I've spent 4 hours of 2 player gaming, and that are my impressions:
MOVEMENT:
- We have recovered freedom of movement. Something no one has commented is that Supercancel is sweet as silk again, as it was in pes4. At last!
- No auto.sidestep also helps regain freedom of movement.
- Very responsive controls. All in all, really good movement control, that's just brilliant. Reactions of the players are impressive. I even managed to save a bouncing ball of the sideline with puyol, something impossible in we9.
GAMEPLAY HAVING POSSESSION
- Attacking is flashy, smooth and rewarding. Lots of movements to do and attackigng possibilities.
- You have to really control passing and crossing. I didn't like the easy crosses of previous versions. It was too easy to just cross the ball to the head of an attacker regardless of the position and skill of the player that was crossing. Try to cross with thuram at full sprint and see where the ball goes.
- Shooting has been downgraded. I still don't know if i love it or not, but definitely don't hate it.
- Throw-ins are bad as usual.
- A lot of deflections and collisions that now seem more realistic. I love when there are crowded plays in the area and the ball just don't go straight to the feet of players. Also, I managed to score one goal thanks to a deflection in a very realistic way.
- High through passing is far better than before, and not as easy as in pes4. It's possible to use it in short spaces just to save the defenders and let your striker free to score, but you have to time it properly.
- Long passes are better, but you need some skill to put the ball where you want and do harm with them.
- Through passes are good, but I don't know if they are too easy to do. I play Barcelona and it seemed easy, but will try it with worst teams later.
- The gameplay is very fluid, players fall and stand up quickly, a lot of new animations that are good.
- The sense of pace and acceleration in the game is very good. You now really feel Ronaldinho changing pace and destroying Sergio Ramos's hip (it's almost as if I heard his bones cracking).
GOALIES
- Really the goalies don't parry most of the shots. I don't fin it irritating. It's just that in real life they parry less shots than in previous versions. If they were able to parry 80% of the shots in WE9, now they only parry 50%, and I think 65-70 would have been better. So, they're not perfect, but they weren't in WE9 and I prefer it as it is right now, it makes the game more fluid and realistic even if sometimes easy shots are not blocked. And now they have very good one-handed animations!
DEFFENSIVE GAMEPLAY
- Now the really bad thing by now. I don't know if it's just getting used to it (I guess it will be that) but defending seems very hard. In 2 player matches, I managed to crush my opponent 6-0, 7-2, 4-2 easily. It's a lot of goals and worst of all, it's nearly impossible to defend 1 vs 1 in front of a skillful player. I was with puyol standing just in front of del piero and pressin X and del piero just passed through. That tends to happen a lot. I managed to score maradona goals with messi dribbling all the juventus players in front of him. I'm just worried about it, it made the matches feel a bit like fifa. I mean, when you dribble an opponent, it's realistic, but a lot of times your striker just passes through defenders, even if they were in the right position and tackled you. In fact, I drove mad my opponent with messi and ronaldinho just passing through everybody.
- Pression is now more effective. In we9 if you pressed square your player would do a foul or just push, almost never gaining possession. Now you can move a defender to close the space and gain the ball with another with pression. That's the way it was meant to be from the beggining, so it's good.
REFEREE
- Veeeeeery good!!! A good step forward!
SOUND
- It has improved only a little, so not very very good. But I heard 2 things that I liked a lot. When I recovered a ball in defense, my spectators gave me an applause! I like it a lot, they were rewarding my deffensive effort! I had never heard this before. Plus, I missed a pass and they were like "oooooh". I liked it also. But there's passion lacking all the time.
OPTIONS
- They're in japanese!!!!
STATS
- As I played barcelona all the time, I must only reckon: Barcelona is great at last. Key players have been given key stats.
- Messi, the man I will marry, is really good (I would prefer him to be a woman, but nobody is perfect).
MUSIC
- The first thing we do in the game is switching music off, so... why do they bother to put it on?
FINAL CONCLUSION
- If I manage to learn how to defend properly, I'll take my hat off. Brilliant final game on the ps2. If only they had developed a little the ml...
That's my two (hundred) cents by now. Happy gaming!
