Gameplay is terrible!! no where near as good as the ps2 version
Well actually no, I got this game at christmas and still yet I can't get into it. I started playing it, it looked nice of course great visuals but WTF HAPPEND TO THE GAMEPLAY!!. First off the players A.I is so rediculously dopey the players look like they don't even have a brain in their heads and they jus run about at command of the controls. At first I thought the passing was ok but then you realise other things like the player switching system it is so unresponsive and clunky it takes so long to get the marker on the player you want to control. The players hardly walk in a straight line for example whe you are defending and you send one of your players to tackle the attacker they run around him first for hours and then they finally plow into them the defenders are so lazy and just dont work as a group most of the time if you send your player in to tackle an attacker he just runs straight past them because you have no control over the players (duuuuuuuuurrr where am I going?).
The commentary is up the wall and dopey for a next gen game and they never know what they are on about. On the ps2 version 30+ leagues now we go to the next gen version theres about 6 of them?? and we go from about 40+ different staduims to about 20 or something like that and just about every team has that same staduim that portugese style stadium, even all of the english premiership teams who don't have their real staduims have been put into this stadium english stadiums arent like this they are usually square closed in style the style they used for teams in the ps2 version, so when you play an away match in the english premiership it looks lik you go abroard for the match.
Back on the gameplay, in the ps2 version they managed to change the computer assited rocket shots and put in more realistic un assisted shots which was great, but in this version the onlly way you can score now is by rocketing it in the corner or tapping it past the keeper theres no variety on the shots like what the PES series manages to do on that game you would never see the same goal twice. What the hell did the do to the finesse shot in this version, on the ps2 version it was a proper side footed accurate swinging shot and now its just some little tap where it just goes up and bends a little bit and because of that the goalkeepers catch it with ease complete waste of time. Manager mode also just feels uninspired compared to the ps2 versions one even though they are practically the same, there wont even be any promotions or relegations during seasons on this version (realistic huh? not) due to there being no lower leagues.
It looks nothing like the real players and they seem to have borrowed PES 5's old foul system where if you so much as touch the other player it is a free kick, and if you ever just miss time a slide tackle 95% of the time you will be sent off. I was so dissapointed and let down by this game, pretty graphics on its own isnt enough football games are all about gameplay. I hope in fifa 08 we see drastic improvements on the next gen versions and for now I will go back to playing the ps2 version of this game, and I know alot of you probably wont agree with this review and if you don't agree with it thats fine but its clear that you don't know a good football game when you see one. You cant just be won over by good graphics. I don't know why this game took longer to be realeased than the ps2 version when it feels like the game was thrown together in 5 minutes.