PES 2011 Final Build Hands on Impressions!

[Xavier]

I have been pestering the kind folk at Konami in the hope to play some sort of build of the game, when I arrived this morning I was informed by Steve it was final build!

Now if you want to know anything you don’t already about the menu’s then feel free to ask but I didn’t spend much time with them, instead choosing to goto an exhibition match, picking my beloved (but at this time beloathed) Merseyside Blue against Fat Sam’s team Lancashire.

First thing was the camera panning back and you will be pleased to know I wasn’t having any of the tracking issues I found during fast exchanges, the reason, it was on Wide cam, fear not, it is there!

Another thing that struck me immediately was the true 360 movement, it may have just been me not used to the PS3 pad for this game fully as I spend most of my gaming time with the Xbox pad, it was very difficult to stay in a straight line, I pointed this out straight away to Steve.

Secondly after passing the ball about there does not seem to be that remote control ball to foot curl I noticed at times in the beta, an almost artificial assistance that ensured short passes would find their man, short passes appear just like old with the added control of the power and angle should you wish to play the ball in space, passing seems less powered than the beta, you can easily underhit the pass and also what some considered to be an exploit which was to free the striker with one full powered pass down the centre never happened once, you can hit him but it was far less powerful on full power and the defenders were positioned correctly anyway.

The worrying issue was I won my first game very easily, breezing past players, AI standing off and could easily shoot from outside the box, I even scored a soft goal from outside the box with Cahill as my first goal, but I wasn’t impressed, the good thing though was that the difficulty was on Regular, so changed that right away, was going to show off and go straight to Top Player but decided against it as Professional (4 stars of old) always eased me in without letting me exploit it, the change was immediate the following game as long shots were charged down easily when I was not making space and they have a new urgency when attacking your goal, but I was still doing well enough to scrape by one goal advantages....

Decided to start a new Master League with Merseyside Blue, had a look at the default tactics, said I was a “Long Ball” team, I agreed and set to play with the default formation, was held to a scrappy 0-0 draw by Middlebrook, second game was away to Man United, took the lead with a Saha header from a corner and held my own, but they always score and they did again, then in the final minute Cahill headed in a cross from close range to get me the win, I know it sounds a little far fetched but bear in mind my new found optimism that I was awesome was chopped down when I failed to win any of the 3 following games, ah just like old times!