It’s time to say goodbye. A child from the very beginning is leaving us, it was only a little over 20 years old: The Japanese game developer Konami has been working impressively consistently for 30 months on the end of its soccer simulation efootball (formerly known as Pro Evolution Soccer, also known as PES for short), and it feels like the last few life support measures are being phased out over these months. It seems almost cruel how the game, which has been so popular for so long, is led to the slaughterhouse with a keen eye.
PES has always been more dynamic and realistic than EA Sports’ competitor FIFA and has, without a doubt, always had better gameplay. The decisive disadvantage is the lack of licenses for the big leagues, the big clubs, the big player names.
But you learned to live with that as a consumer. Basically, you could always rely on stable foundations from the pure gaming experience, even if the pro-evolution development curve did not point steadily upwards, God knows. There were also weak years, such as the last renovated full version in 2020. It offered a number of advantages for those who are not really familiar with the sport of football as such, because it contained so many game-related bugs that the exterminator wanted to be alerted.
Then Konami called the big revolution, threw the version of the previous year onto the market again in 2021, only with the updates of the respective team squad, and announced a quasi-world novelty. The baby was given the name efootball, the 20s and 21s versions were subsequently given this nickname, and all Pro Evo disciples were eagerly awaiting the release of the new Free2Play model. After all, Konami had had two complete years to work on efootball.
Reputation armageddon after first release
Instead, however, all employees were apparently on vacation, on short-time work, quarantine or on a cure, no one knows. In any case, the beta version of an internship came out last September, so indisputably disastrous that people’s anger exploded and the product is still considered unrivaled in the fight for the worst game of 2021. Konami reacted to reputation armageddon – there was no alternative – and promised improvement. What was no less without alternative if you didn’t want to hoist the white flag right away.
After six months of rework, version 1.0.0 came out in mid-April. on the market, initially rehearsed by a few selected journalists who were as uncritical as possible, who were given an entertaining justification for the previous disaster: “We were too focused on the release date,” says producer Seitaro Kimura, among other things, on “kicker.de” quoted. Either a crucial half-sentence is missing here (“… which we remembered exactly one day before”), or it is a flowery and colorful paraphrase of the fact that one slept in the tree for two years.
Even the current version is light years away from good
Because the new version, marginally changed a few days ago by the 1.1.0 update, actually has features of a football game, but efootball is still light years away from the attribute good even in early summer 2022. If the game were a novice’s attempt to gain a foothold in the market, one could say: reasonable approaches, something could happen in a few years. But since the previous industry prince was at work here, other criteria apply. And efootball won’t stand up to them for a kopeck.
Let’s leave the still regularly occurring technical shortcomings aside, which at least in the form of apologies from the admins regularly bring thousands and thousands of thalers of the game’s own currency, and concentrate on pure kicking. It actually has a few innovations to offer.
The previously absurd frequency of mass meter-wide offside positions has been brought into line with reality in every respect, the keeper no longer throws a brilliant save at every 0.5 km/h shot, but has become difficult to sanction: almost everyone, no matter how snow loaded ball is fisted instead of caught, a defender who runs a long ball is by no means a reason for him not to run out anyway and thresh the ball away, in rare highlight cases also against the teammate in front of him.
Like barefoot on a frozen pond
The centre-forward, who sprints forward after the kick-off and was alone in front of the keeper in an estimated quarter of the cases with a long ball, is also largely history. However, the choice of the remedy is difficult to discuss: it regularly stops running at the moment when you have just started the through ball.
The change in conducting duels brings you almost to despair. Anyone who runs at speed with his defender towards the opponent who has the ball is hopelessly lost as soon as the opponent makes a tiny change of direction because it is simply not possible to follow. As if you had a frozen pond under your bare feet, you glide unsteadily across the lawn, trying in vain with the reaction speed of a glacier tongue not to completely lose sight of the offensive man who has long since escaped.
Also new: passes that just roll right past the target player because there is apparently no interest in the ball, a noticeably increased inaccuracy with through passes, an accumulation of silly red cards with simultaneous permission to polish Achilles tendons with impunity, and a noticeable slowdown in the pace of the game. And if you sprint with the ball to cross towards the goal line, you should drop the anchor from around the sixteenth height, otherwise the braking distance will not be sufficient.
Disastrous running paths and ego offside trap
In addition, there are deficits from the 2020 version that have not been eliminated and are still annoying. An essence: The running paths, especially those in the attacking area, are as usual a kick in the genitals of every counter troop, the own players continue to run over each other with regularity, a teammate is always happy to stand in the way to clarify if you have just fired a promising shot on goal. As before, in the reverse movement, contrary to all customs from the district to the federal league, one of the central defenders is the first player assigned to leave the defensive chain if you want to oppose an opposing counterattack. Then there would be the ego offside trap in particularly poor situations, which a defender spontaneously creates by stopping abruptly without being able to do anything about it. And and and…
It’s really hard to see anything positive about efootball. Because it thwarts almost everything that characterizes the modern real sport of this time with its speed, technical skills, intensity and dynamics. Sort of like soccer on Valium. And above all because it’s a game that fails miserably when trying to reach the level of its own two and a half year old (and not outstanding) predecessor. This is basically very tragic if you have spent half your life with the game, but the logical consequence of Konami’s obvious inactivity, which also leaves you alone once again with an essential question: why on earth do you get everything – especially since as a cooperation partner of some big clubs – not even tips for improvement from professional kickers to at least minimize this outrageous accumulation of programmed nonsense?
Admittedly, that could hardly prevent efootball from dying out anytime soon. The game is over!
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