Fifa 11 or Pro Evolution Soccer 2011

[El Unicornio, mang]

PES feels like a football match

Albeit with fake teams.

Fifa is plenty challenging on World Class (haven't even attempted Legendary), passing seems natural and I'm often intercepted or passes go wide of the mark.

[MALCOLM]

Fair points, I've only ever tried FIFA on the middle level, I'll try it on tough

It's just they do it by asking "how good are you?" and I'm not very good

[Slaaaaabs]

It's just they do it by asking "how good are you?" and I'm not very good

Yeah I don't like that at all, it detected that I had played FIFA 10 but still stuck me with Semi-Pro difficulty and all automatic, when the lowest I ever played FIFA 10 was Pro. People are going to know to have a look through the options if it is too tough for them.

[Bennygaylord]

FU4FIFAOREL3E

[Viero_Berlotti]

Any other PS3 owners finding a few bugs with FIFA 11? My arena player keeps turning invisible when the game exits the end of a match and goes back to the arena, but more annoyingly I paused the game near the end of a thrilling 0-0 draw last night to make a substitution only for the game to lock up and crash.

The framerate seems a bit shit as well, not in the game but in replays and cut-scenes and the like, it has really crappy jerky camera movements too.

It just doesn't seem as polished an experience as I'd expected.

Had some exciting games though, but the jury is still out on this one for me.

[chand]

Any other PS3 owners finding a few bugs with FIFA 11? My arena player keeps turning invisible when the game exits the end of a match and goes back to the arena, but more annoyingly I paused the game near the end of a thrilling 0-0 draw last night to make a substitution only for the game to lock up and crash.

Seen a few folks reporting this; I've had my arena player disappear but thankfully no crashes yet. The second time I booted the game it also told me it couldn't find my Online Pass data, not that I particularly give a shit.

I'm not really feeling it; I played the PES demo a lot, and while this is a decent game it just feels like FIFA 10.1 to me. It seems to take fucking forever to load and in-game the passing doesn't feel that satisfying, and through balls seem largely useless. At least they seem to have fixed the inexplicable disappearing radar from last time; I don't think they understood the point of the radar and just had it fade out seemingly whenever it fucking felt like it.

[MALCOLM]

Ok played both now, and stand by my original assessment. FIFA too arcadey, PES feels like a real match. Every move is different, there's more freedom to what you can do and how you can try to unlock the opposition. FIFA just feels like I'm playing the same series of passes every move.

Also, you can actually time a sliding tackle. With FIFA, it's a lottery, but with PES you can run alongside an attacker, wait for the ball to be just far enough out of his control and instinctively execute a perfect sliding tackle. It also looks a lot better to my eyes, just the lighting and sharpness of the players is better than FIFA. This is all on PC at 1080P BTW. Well, 1200P really.

PES 2011 is awesome, the lack of real names is no bother and is usually patched out by the PC modding community anyway.

Buy it.

[buntyman]

I've given it pretty much a full day's play today and it's quite fun but I think I have to agree with MALCOLM. It's very hard to get a good flow of passing, especially with chipped passes and the through balls are very difficult to judge the weight of. I also am finding it very difficult to retain possession with sharp turns like I used to be able to do successfully on PES.
I'm now kind of regretting succumbing to the hype and forking out £35 quid to get it on the release day and, having applied my online code, It's probably halved in value now.
Although PES 11 has mainly fake teams, I'm pleased to read that Spurs are one of only two licensed premier league teams so it won't bother me as much as it might others.
Anyway, I'm keen to get my money's worth on FIFA so if any of you fancy a fixture, i'm on Xbox as JiggerOuzo and would be delighted to play you.

[El Unicornio, mang]

The patch which makes all the PES teams and players real is out:
http://www.mysoccerpatch.com/pes-2011-pc/pes-2011-pc-pesedit-patch-0.1.html
Well worth downloading

I played PES 2011 last night, and it's good but the commentary is still ropey (not just what they're saying but the audio quality), there's only a couple of Premier league stadiums, and the graphics seem a bit jerky. Also the opposition seemed to spend a lot of time just faffing about. Fifa is a bit smoother I find (on PC anyway). I'm going to wait for a Fifa patch before continuing though because not having day games in manager mode is bugging me.

PES has more depth in terms of stuff you can fiddle with, but as far as on the pitch gameplay goes I don't think it's any better than Fifa. I'd say they're probably equal as an overall package, but for my personal preferences Fifa edges it.

[chumfatty]

Anyway, I'm keen to get my money's worth on FIFA so if any of you fancy a fixture, i'm on Xbox as JiggerOuzo and would be delighted to play you.

.... and prepare to be hustled, the old 'Oh, I'm not very good at FIFA' soon turned into a 4 - 0 drubbing of my beloved Aston Villa.

Seriously though I am struggling with this incarnation of FIFA, but I think I always struggle early on with a new  FIFA until I naturally adapt my playing style. I've taken to dropping the difficulty level down to Semi-Pro and changing the passing setting from Assisted to Semi which allows me to be a bit more creative rather playing pinball passes around the pitch that go nowhere. But still the AI fucks it up at the most crucial point and that subtle lay off to a winger turns into a pass to the fullbacks. Maybe when I get used to it I can move to manual passing. This is the good thing about the pass setting in this game, whatever type of game you're after you can achieve by adjusting the setting to suit an arcadey style or simulation and tailor it to your skill level.

I like the physical aspect of it as the CPU will fight harder for possession, but it fucking irritates me when most 50-50s seem to be won by the CPU as either their player gets on their feet faster or the bounce of the ball ends in their favour, but maybe thats just because I'm still trying to get used to the game.

They've improved the animations and the way players deal with incoming balls, chesting the ball on the run or trying to pluck a ball out of the air with their feet all make it run more fluidly. The manager mode seems better as well, with games in the season being re-arranged so you don't have to play a league match on a Saturday then have a cup match on the Sunday.

Overall it's a slightly better version than the last, make it too perfect and it becomes harder to top it for next years market. But I was still playing FIFA 10 the day before FIFA 11s release so I tend to get my money's worth out of it so don't mind spending the cash every year.

[Mr Colossal]

I wont believe anybody because for the past two years everybody has been waxing on how the new fifas have put the new pro evo to shame, so I was eager to give them a crack, but it was like some kind of bad joke.  I found both the next gen PES and FIFA's so bad as to be almost unplayable.  PES seemed to have massive issues in the 'player on rails' factor only this time it seemed as if the ball physics had been programmed incorrectly so that the computer thought the ball was the size of a marble- so players would routinely run straight past a stray ball and not gain control and it felt like you couldnt execute a block tackle unless you were on the EXACT blade of grass they were standing on, and fifa just felt like some weightless game of blow football, and just found both embarrassingly half-assed efforts with too many flaws to make playing on them pleasurable- so I found myself diverting to things like fight night and street fighter for 2 player action instead.  Haven't played on either of this years incarnations yet, but I hope they actually FEEL different in terms of game engine and player/ ball physics instead of just giving last years offerings a new seasons facelift.

[ThickAndCreamy]

I've been playing Pro Evolution 6 since release on PS2. I played it for about 3 hours with a mate and a lot of alcohol a little while back and it still does the job perfectly, I can't be bothered to buy an update of such linear games every year when the differences rarely make me feel it's worth it. I don't care about up to date players either.

[El Unicornio, mang]

That's something I'm really fussy about. I have to have the rosters exactly as they are in real life, even if it takes me ages to mess about with them. Same thing with kits, etc. It's kind of silly but I just can't enjoy it otherwise

[ThickAndCreamy]

I think I did spend about 5 or so hours on Pro Evo 4 or 5 changing the name of every single player in the game so they were all completely correct, even the obscure teams whose players I had never heard of. Eventually I just came to realise it's meaningless for me, it doesn't add anything at all to the game but a graphical / perfectionist sheen. Same with the shirts and so forth... it's only branding after all. I don't want to buy Fifa because it has more accurate advertising, that's just a depressing thought.

[chand]

It doesn't really bother me; the illusion of realism is shattered pretty early on in a league anyway when your rivals start buying players they'd never have in real life. I'll end up playing whichever game feels the most enjoyable to play. FIFA 11 may have all the kits, but it doesn't really matter when you're playing Bolton, they've got Daniele de Rossi in midfield and they're playing in what appears to be their filled-to-capacity 80,000 seater stadium. Plus the player models are all over the place.

[Bennygaylord]

Scotland centric post here.

Ok, so I won the league with the glorious Glasgow Celtic. Next season, I expect some European ties, but no. There don't appear to be any (even qualifiers) on my calander. What the shit? When I started my league, there were no qualifiers for the Europa Leauge but I figured maybe the game was SUPER realistic (Celtic were out of Europe by late August).

Another issue, bigger players keep rejecting me because of the prestige of the league. Obviously Ronaldo is going to balk at the notion of a wet wednesday in Inverness but is there anything my team can do to improve the league's prestige? Or am I fucked?

[Viero_Berlotti]

I don't really play through league seasons on FIFA games so I might be wrong but I don't think it has the rights to the Champions League, hence it's omission from the game. That shouldn't stop EA adding some kind of generic European competition though, considering the game has an option to create tournaments anyway.

I'm pretty sure PES has the rights the the Champions League, I know the last one I played, PES 2009 did.

[spanky]

EA doesn't have the naming rights to the Champions and Europa Leagues but I was under the impression that the equivalent of them under generic names were incorporated into the career mode, hence you being able to view the league tables around Europe and so on.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Scotland centric post here.

Ok, so I won the league with the glorious Glasgow Celtic. Next season, I expect some European ties, but no. There don't appear to be any (even qualifiers) on my calander. What the shit? When I started my league, there were no qualifiers for the Europa Leauge but I figured maybe the game was SUPER realistic (Celtic were out of Europe by late August).

Another issue, bigger players keep rejecting me because of the prestige of the league. Obviously Ronaldo is going to balk at the notion of a wet wednesday in Inverness but is there anything my team can do to improve the league's prestige? Or am I fucked?

Did you play season mode? If you want to play UEFA/Champions league, etc you need to play in manager mode

[chand]

Did you play season mode? If you want to play UEFA/Champions league, etc you need to play in manager mode

Yeah, I started playing season mode (where you can pick a league), because "Manager mode" sounded like it wasn't even gonna let me play, but the former is literally just the league, no domestic cups either. You have to go to Career > Manager Mode to get the whole thing.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Manager Mode lets you play, it's basically season mode but you can go for 15 seasons, you get all the cup stuff, and you get to make more decisions regarding the team, ticket prices, sponsors, etc.

[Subtle Mocking]

One massive problem with the Player career mode is that you never get subbed out of games, even if you get an injury ten minutes in. Not only that but the manager AI stinks, even when you have no energy they'll play you in games against teams in the bottom 3 of the league, but when it comes to a big game against the top of the league side they leave you out of the squad...also some teams have ridiculously high standards it would seem, after scoring a hattrick for tottenham, the manager emailed me to say that I wasn't fucking playing well enough?!

[El Unicornio, mang]

I don't think the be a player mode in football games really works that well anyway, most of the time you're just aimlessly wandering around waiting for a pass. It works for sports like baseball because then you're only used when there's action occurring.

[Subtle Mocking]

I was mostly playing through it with the option of controlling the whole team, but I don't see the point if the manager AI is so absurd.

[Bennygaylord]

Why would you just be a player? Why not player manager?

[chand]

Played six or so games on PES 2011 last night and I'm loving it so far, it's miles better than the last two and the passing and shooting and in particular the crossing all feel better to me than FIFA's. Gonna attempt to install an option file to correct all the kits and stuff but it's great so far. Also, it has the "You Are My Solskjaer" chant in it, complete with loud and obvious swear word.

[Bennygaylord]

It's actually You Are my Larsson.

[chand]

It's actually You Are my Larsson.

Not quite sure what you're trying to do there.

[Bennygaylord]

You might get it. Keep on it, champ.