Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 (PlayStation 4) Review

Start up Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 and its clear that Konami has persisted with pursuing the modern gaming mantra of online connectivity. It takes a good minute and half to start up the game on a slow/weak Wi-Fi signal, but is infuriating insofar as the blank screen switches rapidly between 'now loading' and 'communicating' with the network. Not exactly a great start. Inspired by Japanese MMO design, a list of 'news,' whether it is new or not, greets the player once the game loads - usually nothing of interest, maybe a message of thanks for buying the game, news about connectivity issues, and so on, as if the only demographic for this game is the always-online-suffering fans of its rival.

The main menu doesn't exactly dispel this notion. There's the usual plethora of options, leagues, cups, exhibition matches, and so on. The clear emulation of its rival game stands out in the 'myclub' mode; think EA's Ultimate Team, but PES has always been strongest in its fantasy Master League mode, neglected most instalments and downright abused in the last few by turning it into a rather silly gimmick.

Thankfully, PES 2015 clears up a lot of the rubbish from Master League mode, so now it's simply pick a team and jump in, either with the club's real players or with the traditional fake players. Money is included, as is a schedule calendar and transfers and a youth team. Out is the extra gimmicks, stuff like 'energy bottles' and the chairman meetings and whatnot trying to invoke a little RPG in what should be a football game through and through. Training returns, although it's nowhere near as simple and as clear as the older systems. The player can elect to train in categories, but nothing is mentioned as to what attributes fall under what category.

Therein lies the problem with this game - it is, in essence, a game of two halves. On the one hand, the Master League and the on-pitch action works, on the other everything else just falls apart. Electing to play with the "original squad" of fake players and it is quite clear that none are overpowered. Check the youth team and there isn't any 90-rated striker aged 16 anymore. Things have been toned down considerably, which is a good thing, but for whatever reason Konami decided that with clearing up one thing it must obfuscate something else. Player attributes, for example, are nonsensical. Elusiveness? What the heck is that? A method of getting away from being marked? Elusiveness? There's an attribute for vision and penetration, yet another for 'final pass,' so which one is used when? Vision is the ability to see a pass, but how does that affect the gamer and not the player? It's all rather daft - a case of translation error, maybe? Or Konami's keenness to be different?

Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 takes football analogies to another level. It is literally a game of two halves. On the one hand, there's the gameplay, the strongest point of the series that had dipped significantly in the past few years. It is satisfying to say that PES 2015 is quite decent in this respect, particularly general AI pitch-play. There's no basketball here - arcade fans will struggle, as will those with the desire to play ping-pong with the football and turn on a dime. Here, the football is as realistic as it can afford to be. Players turn at a slower pace, yet well-timed explosive pace can easily steal a yard off a defender - strength matters insomuch as weaker players will be floored by a simple shoulder-to-shoulder action.

The AI passes and moves and at times passes so damn fast that hands can be tied in knots trying to defend the action. There's no super-dribble obnoxiousness here, in contrast to FIFA 2015, instead PES 2015 is sharper and more mature; this game is the 'professional player' to FIFA's Sunday School kick-about. It isn't perfect, though, as for all the attention to the AI and passing, there are still anomalies that only serve to frustrate: mis-directed passes, for example, can be annoying and there is always that familiar battle with PES in getting the ball to go roughly in the area that those in control would like it to go!

Furthermore, the AI team easily racks up a 90% pass completion rate when in reality the average in a top league (Premier League, for example) oft hovers around 80%. The Championship's highest pass completion average across a team is 79% this season and varies down towards 66% for bottom of the table Yeovil (at time of writing). There's a massive difference here - 90% pass success often means defending is simply a case of closing off the avenues and waiting for that rare error, or getting lucky enough to close a player down. That's because tackling is almost obnoxiously old school: tapping X twice results in a tackle, for instance. Get it right and the ball is knocked away or stolen, but if getting it wrong, oft times the yellow card comes out. Referee's are borderline psychotic with the card counts; slide tackles are a guaranteed red if mistimed, yellow if lucky, but ordinary tackles get a booking far too often. It doesn't help that the AI often seems to read the button presses, turning on a dime, or perfectly in that specific direction, to avoid the tackle, something that is exacerbated by the fact that no sane human being can react that fast without figuring out animation 'tells.' Tackling doesn't always mean the ball will be won, though, and sometimes a tackle wins the ball but loses it because the players collide. For whatever reason, it feels like the AI players don't have too much of a problem reacting and moving faster than the human ones do.

The super-high pass completion rates imply that Konami is shy of keeping things in line with the reality of the sport in favour of artificially increasing the difficulty. For a game that has a reputation as being realistic, it certainly subverts it. Furthermore, the average fan is going to be frustrated watching a team like Yeovil or Stoke keep the ball so effectively when they themselves are playing as possession-centric Barcelona. How can anyone differentiate the two teams? Must Barcelona run with a 99% pass completion rate in order to be considered a 'top tier possession' team? It is little things like this that cause the game to falter, especially when they all combine to present a frustrating experience.

A particular annoyance is the control scheme itself. Switching between players can be lethargic and if it goes wrong is almost a recipe for disaster because the AI dares not make a mistake. There's not much to be done against a striker clean through against the defence when the control has switched to some midfield player miles behind them. The AI strings passes together with alarming ease and has a bitter hatred against crossing it seems, often going down the byline to do a simple cutback - something that online players used to rage about as an exploit. It's difficult to see why this would be implemented to the offline gameplay! Finally, goalkeepers seem pretty much there for show. They appear to be there to save the 'weak' and crap shots, or be flashy with the long-range shots, but nine times out of ten will fail to make a reasonable save to a shot planted firmly in the corner. Master the shooting and everything sort of comes apart at the seams on this front.

Player lethargy is also an issue, from turning to reaction, to just doing what the user wants them to do. It's almost a case of 'same old, same old' but at the same time it is clear there are improvements to the game; it's taking baby steps forward but it isn't really setting the world on fire here and that translates over into other areas of the game.

The 'second half' - presentation - is an absolute write-off. It's as if Konami had a team of 100 people and assigned 99 to the gameplay and left one, lazy intern to do the presentation side of things. Some teams are licensed and some aren't - something that is not a massive issue, but none of these licensed teams (aside from Manchester United) have their own stadia in the game, instead being assigned generic ones. On the plus side, these can be edited, although in no great way, and they can have individual names that will display when the team plays at home, which begs the question of why-oh-why didn't the guys at Konami decide to put in some fake names that closely resemble the authentic names? Given it has the licenses, why-oh-why didn't it just put the right name on a fake stadium? Does the company not have the resources for the stadium licenses? Are the licenses just for the name and kits?

Regardless, there is so much laziness around the game that players are expected to edit in their own way. Take unlicensed teams, for example - each team is given a two-tone stripe kit that is nowhere near identifiable as a unique kit. No 'fake' team has a decent name either. Tottenham and Arsenal are 'North-West/East London' and Arsenal plays in red with two white stripes down players' chests. It is like this throughout the entire game, and no fake team has a modicum of effort put into making the kits unique or stand out - anything, really, that would allow the user to make minor changes and have a fully edited save file on hand.

Normally, this isn't a massive issue because PES lived and died on option files that poor sad saps, like this reviewer, would spend days editing to upload and share, and resulted in a game that was as close to being 'licensed' as possible without breaking any laws. Except, 'next-gen' likes to go a bit backwards in this respect, as option files are a big no-no on the PS4/Xbox One. No files can be downloaded or uploaded or used or modified whatsoever. That means that in order to get the full experience, gamers are going to have to spend hours and hours editing every team name, stadium and kit. It doesn't stop there either, since there are managers now that can be edited, not just name-wise but appearance-wise and no, not one of these managers has even a stock image to guide the editing - it is all simply blank. The height of lazy development is checking out the International football scene, where looking at a minor nation like Wales reveals that Konami believes the team plays in green and not red as they do in reality.

On top of this, every non-licensed team has a shade of 'cream' instead of white, and 'charcoal' instead of black on their kits, so any casual editing fan is going to be agonisingly slogging through the editor just setting things to black and white. On top of that, all the fake teams' kits seem to be designed to make editing annoying. Each shirt, short and sock combination has at least three or four layers that each have to be individually removed, unless the entire kit is 'cleared' and everything is started again from scratch, which is the same amount of effort anyway.

It doesn't stop there. Konami has included additions such as 'banner editing,' which allows the player to edit the banners held along the stadium 'boards.' A nice touch, perhaps, although all of them are blank awaiting a user to edit them and none really get shown in any prominence when the match is ongoing. Finally, there's a lovely feature called 'rival team' where, say, Manchester United can be selected to be rivals with Liverpool (or Merseyside Reds). Guess what, though? None of the teams, absolutely NONE of them, including the licensed teams, have been assigned rival teams, not even the licensed Real Madrid and Barcelona. There's no way they can fear any issues arising from modifying this feature, it's just lazy, lazy and lazy. It is utterly frustrating and just adds more hours in the editing workshop.

A game of two-halves, reasonable AI, and poor presentation - it continues throughout the entire game. Take, for instance, player looks. PES 2015 has often been considered exceptional, in some cases, at getting player likeness down to a tee. This year is no different, as Wayne Rooney in the game looks as he does in reality. The problem comes with everything else; some players suffer from glass-eye syndrome, making them look like something out of a puppet-show horror movie. Anything created via editing or fake players look like they have spent far too much time putting on foundation - they look sculpted out of clay, one of those 'dead' reconstructed faces out of CSI.

The graphical issues don't end there! The pitch itself is a notorious offender. For all the 'grass' on offer, it looks very much like a carpet, or a Subbuteo board. It's too perfect, stitched and weaved into existence rather than organically grown. Nothing that happens on the pitch affects the pitch. There's no scuffing from rough tackles, no divots, nothing. It's just one flat inorganic being that exists for the robots to run around on. It is dire, as lazy as the commentary that recites player-name after name, after name. There's no emotion to the game; it is flat, tepid, boring, lazy, uninspiring. The lack of emotions engine that its rival has really makes the two look incredibly different.

PES 2015, then, feels like a game in need of a new team, with fresh ideas on every single level assigned to it. The gameplay on the pitch is alright - it's not quite there yet, but it is the best football game available on next-gen systems. The problem is, though, that nothing else has had any effort or time put into it. This is really a game that is meant to be purchased and then loved and edited for hours and hours on end until it's perfect and, in this modern-day world, nobody has the time for that. There is a lack of polish, and it is just slack in terms of design decisions.

Better than FIFA 15? Yes, it's no contest since this year's FIFA was so poor on the pitch that Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 would have had to put actual extra effort in to be worse than that. However, as a package on the whole, both games are bad as each other, just holding different strengths. Want flash and license? FIFA wins hands down. Gameplay instead? PES 2015 is king… but, sadly, that's not saying a lot.