A few weeks ago Konami over a couple of live streams at E3, revealed their first gameplay for the 22nd installment of the Pro Evolution Soccer series yet to be released in August 2018. The game looked so great and at just surface value, there are a lot of positives to be drawn and massive improvements from the 2018 version. This article will highlight some of these positives.
Realistic Pitch
Now for the number of years I've seen and known pes, they've never had a great pitch. With the acquisition of the Fox engine back in 2013, you'd have expected PES 2014 to have a realistic grass, which didn't. They did, however, improve in PES 2015 through to PES 2018, where the grass looked better but not close to realness. The playing turf looked like grass only in closeup or replays. This had had fans crying for change and it looks like Konami finally listened. The pitch looks completely amazing and even looks better than the pitch in FIFA 18/19. The grass blades cutting and bending as the player moves across the pitch and that's simply amazing. I had cried about this and I'm happy it's been fixed.
 |
| Look at that grass! |
 |
| Still looks great in normal screen |
 |
| To understand the improvement, this is PES 2018. So plain |
Konami promised to rework the lighting in their game and oh my God, that looks amazing. The sun rays and shadows look so realistic and true to life. In the picture below look at how the sun hits off Suarez's face and the shadow cast on his body, it's simply amazing. The lighting in PES I've always had a problem with. No difference in sunlight, no difference in times and so throughout the career you get bored. This is a major plus for the series and I hope that games could be scheduled at different specific times (like 12pm, 3p, 4pm, etc) instead of the static day or night options.
 |
| Reworked the lighting. Looks realistic |
 |
| This is PES 2018 |
Finally! Finally! PES has snow. It's been a problem for ages and I always looked for a mod or patch with snow but now those days are over. The snow in PES is simply amazing! The white patches on the rear ends of the pitch and little snowflakes falling on the pitch add to the realistic feel of the snow. It's also evident how the snow affected play, the ball skidding across the surface, misplaced passes, players easily drained, and that leads to my third point.
 |
| Snow in PES 2019 |
Fatigue
Now it's no hidden fact that fatigue had never affected player performance in PES. The stamina bar would be empty and players would still be running around the stadium the same way as the time of kick-off. This made the game feel less realistic and the master league didn't require you making changes in lineups and you can pretty much line up the same team for the 50+ games. PES 2019 is different from fatigue having an impact on play. I noticed that players with low stamina that were making runs stopped to complain of injury and had to be taken off. Players were making fewer runs and there were a lot of misplaced passes and this is great for the game. This will enhance making changes with the new quick sub-option. This option comes on every time the ball goes out of play or a foul. This will eliminate the long trip of having to press start, then changing the players from the game plan menu, affecting the flow of the game.
Shooting mechanism.
I remember a good friend of mine talking about how fantasy-esque the shooting felt like. It looked like everything would go in and that there was too much power for the shooting. From what I saw, Konami has added a bit more weight to the ball and decreased the high percentage in shooting on target. Player position as well as movement and posture all factor in how accurate the shot is. Thus, former PES players will find that not everything goes in and players would need to press the shot button in conducive situations.
I love what I've seen so far. It's a massive improvement and this is just a demo. This is just a sample of the improvements in the game. Gameplay has seen bits of changes, new cut scenes, a new scoreboard and several different, weird and fun celebrations. I really hope the celebrations in the actual game will be manual so that by pressing specific keys you can make your player do the desired celebration instead of the ones just assigned to a particular player. However, so far the game looks great. I can't wait to get my hands on it when it comes out in August (I'm not a fan of demos).
Will you try out the new PES when it comes out? I think you should, let me know in the comments your thoughts on these.
All pictures are screenshots taken from the first few gameplay videos from YouTube
Click here to watch the PES 2019 gameplay on their YouTube channel.
0 Comments