FIFA 11 vs PES 2011

FIFA 11 vs PES 2011

As I wrote in my FIFA 11 review, I am a Pro Evolution fan for years last year I found myself drawn towards FIFA 10. Although last year I stuck with my favourite franchise at the end, I had trouble convincing myself that this year I could do the same.

While playing FIFA 11 I found that they improved most of the things that I found annoying with the game like the attackers always being outmuscled from the defenders, constant whistle blowing from the referee and goals getting scored too easily after the first goal was scored.

On the other side PES 2011 needed to make some huge improvements in order to keep up with the now market leader FIFA 11. What they did was they made this years pro evolution soccer look and feel like FIFA 09! The moment from the second you insert the disk to the moment you take it out feels terrible. Instead of PES getting improved what KONAMI did was they redesigned the whole game into something appalling for the franchise fans.

Commentary

Were PES failed miserably over the past few years was commentary and this year is no different. Absolutely appalling commentary which gets repetitive after 2 games if you played the franchise before since it basically remained the same!

Teams

Personally I never really cared that PES could not include the names of all the teams it included and I still don’t. What I mind however is that FIFA has a huge number of available teams in comparison to PES. Also in this years PES I found a few players looking nothing like they do in real life, considering the same players are correct in FIFA which also has a larger number of available players that is really disappointing.

What I don’t really get with FIFA however is while they have all these 2^nd – 3^rd division teams from a few countries they still do not include all the national teams and all teams that participate in the champions league! It is probably just rights but it is a bit annoying when you want to play with your national team and you find it ignored for one more year were EA finds a 3^rd division team important enough to be included.

Gameplay

FIFA 11 is basically the same as FIFA 10 but with the improvements I mentioned above the same does not hold for PES since the game is completely redesigned.

The new passing system of PES is difficult but I kind of liked it, however FIFA offers the same passing system as an option so once again my point goes to FIFA on that.

While playing you will notice that the only place were these games vary hugely is the shooting of the players. The shooting system of the new PES feels more responsive and accurate than the one of FIFA. Players can shoot and force a difficult save from the angles they do in real life unlike FIFA were there are angles which is almost impossible to score! However the movement of the player during the kick of the ball feels a bit weird and unrealistic in some occasions in the new PES.

Player movement and dribbling in both games is almost identical. PES switched from its easy controls to a more complicated FIFA style dribbling. I will not compare the dribbles as they are almost identical to perform as they will probably come down to what you prefer. What I did not like in player movement is that PES like in last years FIFA (and possibly even worse than) attackers get pushed around by defenders regardless of how strong they are.

When playing the new PES you will find that the new camera settings the classic version of the tele camera which only moves horizontally does not exist anymore. I don’t really mind as it makes the game more challenging but it is quite tiresome for your eyes after playing a few games.

The most annoying bit that I found with the gameplay of the new PES is the lack of in game tactics on demand. The PES franchise strong skill over the past few years was in the easy set up of the team with players being set up as you tell them. You could easily launch a counter attack and offside traps in game but not anymore. Although general team tactics set up is still better in PES, FIFA allows you to at will call systems like offside trap and counter attack. So my point goes to FIFA in that respect.

An improvement that EA has made on FIFA 11 that most of you probably won’t notice is the ability to add team chants, something that PES has since last year. This is entertaining to be honest and if you never tried it give it a go, watch your friends getting surprised when they listed to a custom chant.

Menu

Possibly the one of the few places in my review where PES beats FIFA. The menu of the new PES feels more responsive and faster in PES than FIFA. As a user I don’t need a player in the menu to play with if that will slow down my menu and increase my loading time.

How does the game feel

One of my main problems with this years FIFA game is that it feels unfinished; it feels like they released a beta version just to beat PES 2011 by a week. On the other hand playing PES 2011 there were no obvious bugs in the game. A patch is going to be coming sometime soon to fix the FIFA 11 bugs, but it is really disappointing that a company like EA released a game before it was ready to hit the market.

Gaming modes

There is almost nothing to separate the two games in terms of gaming modes except of names. One franchise calls it Become a legend the other calls it become a pro. The same goes for seasons tournaments etc.

Which is better?

I am quite displeased about the outcome but I think FIFA 11 wins the heads on this year. Although I will keep on playing PES 2011 from time to time hoping it will grow on me I doubt that this will be the case at the end of the day. However I would suggest trying both, because as I said above there are not too many things to separate the two games so you might like PES more than I did.

A few last comments

I am quite surprised by the critics of PES 2011 giving it an 8.0 out of 10 when last year it got a 6.5 out of 10 (FIFA got 9.0 both years). Although granted that last year difference should not be 6.5 to 9 clearly the improvement has not been that dramatic.