Now, I’ll try my best to remain impartial, but seeing as I’ve been a FIFA player for the past few years, it would only be human nature to compare PES2014 with FIFA. I apologise if I hark back to EA Sports’ finest throughout, but I’ll try my best to limit the amount of times I mention the F word.
That said, there’s more than one F word in the English language. My favourite for summing up this game as it currently stands is a lovely 6 letter one. One that begins with F, ends with a D and has a U,C,K and E somewhere in between. I’ll let you rearrange and work out the word I mean, but once you have, feel free to apply it to PES and it’s online mode, as that’s about how good it is.
Yes, that’s the word. Or in nicer terms, it’s knackered!
In this day and age, a football game NEEDS an online mode. Tell me how many times over the years you have wanted to play a single player game on either PES or FIFA instead of an online match? If you’re given the choice between the two, the online thang will normally prevail. But if you go out and buy yourself a copy of PES 2014, then it’s going to be the single player you get to look at. That’s not to say there isn’t an online mode, there is, but getting it to work is nigh on impossible. I’ve held off on this review for a few days in the hope that Konami would be able to get their arses in gear, but as at time of writing, there looks to be no real fix (or at least one that doesn’t work for any more than a very small minority of players). My last attempt ended after trying to download a data patch, a data patch that hung after almost 2 hours of sitting around waiting. In that time, it didn’t even manage to grab 40% of the download. There has been a statement direct from Konami saying that they are working hard to solve the issues and are ‘currently in discussions with Microsoft in an attempt to fix it’, but god knows when that will be. Maybe in time for PES 2015?
But anyways, let’s put the multiplayer side of things to one side (and in the bin preferably), to see how the single player game holds up?
We all know that the majority of official licenses have been snapped up by FIFA, but PES lovingly brings us the greatest club competition in the world, The Europa League. Oh, and this small thing called the Champions League as well! Throw in the COPA Libertadores, and the Asian Champs League and you should be able to find enough real world stuff to keep you happy. Without these, I feel PES would be on a hiding to nothing as no one in their right mind would pick it over the licenced stuff.
There are also the usual PES classics in the form of exhibition one-off matches and full cup and league systems. You know the drill with these, so I feel there’s very little need to go into detail with them.
To roll alongside them, we have the Become a Legend mode, and what PES is possibly best known for, Master League. I’d personally never heard of an Online Master League but one is now with us, or at least it would be if that poxy online issue didn’t arise. With these options, you are given the chance to see the world through the eyes of both manager and player, and things seem to work very nicely, even if, yet again, they don’t match up to FIFA!
As for the football itself, well I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The ball rolls well, the players move nicely and shooting is, well, shooting. The overall gameplay is very much on the side of ‘slow and steady’, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing to have. FIFA seems to have gone that way a bit more than usual, and PES takes it to another level. It’s not ‘too slow’ but your attacks do need to have a little bit of thought about them. Close player control and dribbling is well crafted, but there doesn’t seem to be many flicks and tricks to beat the opponent with and so it’s all about the passing instead!
Tackling is a dying art in the world of football, and that thought is taken over into the virtual world with some ridiculously overzealous refs. In my first game, I’d had a player sent off within 20 minutes, and the a number of others yellow carded before the end of the game. The second game didn’t go much better but I did at least manage to hold it to 11v11! After that, once I’d realised that diving in really doesn’t work in this game, I could begin to fashion some tactics that would work. (Best not name them though, I want some easy wins if the online ever gets fixed!).
So what else other than the crappy online is there to not like? Well, unless you have the game installed to your hard drive, the loading screens are atrociously long. There is also a lot of video juddering in any cut scenes, almost enough to make you feel ill in fact, and whilst the big name players resemble their real world counterparts well, any lip movement whilst they are ‘singing’ the national anthem is an absolute joke. I guess that would be the least of their worries though as anyone who isn’t ‘world class’ just look weird! You can also throw in some boring repetitive commentary to the dislike list if you want.
We are also treated to Konami’s favourite menu system. Whilst this would be fine ‘back in the day’ (PES5 perhaps!), the simple, bland menus do nothing to enhance your Pro Evo experience, especially now that their adversary has put plenty of effort into improving theirs.
It’s not all bad you know, the football itself is pretty enjoyable and you still have the option of editing absolutely everything if you so wish. Granted, it’s still not a patch on FIFA14 and, if this were the only football game out this year, then I’d tell you to go buy a second hand FIFA13. If that wasn’t available, then you’d be best off with FIFA12. If again that wasn’t an option, then PES 2014 would perhaps be a viable option for any footballing gamer, but as it stands, the latest three FIFAs are still way ahead of Konamis offering. It’s like pitting Barnsley up against Barcelona and because of the online issues, I can't rate it any high than purely average.
Even the inclusion of the Champions League music can’t save 2014!
But hey, maybe next year.
On next gen.
I’m worried already.
