PES 2014 was billed as the first PES using the new fox engine. It fell well short of the hype however, with the majority of fans being very unhappy with it.
Gari Clark (@GariClark) was very critical, sharing on Twitter: “Last Tweet of the night before bed. As much as I love PES, PES 2014 is an absolute nightmare. It really hit me how bad it was earlier.”
Meanwhile Asim Tanvir was appalled with the game’s online performance. He also tweeted: “I rarely get frustrated and annoyed at a game, but it’s just laughable how bad PES2014 is online. Shocking.”
Finally, Lawrence Schott was blunt in his assessment: “Playing PES2014 was literally the worst experience of my life.” We think he was exaggerating on this but does paint a good picture nonetheless.
PES 2014 Not Finished
Konami naturally denied PES 2014 was a poor or even unfinished game.
With that said they practically admitted such through European Brand Manager Adam Bhatti recently, who said: “We learned with PES 14. As you mentioned, it was probably half done, and I think that was the feedback we got from all the fans.”
He continued: “With PES 14, we had a new engine – FOX Engine – that we were trying to incorporate and many of the gameplay feelings of PES were just lost really, because we were trying to make a game that looked beautiful. But really, PES has been known for playing the beautiful game but not really caring about… how we moved, having the most accurate animation.”
Bhatti also admitted earlier PES titles were more befitting of the brand saying: “[Earlier PES titles] definitely captured certain things, like a player run, for example, but it was super responsive and that allowed you to be very instinctive when you played. [In] PES 14, you had to think two seconds before you were going to do something because the animation would play out, and that’s not PES.”
It seems Konami are learning from their mistakes as PES 2015 will be released when it is completed. That could mean a later release than expected but on the upside it does show Konami are serious about making PES 2015 as good as it can be.