PES 2016

With PES 2016 due for UK release on September 18th 2015, huge interest in the game has now been established due to the official unveiling of the demo.

The graphics look beautiful as ever, the controls feel far more responsive, defending has been massively improved, but how do these changes impact upon the overall quality of the game?

A good attacking player will now make incredibly intelligent runs and you’ll really be able to tell the difference between a good defender and a bad one. When playing with someone like Andrea Pirlo, you’ll find his real-life strengths quite accurately reflected in the game. Each player seems to have their own distinct playing style reminiscent of their true to life self.

There’s certainly a lot to appreciate about PES 2016 from playing the demo, but with the more responsive controls and increased intelligence of attacking players, has Konami made things a little too clean, a little too easy? Playing the game on the ‘Top Player’ difficulty setting, that definitely seems like a fair criticism. ‘Top Player’ is the second highest difficulty setting in PES 2016, there’s also the ‘Super Star’ difficulty setting above that, but ‘Super Star’ is arguably the most logical starting point when playing the demo as anything below that just feels a little too simple.

When playing a new football game for the first time, you expect there to be some sort of learning curve, you expect to suffer a few negative results before you begin to start properly mastering the game. PES 20216 just feels a little bit too ‘pick-up-and-play’ though; the responsive controls and artificial intelligence are to be praised, but they’re also a huge part of what makes the game seem so simple.

There’s still a month to go before the game’s release and some major tweaks may therefore be made before September 18th rolls around. As it stands, however, PES 2016 could definitely do with some fine-tuning in order to make the game as enjoyable an experience as possible.