Like every season, when the main football competitions draw to a close, Konami and EA begin to present their arsenal for the next campaign. The first to hit has been the Japanese, which has announced ‘ PES 2011′ for next fall on PC, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PSP and even on the fireproof PlayStation 2, the immortal console.
Once again, and aware that its product has been performing well below what it should for several years, the company has promised a large number of improvements with which it will try to recover the title of best football simulator. The main bet to achieve this is the concept that they have baptized as total freedom , a control bar in each player that will allow us to make passes or shots with maximum precision.
The actions carried out by the machine will be reduced, so that we have the maximum possible control of all the plays, making everything much more open but also much more demanding. To give you an idea of how far this philosophy will go, suffice it to say that the passes will no longer automatically go to the foot of the partner towards whom we are aiming, but we will have to orient the direction of the ball ourselves as precisely as possible. .
In addition, the level of resistance will now be much more decisive and demanding, because for example after performing a long sprint, the player we are controlling will lose precision when passing the ball or taking a shot. The defenders will also make it more difficult for us with an AI that will bet on covering gaps and closing the field rather than launching directly at the attacker.
We are therefore facing a very risky move, defined by its creators as “the most ambitious redesign of the entire saga” , and which apparently intends to take simulation to its maximum expression. The pace of the game will inevitably slow down, and braiding plays or finding spaces to sneak through will now be more complicated, making it generally more difficult to dominate matches . Hit or miss on Konami’s part? After the summer we will have the answer.
On a technical level, the novelty on which the most incidence has been made is in the animation section, one of the weakest points of the latest installments. More than a thousand new animations have been created from scratch, which combined with a new physics system will now make the movements of the footballers on the field more real and fluid. New mechanisms to determine strategies and an online mode for the Master League complete the news section.
As you have seen in the first published trailer, Messi will once again be the image of the title, but he will not be the only familiar face that is back, because Carlos Martínez and Maldini will be in charge of the comments again. Will they all get ‘Pro Evolution Soccer’ back to the place it deserves? I would like to believe so, but there have been so many years of disappointment now that I don’t put my hand on the fire for anything or anyone.
To finish, here I leave you with a gallery of images, all of them extracted from the video that you have already seen, but with a sufficient resolution so that you can see the unstoppable Barcelona striker up to his eyelashes:
See complete gallery »PES 2011 [May 2010] (7 photos)
Video | Youtube
