes it does still feel familiar but be prepared for some new thrills and spills as you get to grips with how to play the beautiful game.
360 control does not mean you can pull off physically impossible movements from one angle to another.
It means that you have a fully subtle range of movements which you have in a normall physical fashion.
You now have to think about what your players body position is and how to move into another position naturally. For example whilst running forward you can’t suddenly change direction and start running in angles greater than 45 degrees with no change in pace.
As I’ve previously said you can’t run full pelt then change direction by 90 degrees as you currently can.
Players slow down when trying sharper turning on the ball. This means that you have to learn to slow down and speed up to make full use of your new found 360 degree movement. The faster you are, the harder it is to make sudden direction changes - obviously highly skilled dribblers will have an easier time of trying that less skilled players. Yes there is familiarity in feel and play, but there are enough differences to make you sit up and pay attention to what you’re doing in game.
Player movement animations have been considerably increased. You now get the feel that there are different types of players with more movement styles evident. The last two PES games have had a very robotic feel to them, with the same singular player animations in use. Now you have a few running styles which feel more natural. The stiff comedy running is no more.
Long balls
Another great change that I also found was that long balls were more satisfying to pull off. I generally don’t use long balls all that much in my own playing style because I tend to find them to hinder my game rather than enhance it. Long balls previously used to slow down play for my liking. But now I felt that they were more useful and helped keep the flow of my attacks more. The ball physics are better than ever, and have a very natural feel which means you feel more in control of the ball and what you choose to do with it.
Equally crossing from the wings is so much more satisfying since you now can practically pinpoint where you want the ball to go. I didn’t mess around with the types of crossing modes so it was in default mode, but there were times when my crosses went way over to a further area than I expected. But that was because I was expecting the usual semi auto crossing to take place where we generally know where the ball will go.
Shooting
Shooting also felt very satisfying. I felt like the players were really connecting with the ball.
Shots varied depending on body position so it was intuitive. Chipping has been fixed and I was instantly comfortable with them too. I scored a couple of great chipped goals, so thumbs up from me.
Goalkeepers
Unfortunately once again the keepers in the version we played did not allow you to choose which defender to kick the ball out to from goalkicks. The default first defender is still the only recipient of a short ball out.
Apparently you should be able to use the right analogue stick which is still the manual pass stick to take goal kicks and pass the ball to any player you see fit.
Keepers were ok I didn’t see any real dodgy clangers going in or anything like that.
The one new feature which was present which I think really opens up goal keeping was the ability to press the right analogue stick in to give you total control of the keeper. What this did was allow you to rush out at players in the area and give you more say in how you defend against an attack. Its a bold innovative system which works very well.
It will of course mean you will need to learn how and when to switch to manual control in play to stop
attacks, but ultimately you are rewarded with unprecedented richness should you be brave enough to try it.
One thing I should mention is that when you activate keeper control, you remain in control until you press the
right analogue stick back in again. If you don’t press in it again all your outfield players are CPU controlled.
So that could throw some people who expect the control outfield players automatically when the keeper plays the ball to anyone.
Odds and sods
Still present in this build were the old invisible barriers that we know and love to hate.
Again we were expecting these to not be present, but again it could just have been the feature wasn’t included in our build. Because of build differences I don’t want to be critical of the game.
Now that we have access to early dev builds of the game we must be careful to ensure we only report issues which we expected to have been dealt with and not moan about things which we are being told are being addressed. It is very easy to get into a state where this privilege that has been afforded to us by Konami could inadvertantly bring about bad publicity for them through basic miscommunication.
We are very keen to avoid this situation. I am expecting us to get to play at least one more build very soon. If the features are still missing at that advanced a stage, then I think we can begin to worry. But so far Konami have been true to their word in their dealings with us, and we respect that, and won’t do anything to misrepresent any information they afford us.
The trick stick still isn’t present as I had hoped. You still have to use R2( or RT on the 360) to trigger tricks with the left analogue stick/d pad. The right analogue still is still the manual pass stick. Again there have been mixed messages about this, so again it could be a feature that didn’t make the build played, so once again I ask you to reserve judgement on this for now. I will try to get the official position on this as soon as I can. So with the current implementation of tricks, being the same as pes2009, I felt a bit more comfortable with it, but given a choice, i’d ditch it.
Stadiums
There are 22 stadiums in all. The pitches have their own grass patterns, and look very lush.
They definitely are more pleasing to play on.
Summary
I left the playtest with a quiet confidence about PES2010. We’re well onto our way to getting a serious game that has bounced back. I am holding back from declaring my undying love for it, because we’re on the home straight, but the race isn’t over yet. It would be easy for Konami to start to wave to the crowds and even perhaps sign a few autographs, and offer self-congratulatory smiles to the crowds with the finish line in sight. But the big three sites which in my opinion are us guys at PESGaming, WENB and PESFan (in no particular order) will be continuing to provide feedback and request more out of Konami until the very last minute, because there are still small details to iron out.
I’m trying to think of negatives to point out, as I did with my previous playtest, but I can honestly say that there isn’t anything that sticks out that is fundamentally wrong with the game. We need to play a build that is closer to the finished product to categorically state whether the last few features that we want to see implemented are added (such as the invisible throw-in barriers, keeper goal kicks etc, as well as online play).
I’d like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to Konami for implementing 360 control in the game.
It’s absolutely amazing that after the complaints people made after the previous playtest, that Konami listened to what we wanted, and implemented a vital feature - and it works! It’s not a bodged implementation that partially works, but a proper new feature that they can be rightfully proud of. They listened to what we wanted to see in PES, so please do express your appreciation for the hard work Konami have put into adding features into the game at this late stage.
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