The Football Game Thread [FIFA, PES]

[Mister Pink]

Thought I'd start a thread that covers the two top football games as any FIFA or PES thread solely will die out pretty easily. 

 

After essentially rage quitting FIFA back in 2018, I was done with football games. But then I started to miss how fun they can be and they're one of the best couch PvP games you can get. So, I checked out PES which is now called eFootball. They didn't try rip people off for 2021, it's a €30 game called eFootball 2021 Season Update (just going to call it PES). €30 might be an expensive update but it's good value for people like me that might buy bi-annually a football game. 

 

I started a Master League in PES and it's great. You can set players to train specific skills and assign them to become specialists in certain roles like "Goal Poacher" or "Box to Box" based on their attributes. I really give the sense of having more managerial input. There's also mild RPG elements in the style in the manage runs the team. In the initial board meetings I had multiple choices to respond to how I was going to compete in the upcoming season. I could also negotiate my KPI's. So, I picked Diego Maradona as manager. I picked Italian Series B team Empoli with unknown players but with a large budget. I was roleplaying that the club got bought by a billionaire and they were injecting cash into the club. Well, that's how I was justifying this tier 2 team with a large budget. 

 

There's a great scouting feature where you can set 3 different types of search for new players. So I have 3 different searches with different criteria looking for 3 different types of players to try sign during the transfer season. This is great because I remember it before being that you wouldn't go near transfers until transfer window. But this system has be always scouting and I'm shown results by the scouts based on my 3 sets of criteria.   

 

Game play is fun. Although I'm playing with very basic controls. I have to relearn how to play and I stay away from any advanced moves. I'm playing the game in very vanilla sense. 

 

 

 

Some goals

 

https://youtu.be/QGju5nWrXdA

 

Did anyone buy football (soccer) games this year?

[Jason]

Football games are in the worst state they have ever been IMO. They're all hot garbage. I say this as someone who has bought every Fifa, including this years, for the past 11 or 12 years, and as someone has tried PES multiple times.

 

Konami simply doesn't have the interest (or the money from sales) to invest heavily into the series and EA has absolutely no interest in Fifa outside of Ultimate Team and whatever new mode they're using to market the game this year, which was the mindnumbingly boring The Journey mode for 3 years, now it's Volta.

 

Career mode in Fifa has massive potential but it gets 2 or 3 paper thin features every year, which in some cases are simply an old feature brought back or a pre-existing feature given a UI refresh. Scouting, training, transfers, they all need completely redoing to make them less tedious and boring. Pro Clubs which is the only reason I still buy Fifa is a fairly popular mode but gets an update once every two or three years, despite having massive potential just like career mode. It's seen more features removed in the past few years than added.

 

Gameplay is the worst it's been since the days where you could only move in 8 directions, their attempt at making the game fresh is nerfing viable ways to play football into the ground, which has promoted a meta of one two passes and pace that has made playing 1v1's more of a chore than fun. Couple this with changes that have lowered the skill gap, particularly defending and finishing changes, and hey presto, Fifa 21 plays like garbage!

 

Don't even get me started on my beloved Football Manager games. They advertise thousands of new features every year and the game doesn't change one bit, and they (ie Miles Jacobson, who likes to keep responding to fans asking for stuff like this on Twitter with a "that's not how it is irl") refuse to do things like overhaul the tactics system to allow for things common in modern football such as dynamic formations.

[Mister Pink]

3 hours ago, Jason said:

Football games are in the worst state they have ever been IMO. They're all hot garbage. I say this as someone who has bought every Fifa, including this years, for the past 11 or 12 years, and as someone has tried PES multiple times.

That's the thing, I think it's really challenging to jump to PES when FIFA is your current jam. All the the things PES doesn't do that FIFA does and vice versa will be glaringly obvious and very frustrating. That's why 2 years of no football  reset my palate, completely. Before ditching FIFA I got enraged in FUT.  It's prefer to not spend money and try build a reasonable team by playing. But I remember everyone just spamming the finesse goals tap-ins and seeing the same goals scored against me over and over and some of this guys watch every single replay like as if they scored some sort of Seedorf rocket goal. But that's people, not the game itself. 

 

Every title for the last 12 years I think should burn anyone out on Football games though, I'd imagine. It would be like me playing GTA every year for 12years.  No GTA was playing in 2019 or 2020 or possibly 2018. Maybe skipping a title or two would give you a fresh feel. Because they simply cannot add many new features in an annual release. I guess that might be why PES is fresh for me now. I'm trying a new game I haven't played in 12 years (2008 was the last PES I owned and played properly). So it feels fresh and the gameplay reminds of me of times when they were king. I'd argue it's still a better game that FIFA recently, just doesn't have all the licensing. I thought that would bother me (on Xbox can't use option file to get real names) but as soon as I felt that more fluid and less predictable gameplay I knew it became a lot of fun Master League is where it's at!

 

PES is in the best place it's even been, I think, not that I played every title or anything but overall fans are happy. 

 

This a really great review. It's a realism review. This guy plays fully manually. Check out the goal he scores at 1:35. Insane for fully manual. And that's a challenge I might be interested in. Learning to play manually.. I did it for Forza and I can't go back. I play manual w/c and have all the assists switched off and it's great. 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2020 by Mister Pink

[Jason]

I'm actually really not burned out of football games at all, probably cause I am a huge football fan irl, I really am just burned out on the dogsh*t selection of footy games in recent years. I adapt pretty well from game to game too and while I'm not gonna pretend I've played loads of PES, every single time I do I'm very underwhelmed. Gameplay is one thing but the UI's are just incredibly poor and the I suppose sad reality is that licenses do matter A LOT - and I get tired of hearing "b-b-but the custom files fix it" excuse over and over and over from the very same people who proclaim that "the king is back!" every time the new PES demo rolls out.

 

I have heard that the career mode is genuinely better than Fifa's though, but I personally tend to stick with Football Manager for a good authentic footy game career mode, but that series is pretty tired at the moment like I said above.

[TheSantader25]

You know I actually wasn't interested in football despite growing up in a family that loved football. Not until playing PES in the early 00s. It's crazy to think that it was a videogame that finally got me to like football as a sport.

 

It's a shame that these games are the way they are now. I quitted both FIFA and PES in 2018. PES doesn't have the resources to compete and EA is EA. I generally preferred PES to FIFA especially in these last few years but they haven't improved a lot recently as well. I really HOPE something happens here. I'm watching and if a good one gets made again, I'm gonna buy. But for now I'm taking a break from this disaster until something happens. 

[Mister Pink]

4 hours ago, TheSantader25 said:

You know I actually wasn't interested in football despite growing up in a family that loved football. Not until playing PES in the early 00s. It's crazy to think that it was a videogame that finally got me to like football as a sport.

 

It's a shame that these games are the way they are now. I quitted both FIFA and PES in 2018. PES doesn't have the resources to compete and EA is EA. I generally preferred PES to FIFA especially in these last few years but they haven't improved a lot recently as well. I really HOPE something happens here. I'm watching and if a good one gets made again, I'm gonna buy. But for now I'm taking a break from this disaster until something happens. 

Same man. It was a game that got me into it. Well, I'll casually watch it. 

 

Anyway, PES is finally moving over to the Unreal Engine 5 for the "2022" release, next year. So next year's title should be truly next-gen. Might be a good time to revisit them. Again, two years break from footballs games was very refreshing. And before, I would never buy 2 titles in a row, year after year. That's not sustainable. No matter how much of a fan of something I was, I would not put that much energy into because I know I'd burn out on it and there wont be enough change over two back to back titles. I wanted to keep a football game fresh, so I said to myself, if I'm going back, it can't be FIFA. It has to be a new game and after a long break. The change of game and the break was wonderful.

 

So, now I'm playing PES Update 2021 (presumably they didn't try sell it as a full titles due to them working on Unreal Engine 5) and now I can practice for next year's title. So that's good news. 

 

Konami may not have the the budget for licenses but they have the gameplay and the graphics, the fundamentals.  The option file fixes licensing if you are PC/PS4.  Not sure why anyone would dismiss or discredit that as "excuses", Jason, I'm looking in your direction!  . It's a 5 minute fix made by fans for the passion of making the game better. It works. The endgame is you see the team, crests and names you want to see. I don't see that as an excuse for anything.. It's a solution to a problem. If anything it's just a great community response facilitated by Konami to answer to EA's monopoly. 

 

EA have always been scummy. But FIFA  is probably their most scummy title. It's not a FIFA vs PES thing. I've probably put more hours into FIFA than I have PES. But I'm done with FIFA. I don't feel like I'm constantly being ripped off when playing PES. I find the community less toxic and more into the realism and fun of the game. And yeah, that's possible without all the licenses because the fun and community is there and most of all great gameplay. I paid about €30 for this title. And Master League is a lot of fun. I don't mind buying this 2021 Update before buying 2022 (I realise this contradicts what I said earlier) but I bought it knowing about UR5 is coming next year and next years title will should make more use from new generation of console hardware. 

 

PES beats FIFA in gameplay and graphics. And EA being EA, That's enough for me. The decision is easy. 

 

I don't know, everything in FIFA looks a bit washed out, less detailed and copy/pasted. 

 

[LL Cool L]

does anyone play pro clubs on fifa?? or become a legend mode on pes?

 

last pes I played was 2018, how does 2021 compare?

[Mister Pink]

Haven't played Become a Legend on PES. PES gameplay, I think, is solid this year. For the last 10 years been playing FIFA. Got sick of FIFA. Wanted a new change. PES is fun. Just been playing Master League. But it's a warm up for PES 2022 when they upgrade to a new engine (Unreal Engine). PES 2022 will have new engine on new hardware. It will be a true next (current) gen game. 

 

PES 2021 Update is cheap (€30). They just updated 2021 instead of pretending to make a whole new title, presumably so they can work on 2022 and on the new engine. 

[EGA_6]

I know this game isn't PvP like FIFA or PES, but I enjoy Football Manager more than those games. I just like to make a save file and simulate through seasons and see what has happened in the future of football. Like who has won the premier league, champions league or even international competitions like the Euros or world cup. There's even world rankings and individual player awards like the Ballon d'Or. You can also manage your club/country and imo go through a much more realistc managerial journey than that of FIFA or PES. There are realistc storylines that are developed every season, major players signing contracts, the media in the game is played out very realistc, and the results in leagues/competition are believable with lots of realism to it. Yes, FIFA and PES has these features that I mentioned, but to me, FM has a much more natural experience that feels much more realistic.

Edited January 25, 2021 by EliteGamer_6