It also means a player will attempt to use the most suitable part of their body to control or pass the ball depending on how they receive it. Wannabe Ronaldos can still spend hours perfecting stepovers, flip flaps and rainbow flicks but the point is you can beat players with just a good old-fashioned burst of pace. Konami has added what it calls Real Touch+, which basically means that dextrous use of the left stick can be used to manipulate the ball in tight spaces, allowing you to beat opposition defenders and exploit the smallest of gaps without having to learn any beat-‘em-up-style button combos. That makes it possible to play on the edges of your opponent’s penalty box looking for an opening. Laying off the sprint button opens up the pitch, giving you time and space to find a teammate or take your marker by surprise by suddenly bursting past them.
Tear around the pitch at full speed and you’ll regularly find yourself dispossessed. PES 2018 is played at a slower pace than your typical FIFA fan will be used to, but it’s a better game for it. Although perhaps we just spent too many games playing with Simon Mignolet between the sticks. Konami has also added an indicator to show which player you’ll take control of next when you’re defending, which goes some way to taking any guesswork out of your defensive organisation, although it still has a habit of refusing to give you control of a man behind the ball when you’re chasing an opposition breakaway.Īll your hard work can also be totally undone by a goalkeeper parrying a shot rather than holding it, which they seem to do just often enough to make it annoying. It feels like there’s less luck involved, giving you more chance of winning the ball against strikers that are good in the air. Winning defensive headers, particularly from corners, is all about timing, with a couple of steps usually required to get above your opposite number and head the ball away. Failure to maintain defensive shape will more often than not result in conceding a goal as opposition forwards look to exploit gaps left by your wandering back line.ĭefending in general seems tougher but more satisfying. Against AI PES 2018 is definitely a tougher game. Perhaps the opposition teams have just got better. Besides, no real-life team has ever finished a game with 100% passing accuracy and if everything you did went exactly as you imagined it you’d score with every attack, but there are times when a move will break down as a result and you’ll want to pull your hair out. A certain number of these are an inevitable result of the game and your button inputs not quite being in sync – how does it tell the difference between a short, hard pass and a softer, longer one? – and they’re acceptable up to a point. Occasionally a pass will inexplicably go astray, either to a teammate it wasn’t intended for or, if you’re unlucky, to a point where it’s easily intercepted by an opposition player. Players are now better at using their bodies to shield the ball, so you can combine changes of direction with bursts of pace to keep the ball and recycle possession. Creating opportunities is about taking risks and the changes to the passing only emphasise that. In fact, do everything at one pace and you’ll struggle to get anywhere. Playing the ball into your frontmen requires good control, strength or a combination of the two, and without support, more often than not it’ll go nowhere. That means you’ll spend the first few games raging at your players for their inability to complete what used to be fairly straightforward passes, but soon you’ll become accustomed to the slightly more relaxed style and concentrate on playing it safe.