For years Pro Evolution Soccer, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year, was a few goals behind the reigning champion FIFA.

FIFA was so popular that FIFA 14 was still being produced for the PlayStation 2. PES in the meantime had become the Manchester City to FIFA’s Man United. Last year however PES scored a striking equaliser in PES 2015. Nevertheless, after the release of Metal Gear Solid V, PES is reported to be the last and only AAA game series that Konami will continue to develop.

So should Konami keep this last one around? Fortunately, PES 2016 is a solid update to last year’s PES 2015, one that takes it to the top of the heap.

From the main screen you can find easy access to your standard exhibition matches, tournaments and online game modes. The game isn’t designed for quick matches though.

PES 2016 wants to give you the ability dive deep into setting up your team for play. You could realistically spend just as much if not more time managing your team players (who individually can radically alter the way a team plays, and are updated weekly with their real-world performance), their layout, dynamic tactics that react to whether you are defending or attacking or any of the myriad other options.

Despite all this complexity though, you are still able to quickly jump into exhibition matches for a quick ten minute round.

You can develop a real rhythm to the game with its realistic-feeling physics and fluid player animations. For a casual soccer game player like myself, I have often found myself being frustrated with previous games sensing what I am trying to do – not selecting the correct player to switch to, or knowing to whom I want to pass the ball.

Fortunately in PES 2016 the automatic selection is intelligent, and nearly every time the controls react just like you want them to. This is helped by greatly improved player AI. Both your teammates and opponents react smartly to how you are moving the ball around. Your opponent’s AI won’t forgive you easily for mistakes too. A bad pass or defence is quickly taken advantage of and will require a quick, frantic and intelligent response.

The appearance of PES on current-gen consoles has been greatly enhanced with Konami’s proprietary FOX engine. PES 2016 introduces dynamic weather to the series, which brings nice visual effects at random times during your match.

The PS4 version looks great, and the FOX engine should provide a solid base for developers to build on in the coming years. There have been controversies with the PC version of PES 2016, which seems to be a port of the PS3 version of the game. This is surprising, given the overall well-made Metal Gear Solid V PC version, which is based on the same engine.

Why Konami made this decision is unknown, but it is disappointing that the best way to play the game is on a console.

As usual, FIFA has the edge in club licences. So while you can’t play as some of your favourites directly, there may just be someone with the same skills and abilities as him. While yes, they are only cosmetic differences, part of the joy of these games is being the person whose skills you admire so much. Konami has done so much with the rest of the game to make it the best soccer game out at the moment (though Rocket League comes close) and it would give the series an almost unassailable lead if they were able to clinch the missing licence deals for next year’s game.

Each year we try and understand which soccer game is the one to play for the next 12 months.

Until recently it was EA Sports’FIFA, but PES 2016 challenges these assumptions. Yet, in the modern age the annual franchise release is being challenged by games moving to a service model, much like Street Fighter V is planning. If next year’s PES and FIFA games do move to this type of game, then PES stands out as the best of the last.

So whether you want to count the improvements over last year’s game, or dive into the series for the first time, you will find hundreds of hours of play ahead of you. No vuvuzelas included.

The post Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

At this years E3 I was fortunate enough to get a presentation detailing what’s new for this year’s release of Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) as well as some hands on time with it. The end result of these two left me with somewhat mixed feelings about the game.

The presentation involved many of what I would consider typical improvements you would expect in the game.

Key focuses were dynamic weather, new commentators and dialogue, new menus and cutscenes for Master League, improvements to My Club mode, visual upgrades, thousands of new animations, camera angle improvements, advanced collision, intelligent player AI among and the list goes on.

In my review of last years entry, I was left impressed with the predominate part of the gameplay however was disappointed with the lack of competitions to play in, particularly the A-League, the small pool of dialogue from the commentators as well as some issues with the way the post camera replay was organized.

In fairness, due to licensing issues, the availability of many competitions is out of their control. Regardless of this fact though, it did take away some enjoyment of their previous entries and this year looks to be no different.

The commentary was also noted by Konami to be expanded with more up to the minute gameplay derivative dialogue on offer. Unfortunately it was impossible to hear the game in the brief play time that I had and it is really something that you need a few hours with to truly judge.

As I only had one game, I also found it difficult to see how the post goal replay has changed. This is once again something I will need to try out once the game releases later this year.

While this may seem like a petty complaint, I did find that it took out much of the joy of scoring a goal in their previous entries.

Outside of this though, the game did seem decisively smooth and natural. Whether this was to do with the new animations or the new collision system they added I am not sure, either way it feels great to play.

The AI also seemed to be pretty intelligent with my teammates generally being in a good position. I was impressed by the AI in last years effort too and it looks as though I may be ever more astounded this year.

From my brief but enjoyable time with the game, I felt it plays very much into what I found was its strengths last year.  I was however unable to see how it has improved with regards to some of the major complaints I had.

I guess I will have to wait until it launches in September on PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3 and Xbox 360 to find out!

The post Konami’s PES 2016 at E3 2015 appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

On my second of three days on the E3 show floor I managed to get my hands on a wide variety of games, including The Last Guardian, Elite: Dangerous, PES 2016 and Ratchet & Clank.

The day began with a small indie game called The Solus Project at the Xbox booth.

This single player survival game has you stranded on an uninhabited alien planet trying to find a way back home. The focus of the game was on exploring and surviving. I was told the game is set on multiple islands, each of which were open for you to enjoy with the game providing about a 10 hour experience.

While the demo I played was short, I enjoyed what was there, particularly the open nature of the game and the focus on finding bits and pieces around the island. The game launches on Xbox One and PC Q1 2016 and if you are into survival and exploration games, it is something you should definitely keep an eye on.

Following on from my short walk around the Xbox Booth, I had an appointment with the crew over at Frontier Developments about their upcoming Xbox One launch of Elite: Dangerous. I never got around the playing this space adventure game however from their short demonstration of the game that they gave, I came away mightily impressed.

The game features a 1:1 scale galaxy which is meant to replicate our own Milky Way featuring 400 billion star systems for you to explore.  The best words to sum up the game is choice and freedom. Whether you focus on trading, discovering or combat is completely up to you.

A new touted feature of the game, Player v. Player, was a major focus of the demonstration.

This new aspect of the game feature two modes, team deathmatch and capture the flag. Featured in the multiplayer is fully destructible environments, a new ship, weapons to unlock and leaderboards. When talking about where the game could go in the future, the ability to walk around on planets seemed to be popular amongst the developers. The game is available now as a part of the Xbox Game Preview program with a free one hour trial on offer.

My most exciting appointment of the day was a behind closed doors presentation of The Last Guardian with Creative Director Fumito Ueda.

While almost half the footage in the presentation was featured in Sony’s conference, it was good to be able to get some insight into the game from the extra bit of commentary provided. If you missed the conference, this gorgeous puzzle based game focusing on the relationship between a young boy whom you control and a giant dog like animal called Trico.

Trico was said to be inspired by a mix of household pets and like household pets, is a bit wild and unpredictable at times. To progress you must utilise the strength of each character.

One thing I instantly noticed and later mentioned by Ueda was the very linear nature of the game. The game is set for a targeted release in 2016 exclusively for PS4 although from the language used it seemed that the release window could shift.

Up next was an appointment with Loot Interactive who were keen to showcase three upcoming games, Whispering Willows, Back to Bed and Velocibox.

My time was spent with the first of the three, Whispering Willow, which was a very unique 2D horror/adventure puzzle game due for release on PS4 soon. The primary game mechanic is the ability to project the main protagonist spirit into realm of ghosts. This is used to complete puzzles and talk to other ghosts.

While I normally love puzzle games, most the puzzles seemed to revolve more around pulling levers and less about actual thinking. Despite this, the combination of a cool atmosphere, nice art style and unique take on the horror genre left me somewhat impressed with what I played.

Being somewhat critical of the PES franchise in the last few years, I was curious to see what improvements Konami are making in this year’s entry PES 2016.

During their presentation, they ran through a whole host of improvements including advanced collision, intelligent AI, camera angle improvements, new animations, visual upgrade and new commentary. I couldn’t help but feel that most of these improvements sounded a little bit generic. With that in mind I decided I’ll give it a go for myself and see how it goes.

In terms of gameplay, the game felt very smooth and the AI seemed to work pretty well.

There were many parts of the game, including the Career Mode, Competition and Teams available and commentary I wasn’t able to try out. For the most part though, the game seemed reasonably promising although the inability to play in the A-League would be a big problem in my books. The game launches on this generation and last generation on September 15th / 17th, 2015.

My last appointment for the day was for Forza Motorsports 6.

From the presentation given, it seems that a lot of improvements and changes are present.  Weather, a long overdue feature, is now an addition to the series. It seems that no expenses were spared in getting it done right as well, which is promising.

Each raindrop is physically simulated and a lot of effort was put into puddles, effect of water on materials and aquaplaning.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any hands on time with the game so I don’t know how these things translate to the actual gameplay.

Another interesting addition in this entry is a new career mode called Stories of Motorsports which features about 70 hours of gameplay. This mode is broken into five volumes which is further divided up into different series.

For each series you are able to choose the car division you would like to race in. Micro transactions, one of the most major criticisms of the last Forza Motorsports game, will also be absent at launch. The game launches on September 15th / 18th, 2015.

Following this, I was finally able to get some hands on time with the Gears of War: Ultimate Edition.

During the presentation the previous day, the developers were very much pushing the fact that this isn’t a simple rerelease, the game has been modernised and built from the ground up.

My brief time on the multiplayer very much reflected what they were saying. The game very much feels like a modern Gears of War game and without being told so, there is no way I would have guessed it was the original Gears of War. The game launches in August 2015 on Xbox One with a PC version also announced.

On a somewhat related note, my final game for the day was the upcoming Ratchet & Clank for PS4.

The game is a re-imagining of the first entry in the series featuring new gameplay elements and weapons not previously featured in the game. Having had a very late introduction into the Ratchet & Clank causing me to have missed the original game, I was unable to make a proper comparison and see how similar or different it really was. From what I played though, the game feels fresh and modern and I’m very excited for the release on PS4 on June 30th 2016.

The post Reflecting Back – Day Two of E3 2015 appeared first on Shane the Gamer.