14 DAY TRIAL // There was a time when Pro Evolution Soccer ruled the football sim world and FIFA was just an underdog series that had too much marketing money and too few ideas about the core gameplay features it needed to introduce.
In the past few years, the EA Sports franchise has managed to overtake the series from Konami, but the publisher has been talking a good game about PES 2015, which at the moment has a demo version available on home consoles and the PC.
The actual gameplay included in the demo, in which I have played Bayern Munich against a variety of opposing teams ranging from Barcelona to Napoli, is pretty captivating and is different from what FIFA 15 has to offer at the moment.
Protecting the goal
On the defensive, in Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 it is important to get the first move right, standing off or sliding in, depending on the quality of the player who has the ball, and trying to keep the shape of the entire team so that there’s no space for first-time passes to exploit.
Referees seem a little too eager to deliver yellow cards and set pieces can be very dangerous, especially when the likes of Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo are involved.
Pace and long passes
When the team shifts to attack, I found that the best way to fool the defenders of the opponent team, almost regardless of their quality, was to start off slow, shift speeds and direction, and then deliver a long pass trying to reach an attacker in space, who can then deliver a shot on goal.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 can be used to create some impressive plays, but the title created by Konami also has moments when it feels ponderous and too cartoon like.
My first impression about the look of PES 2015 was that all the players on the pitch seemed somehow too short and that their feet were not properly aligned with the rest of their bodies, although that might be an illusion linked to the perspective offered by the in-game camera.
There’s plenty of detail delivered by the Fox Engine for the faces of the players, but the overall quality seems to be lower than that of the recently launched FIFA 15.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 will be launched in November of this year on the PC, the PlayStation 4 from Sony, the Xbox One from Microsoft and last-gen consoles.
From now until the release date, the development team at Konami might change some of the core mechanics shown in the video and the images attached to this article.
