Slumberland wrote:Does the PSP version have a wider camera this year?
Assuming it's the same as the Euro release, yes it does. I don't think it's quite as wide as "wide" on the PS2, but it's much better than last year and been fine for me (and I always have played on wide).
Surprisingly, though, I'm still trying to come to terms with the gameplay. It's much speeded-up with super tackling defenders and a huge number of deflections.
BTW, I picked up the 360 version at EB. Zepp, let's get this league started! Might I suggest holding a "PES Night" once a week to help with the scheduling problems of the past?
Another thing- It seems as if the fully liscenced teams like Inter, Lyon, etc...look much better than the clubs like Liverpool (Mersyside Red) in terms of graphics.
Besides the obvious that there is more detail in the uniform, the colors seem crisper and perhaps even the player models are more detailed (not 100% on this yet).
In any case, the Lyon/Inter game I'm playing now looks a lot better than the Liverpool/Tottenham game I just finished.
My first impressions of the 360 version after a handful of matches. I did pick it up straight after a trip to the dentist, so I write this through a fog of pain and pain-killers. You might want to take it all with a grain of salt.
First off, I like it much better than the demo, and so far think I prefer the gameplay to that of both WE10-Japan and PES6 PSP.
I played two online matches, one against a random opponent and one against Zeppo. I won the first 3-1 as Brazil vs. England. It was a cracking match and could have gone either way if he didn't miss a bunch of sitters. Playing on wide all the while, I really didn't notice any significant slowdown, even on setpieces in the box.
As Villareal against Zepp's Barca, it really could have only gone one way as he completely dominated. Granted both Forlan and Riquelme missed golden opportunities, but statistically it wasn't even as close as the 2-0 result. It certainly didn't help that I had three men sent off FWIW, I did notice that with the Yellow Subs the default is to have the back line frequently play the offside trap. They were obviously doing this VERY frequently in our match, and the three reds were last man desparation tackles. Indeed, I thought the scorer of both Barca goals were offside (although I'm sure they weren't in reality).
You can edit player names and attributes, which is great. You can't edit any team or stadium info, as was expected. There also is no WE Store, so apparently you can't unlock anything. There is only one ball avaiable in friendly mode, but the full range selectable in ML mode.
Another annoying omission I hadn't seen mentioned is that there are no detailed post-match stats. Just the basic team stats. No player rankings of any sort nor the possession diagrams. In fact I couldn't even see how you could see a list of bookings.
I think the graphics have taken a bad rap, at least in 720p. In some respects I still prefer these to FIFA's, particularly the face models. It's also much easier to distinguish different players in the wide mode with PES than in FIFA. When my opponent subbed in Crouch his presence was unmistakable.
There was some slowdown in my second online match against Zepp, although not so much as to be unplayable. There is that annoying little pause every time the ball passes the end line that was introduced with WE10 Japan. Overall, though, it seems to be pretty smooth.
However animation glitches do seem to be pretty frequent. In the England-Brazil match Becks missed a sitter and lay on his back with his hands on his head. Two passing Brazilian defenders walked over him and he just slid along the pitch with them for a good 10 meters. Now that I can see replays it is pretty obvious that the CPU will head through your chest on 50-50 balls in the air.
Other things to note: there does seem to be player progression in ML mode (unlike the PSP version) but you aren't able to use a custom side (no doubt due to the lack of a team editor). There is also two divisions in the 360 version and three in the PSP.
In short, I think it's definitely worth it if you intend to play a lot of multiplayer. Zeppo's league should be good fun indeed. With real widescreen and high-res graphics, it beats the old Xbox version in emulation.
The appeal of single player does seem pretty limited, and there seems to be a lot of CPU cheating that just might drive one mad after a while. My first ML match was won by the CPU in the 91st minute, something I've seen far too often in WE10 Japan and PES6 PSP.
FifaInspected wrote:I'm hearing others say it's ok.. Man... There is no excuse for a poor framerate.
I'm keeping the wrapper on this until more feedback starts to trickle in.
I would take off the wrapper...Overall this game is still extremely addictive. I just lowered the difficulty level to normal (3rd out of 5 I believe) and had an amazing game where I beat Germany 3-1 with Argentina (payback). The goals were truly beautiful and the action was extremely entertaining.
I'll agree that the graphics are still pretty nice during gameplay. The pitch feels nice and smooth, unlike in the xbox version where you'd get a lot of choppiness in the textures.
Multiplayer will indeed be amazing as well. For single player, I'll probably stick with a Spanish team because of the licenses.
I could be wrong, but I don't think there's a way this time around to get out of starting Masters League in Division 2. Kind of a bummer.
When you say you saw some slowdowns in your match against Zep, were you refering to framerate or lag / connectivity issues.
... what was that about the CPU heading through your chest??? That sounds a bit troubling.
It's hard to tell, really. It seemed like a framerate issue but I didn't have any in my first online match - maybe it's a matter of which stadium you use.
I've long suspected that the CPU was winning balls in the air cheaply, and I seemingly caught them during one replay where the guys head passed through my back to head the ball. Maybe it was just replay goofiness and hopefully it's an isolated incident.
If you're on the fence I'd say go for it, definitely if you're going to play in a league. Even random matches on Live are pretty good, as the cheese potential seems much less in WE than in most titles. The gameplay is still mostly solid and don't let my bitching over little glitches stop you - my bar for PES is much higher than other games and it just annoys me when everything isn't perfect.
I've played a couple of games, including a couple online. The framerate is solid. I've seen some instances of slowdown, but the framerate from what I've seen so far is butter-smooth. The online play has been smooth as well. There is some weird slowdown as you prepare for a free kick, but other than that, there's so far no sign of the away-team lag we had in the Xbox version, which is great news to me. Also nice is that you screen settings and player settings carry over from offline to online, which is a nice little improvement.
What's not great news is that online games can only be 5, 10, or 15 minutes in length. Sort of sucks for the league, but what ya gonna do? Also, unlike the Xbox WE9, the game only seems to keep stats for ranked games, which is lame. I don't care about stats for bragging rights, but I enjoy looking at 'last 10 games' and such things. Oh well. Otherwise, online seems pretty much the same, except you select most game settings (like ET or PKs, pause length etc.) after you've accepted the challenge, not before. Threw me off mightily, but it's all still there. You can also choose the ball you want online, which means you can avoid the horrid balls that always seemed to be the ones randomly chosen in WE9.
Overall, I find the game to feel very slow, much slower than WE9 on Xbox was. This isn't a bad thing, per se, but sometimes the ball seems light-weight, and shots and passes lack zip. Some of this lack of zip may be a tweaking/balancing of tricks like the lofted through ball, but it seems players can't boot the ball as far as before. The slower pace, however, really opens up the ability to do individual moves, and especially online, wrong-foot defenders in a much more "I meant to do that" way than the John Lovtiz-style "yeah, I meant to do that, that's the ticket" style of randomness that happened a lot in WE9.
The game is definitley a 360 game, with 3d crowds and such, but as would be expected from a WE game, not the best looking game on the system. But the graphics are exceedingly functional. Like I said, the framerate is butter-smooth, and the recognizability of players is tremendous, even from the wide camera, from the way they move and their physical 'look,' like, are they stocky, or tall and slender, etc. The ball movement and ball physics are solid as well, despite the different feel the ball has from WE9.
I've seen some player interaction clipping, but I don't think it's new to the series or unexpected. Ball to player interaction is much tighter and cripser, with fewer phantom kicks (where the foot or the head would just not quite meet the ball) than before.
There's no doubt it is heavily stripped down. It does appear that while you can change player names, you can't change the jersey names. Only Konami could come up with that one! And I was stunned to find no training mode in the ML menu. Maybe it's in there somewhere, but I couldn't find it anywhere, and that pisses me off. Whatever.
As a whole, the gameplay seems as solid as ever. It's certainly not just a port of WE9 Xbox, and not just because of the slower play. A lot of things have been tweaked, and these may not be clearly discernable differences right away, but the differences are in there and do affect gameplay. For example, the mini-turbo that was the R-bumper seems to be gone entirely, and off-the-ball player jostling and falling over seems very different, but I'm not sure exactly what all is going on there. I don't know what's up with the 'play on' function, but it's definitely different, likely for the better, and I haven't yet figured out how to use the 'quick restart' but it's in there. I don't know if it's in online games, but one would think it should be. Of course, it's Konami here, so . . . .
My biggest adjustment is that the bumper buttons and triggers have been switched from the back-compat WE9; that is, where the R-trigger used to be turbo, now the R-bumper is turbo, and the R-trigger is what the R-bumper used to be. Same on the left side. I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough, but it's really fouling me up so far! Early crosses, lofted through balls, and so on, are a mess for me right now!
To sum up, I'm very happy with the gameplay, and very disappointed with the lack of features. But ultimately, WE has always been about gameplay, and not robust features, so while it would be nice to have all the bells and whistles, or at least the bells from the last version, or even multi-console multi-player, I remember all to well when WE wasn't available in NA, and so I'm very much looking forward to delving ever deeper into the controls and gameplay of this game.
Well the PS2 version is definitely more fluid. I just don't know why...you can tell they are running the same engine...it just feels better on the PS2. Granted, it looks better on the 360 though. If anyone is in need of the PS2 option file...it's on OS at the bottom of the page:
I've already loaded it and it works fine. If anyone needs it emailed because they don't go to OS or whatever, just hit me up and I'll get it to you.
Now if only they could get some option files for the 360...why the f*ck did they lock it down? I just don't get it. I would think they would make it EASIER to use option files so that they get the publicity of having EVERYTHING current rather than Fifa which has most of the licenses already.
Just wanted to let you know that you can change the bumper/trigger buttons to the way they've always been.
Yeah, I changed them back at first but am finding that I prefer the new system - takes a match or so to get used to.
Player edits don't appear on the jerseys? That is stunning beyond belief, even in the Konami parallel universe.
On the framerate issue - don't let this hold you back. I only saw some in that one match against Zepp and it was probably just lag. Even then it was far from unplayable - overall it's smoother than the past two or three years of WE. I still hate that little pause when it goes out, though.
I am VERY pleasantly surprised by the gameplay. I love the slower pace (as opposed to pinballesque PSP version), and the overall flow is just about perfect. After a few more matches I haven't noticed any more glaring collision problems, and overall am pretty happy.
Last edited by Blublub on Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
FabulousBastard wrote:
From reading it sounds really disappointing. Yet another sports title taking a step backwards in the name of 360 graphics.
You got that from my impressions post? Maybe I need to brush up my writing skills. . . .
Well not just yours...
But it did sound like you couldn't customize the controls (the rt bumper issue) and basically it sounded like a graphics upgrade, roster update, and some gameplay tweaks at the expense of many of the features I used in WE9. ML for one... more cheating AI is bad news. Also 20 minute games were what I enjoyed.
But maybe I should come at it form this perspective... I already have a WE game... so why upgrade? WE was never about graphics, or else we'd be playing Fifa. WE is about the gameplay, and on that I am pretty happy with WE9. Most teams and players are already not licensed, so what's the point in a roster update? And add to that the losing of features and I just don't see why I would shell out more than probably $10 or maybe 20 for this.
Blublub wrote:
Player edits don't appear on the jerseys? That is stunning beyond belief, even in the Konami parallel universe.
Don't have the game yet (will pick it up tomorrow most likely). This sounds odd though...in the past, they had separate entries for player name (displayed on the screen) and name on the jersey. Is it still that way? Or can you just change the menu name and not the jersey name?
dbdynsty25 wrote:Well the PS2 version is definitely more fluid. I just don't know why...you can tell they are running the same engine...it just feels better on the PS2. Granted, it looks better on the 360 though. If anyone is in need of the PS2 option file...it's on OS at the bottom of the page:
I've already loaded it and it works fine. If anyone needs it emailed because they don't go to OS or whatever, just hit me up and I'll get it to you.
Now if only they could get some option files for the 360...why the f*ck did they lock it down? I just don't get it. I would think they would make it EASIER to use option files so that they get the publicity of having EVERYTHING current rather than Fifa which has most of the licenses already.
So the on the pitch action is the same on both platforms ?
You cant even rename your masterleague club which is realy disappointing, there realy is quite a lot missing, i never realy new what until its not there.
Kinda leaving me with an empty feeling so far.
I got this today for the 360. I want my money back. 8 stadiums, stuttering frame rate (nice freeze when the ball hits the back of the net), s*** online interface (especially compared to last year's PS2 version), etc.
*sigh* Since I can't return it please feel free to kick my ass online (gamertag - DrMacca) - this is the first time I'm playing the game with the Xbox controller and I'm s*** (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).
Jared wrote:Don't have the game yet (will pick it up tomorrow most likely). This sounds odd though...in the past, they had separate entries for player name (displayed on the screen) and name on the jersey. Is it still that way? Or can you just change the menu name and not the jersey name?
It's completely different now - everything is accessed from one screen and there is no longer the option to set both the player and kit names separately. If what Zeppo said holds (I haven't checked it myself), then it must be hardcoded or something since Von Bronkhorst still has the correct name and the "Gio" on his Barca shirt (as he should).
I know I was responsible for a lot of the whining, but I have to say that I am delighted by the gameplay. After maybe ten matches, I am ready to admit that it plays the best human vs. human game in the series so far. Even stripped down and with a few little glitches, it is still twice the game that FIFA is, and $10 less - you really can't go wrong.
FWIW, I did notice that with the Yellow Subs the default is to have the back line frequently play the offside trap. They were obviously doing this VERY frequently in our match, and the three reds were last man desparation tackles. Indeed, I thought the scorer of both Barca goals were offside (although I'm sure they weren't in reality).
