REVIEW

PES 2017 Review

by Ford James, September 27th, 2016

Since the turn of the millennium, there have been two major football games on the market. EA Sports’ FIFA, with officially licensed teams and players and the backing of most major football organisations, and Pro Evolution Soccer by Konami, with often ambiguous team names like the infamous Man Red instead of Manchester United, or last year’s English champions, East Midlands. Gameplay aside, the lack of licensing has always been PES’ downfall, especially in the U.K as they haven’t struggled as much over the years for official names overseas.

This year, Konami have attempted to amend this. Official partnerships with Liverpool, Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona along with official licenses for Arsenal means outside of the Premier League and Bundesliga, Juventus and Real Madrid are the only unlicensed teams in the top five leagues. Unfortunately, EA have an exclusive deal with Juve, Real and Man Utd so until that expires, there’s not a lot Konami can do. Most player names haven’t been affected at all, so the days of Dwayne Booney and Ryan Greggs are long gone.

All is not lost for the unlicensed teams either – even though they’re not in the base game, it’s a fairly simple process to download user created mods that replace the unofficial content with the correct crests, stadiums and names. And that applies to console players too, simply requiring the use of a USB stick to transfer. The problem with this is that it’s still a clunky workaround compared to FIFA having everything ready to go, and the stereotypical audience for football games will likely not be bothered enough to go to all the effort.

Each iteration of football game, whether it be PES or FIFA, has always had at least one key concept it’s struggled with. FIFA 12? Finesse shots were an automatic goal from the edge of the box. PES 2016? Referees were too lenient and goalkeepers were underwhelming. FIFA 16? Scoring from a cross or corner was far too difficult. You get the gist. There’s two issues with this year’s PES: winning offensive headers and scoring from them is far too easy, and players are very reluctant to effectively clear the ball when it’s deep in your own half.

Tall strikers and pacey wingers with good crossing are one sure fire way to score plenty of goals in this iteration. Especially in MyClub mode, which is where you start with a team of default players and gradually unlock more, having to balance the team spirit, apply training buffs and renew their contracts – Konami’s version of FIFA’s ever popular Ultimate Team mode. If you get a player like Ibrahimovic up front, he’ll be able to bang headers wherever you please like he’s got an aim bot. It’s expected that someone like Ibra would be good in the air, but with how easy it is, it means that players who aren’t famed for their heading prowess like Messi and Neymar rarely struggle either. I never thought I’d see the day where Messi could be an effective target man.

Football has some very obvious danger situations, like when the ball has fallen in your box and here’s only one defender back. You’d expect him to try and get the ball downfield, but also to a teammate, right? Apparently the players in PES don’t think so. You can clear the ball with the shoot button in your own half, although it rarely goes where you want it to and will often end up off the pitch, or you can hold down the lob pass button which is more logical. The issue there is if you try to lob pass it out, the player will take an extra touch nearly every time. In those dire situations, that often ends up with you conceding as simply holding X/A is a reliable way to pressure players and tackle successfully with little precision required.

PES holds your hand a lot less than its licensed competitor, which can be both a detriment and a positive. The learning curve is steeper, so for the first few hours of gameplay you’ll struggle if you’ve made the switch from FIFA. You’re able to change the control scheme so it feels more familiar, but with how easy it is to commit fouls and the often rocket powered long shots compared to the speed of FIFA’s, PES truly does feel like it envisions football in a different way. And that’s true no matter who you shoot with; it’s incredibly easy to absolutely blast the ball goal-wards, although it rarely goes in from such range.

Interestingly, the higher rated players don’t feel as strong as they should. My MyClub team consists of Messi at RW, Neymar at LW and Adrian Ramos from Dortmund up front but I’ve managed to whip in better crosses with lower rated players like my 64 default RB than I often have with Messi. Some of my better efforts at goal have come when the ball has fallen to a lurking midfielder or full back outside the box after a corner, and I’ve definitely executed some phenomenal through balls with players not renowned for their passing prowess. The only players that seem to be representative of their stats are Pique and Chiellini at CB; they’re absolute rocks in defence, just like you’d expect.

You’re given a lot more options on the fly to change your tactics. FIFA has the standard scale from Park the Bus to All Out Attack, but PES allows you to customise the presets to things like Tiki-Taka, which employs a system of quick one-two passes, retaining possession to move the ball fluidly up the pitch. Gegenpress is another option which means when you lose possession, multiple players will put pressure on the player with the ball. It demands a lot of stamina but can be used effectively to make the other team panic and make mistakes. It’s still nothing compared to the slew of options in Football Manager, but it’s more than we’ve seen before and they work surprisingly well.

The majority of the time I’ve spent with the game has been online play in MyClubs mode and it frustrates me to say that online play is very unstable as of the end of September. At least half of the games I’ve played have been plagued with stuttering and lag issues, which severely affects response times from the players. Since the majority of players buy sports games on consoles for the online functionality, it’s inexcusable in this day and age.

Graphically, it’s a huge step up from any previous PES game. A lot of the more well-known players look almost identical to their real life counterparts, with David de Gea and Andreas Iniesta being two of the best. Replays look fantastic, with motion blur effects applied very well while the opening cinematics look gorgeous, with impressive stadiums. The most notable one is the pixel perfect Camp Nou, given the official partnership with Barcelona.

Peter Drury and Jim Beglin provide commentary for every match but absolutely pale in comparison to FIFA’s more esteemed commentary line up. The quick shift from drab run of the mill commentary to over excited shouting is off putting at best – whenever there’s a shot, the commentary could be likened to the South American trait of screaming “GOLLLLLASSSSOOOOOOOO!”, as they tend to do. There’s also next to no facts mentioned about the players, how the team is doing, no mention of player’s birthdays or anything along those lines; all aspects that make the commentary in EA Sports’ edition of the sport more natural.

Navigating the menus has had next to no change since the first entrants to the series, looking like they’ve been lifted straight out of the early 21^st century. Impressively though, they have an expensive soundtrack with songs from artists such as Justin Bieber, Major Lazer and Miike Snow; something I’d have expected FIFA to display with pride rather than Konami’s unofficial counterpart. That isn’t to say PES’ soundtrack is better, as I’ve discovered a lot of phenomenal tracks through FIFA’s soundtrack over the years, but PES definitely has the more popular songs this time around.

The multitude of tactical options and more fluid gameplay makes this instalment in the series the best PES yet, but only time will tell if it’s superior to FIFA 17. Keep your eyes peeled for our FIFA 17 review over the next few weeks, as it’s undeniably a far closer competition than it’s been as of late.