By Adam Smith on August 23rd, 2011 at 11:35 am.
Like a whisper on the breeze or a particularly quiet spectre, the foot-to-ball season has begun once more. Of course, the quiet clamour of millionaires hoofing calfpelts is often drowned out by more mundane matters such as collapsing regimes and a crumbling global economy. That’s a joke of course. The global economy has crumbled. It is constituted entirely of crumbs. But, to return to the point at hand, the silly season is upon us and not enough people are repeatedly telling you that. Konami shall be honouring this glorious occasion with the release of PES 2012. There will be demos available very soon. That’s right. Demos. Plural. Excited? Read on!
OK, so it’s two demos. The least amount of plural you can get. The first will be available tomorrow and is based on a preview build. Konami promise that the second demo, which is due mid-September, will reflect the final version’s feel and gameplay. One is tempted to suspect it will feel like engaging in a leisurely pursuit while firmly entrenched in a chair of your own choice. Whether you approve of this is entirely up to you.
So, what’s new? Some sportspersons have moved from one place to another. Konami will no doubt move them to those exact places in the game as well. There is also the promise of realistic ‘Active AI’. Presumably, this means balls will be more effectively shuttled around the court of play. There’s also a new ‘Teammate Control’ mechanism. That may be because the ‘Active AI’ is not quite good enough to control the team by itself. The demo shall no doubt reveal all. Although maybe not the first demo, which is unfinished and thus possibly flawed, but definitely the second one. Apparently.
Is anybody thrilled about this? Can PES regain the foot-to-ball crown from FIFA? And, more importantly, will Konami have programmed Rooney’s new hair correctly? The entire situation is heavy with import.
23/08/2011 at 11:39 luckystriker says:
This series is, and always will remain, a PS3 couch potato game to me. Let’s hope they’ve improved on the efforts of the last 2 years, however.
23/08/2011 at 12:08 AlonePlusEasyTarget says:
The advantage of PC version is of course the ability to mod and customise the game. You can add more leagues and put the kits, boots, fields even advertisement that are true-to life and all other licensed things. Plug your controller and CPU to your TV and bam! Best of both worlds.
23/08/2011 at 13:20 Mitchk says:
I think you can still download PES save files off the net and bung them on your console; I haven’t bought a PES since the PS2 days but a few pals of mine had it on 360 and I vaguely remember them having licensed kits and whatnot.
Either way I might just try it on PC if I decide to buy it, looking forward to trying the demo out. I’ve been a FIFA getter for a few years but this one has piqued my interest a bit!
24/08/2011 at 04:34 luckystriker says:
Mitchk is correct. Super easy to find custom content by dedicated modders in the form of option files to download.
23/08/2011 at 11:45 nubbuka says:
I didn’t read the article but the title just hit the fancy button.
23/08/2011 at 11:49 simonh says:
Staring eyes tag? Or maybe they’re not staring enough? I agree there’s been a bit of a staring eyes inflation lately, not worth as much as they used to be.
23/08/2011 at 12:07 Moni says:
I think they’re not quite staring enough, maybe a little maudlin though. There’s a slight hint that he’s regretting his life and maybe he should have become a doctor like his mother always wanted. Though, in a moment he’ll remember that he’s filthy rich.
23/08/2011 at 12:25 formivore says:
When I look at his head I keep seeing 2 heads pasted together. There’s some kind of weird lighting in his hair and chin and the left side of his face looks much broader than the right side. Its some kind of horrible optical illusion. Must stop looking.
23/08/2011 at 13:40 atticus says:
Must not, however, confuse this chap with famous foot-to-ball player Lionel Messi of Barcelona, famous from titles such as FIFA 2011.
This is Leonard Nesti, star of F.C. Catalania.
23/08/2011 at 15:27 banski83 says:
Staring dead eyes, no soul…
23/08/2011 at 12:04 chackosan says:
The ‘Be A Legend’ mode was where they were clearly superior to FIFA’s counterpart, and considering that they’ve replaced it with the yet-to-be-explained ‘Football Life’, I’m interested to see what they’re doing with that. If it’s like a big-budget version of the downtime in the NSS series, that’d be pretty good.
Shame that the demo will only be showcasing instant play, but at least I’ll get to see if that’s improved since last year.
Edit: Hang on, turns out there’s a smidgen of info about Football Life after all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hz207Jgu8c
23/08/2011 at 12:15 Teddy Leach says:
*Gruff movie advert voice* “First, there was PES. Now, there is 2012 of it.”
23/08/2011 at 12:23 Adam Smith says:
“In the grim darkness of the near future, there is only foot-to-ball.”
23/08/2011 at 12:53 Stijn says:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a foot meeting a ball—forever.”
23/08/2011 at 13:17 Lambchops says:
@ Adam
Own up, it was your answer to the “what do you think about foot-to-ball?” Question that got you the RPS writing gig wasn’t it?
23/08/2011 at 13:49 atticus says:
“In 2012, nobody’s safe… He’s angry, he’s fast, and he’s looking to score….”
And speaking of trailers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_MbaGC6NQY
23/08/2011 at 12:23 DiamondDog says:
I can’t quite believe that finally, with the help of modern technology, developers can accurately simulate feet meeting balls.
We live in amazing times.
23/08/2011 at 13:44 phenom_x8 says:
Active community with dozens of regular mod and community patches, isnt this more PC than any FIFA series or every other game?
And next month, my local PES community will held open tournament sponsored by Biostar, AMD and ASUS. So why everyone hate it? Is there not enough proof that this is considered as PC Game (except for the must use gamepad of course)? I love this series very much more than FIFA!
23/08/2011 at 13:51 Burning Man says:
This new Mr. Smith is rather silly. I approve.
23/08/2011 at 14:15 thesonglessbird says:
Well worth purchasing a PS3 pad to play this with and using the motioninjoy drivers to emulate a 360 controller.
Also, the game is frikkin’ awesome. The AI really is something else.
23/08/2011 at 14:57 undead dolphin hacker says:
Oh, you guys mean soccer.
24/08/2011 at 04:52 PoLLeNSKi says:
No we mean foot-to-ball or association football…ya know cuz it involves people kicking balls with their feet. The only people who call it soccer are those who live in a crazy land where ‘football’ is played with their hands – It’s a sport a little bit like rugby but made gentler with padding.
23/08/2011 at 15:19 Kleppy says:
I still want to know if this years FIFA 12 for PC isnt going to be a neutered version of the console game. No carreer mode EA? really?
23/08/2011 at 15:31 Stardog says:
The AI has been the worst part of PES for years now. FIFA is miles ahead in that regard. Your players in PES rarely make runs at the correct time, because it lacks the L1/LB functionality in FIFA where you can force them to run. I think “Teammate Control” is a step too far and it should just be a simple L1/LB press to make them run on their own.
23/08/2011 at 18:38 LaunchJC says:
Fairly certain PES had that first, I didn’t play the last one so maybe they removed it (?) but the PS2 era PES’ certainly had it.
23/08/2011 at 16:19 mkflin says:
top game that i like to playing them very much,welcome to http://goo.gl/bE88E ,there have more nice top games ,why not visit?
23/08/2011 at 17:21 Gotem says:
quickly, all feet to mkflin balls
23/08/2011 at 19:34 AN_D_K says:
It will be interesting to see if it will be available to download on Steam for a change (there are alternative game portals /bbc) …it felt really odd putting a disc into my machine to play a game and annoying having to carry it back and forth to work to play at lunch.
24/08/2011 at 11:55 Ross Angus says:
I came to the story for the foot-to-ball jokes. And I stayed, for the foot-to-ball jokes. Nice work, Smith. And threaders.