Konami have revealed that PES 2016 will be heading to current and last-gen consoles in September, one week before the release of FIFA 16. The series celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and this has been acknowledged with the game’s official tagline – “Love The Past, Play The Future”.
In today’s press release, Konami gave us a huge list of the new features for this year’s edition. In terms of improvements on-the-pitch, there have been many refinements in order to capitalize on last year’s impressive outing. An advanced collision system will attempt to accurately represent the physical side of the beautiful game, which also affects the game’s new aerial battles.
1 v 1 control has been improved, offering a wider range of movements and more responsiveness, which should rectify some of the slow animation transitions and general clunkiness that we felt at times in PES 2015. Defenders who execute perfectly timed tackles will be able to shove opposing players out of the way and turn over possession.
Improvements to the AI will allow teammates to use intelligence to find space, something which was severely lacking last year. This will also be affected by the strategy that your team sets out to play to.
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Goalkeeper ID will give unique personalities to goalkeepers, which will affect catching, clearing, collapsing and deflecting. Celebrations will now be manually controlled, in a feature which appears to mirror the one featured in the FIFA series.
PES 2016 will feature three times as many animations as last year’s game, which will affect players and goalkeepers. Situational animations are a part of this, with players complaining when a foul hasn’t been given, or moaning at their teammates for not passing to them in open space. New ball physics will hopefully work in conjunction with these new animations to eliminate the on-rails feel which sometimes presented itself in past titles.
Of course, we get the obligatory updated visuals, which now include rain splashes when players slide to win possession and turf being kicked up into the air. New turf textures and night-time lighting are also included.
Speaking of rain, we’ll be presented with a new dynamic weather system this year, which will allow the possibility of a downpour to begin in the middle of a match, altering gameplay. This will be an offline feature only. In terms of camera angles, PES 2015 provided us with a range of options, but none of them were particularly great. PES 2016 will be introducing a new wide dynamic camera, which will give the player a larger field of vision, in addition to automatically tilting and zooming to provide players with the best possible view.
One of the main criticisms of last year’s game related to the outdated Master League mode, which has served as Pro Evolution Soccer’s equivalent of a career mode for many years. Master League has seen a total revamp for PES 2016, but Konami are keeping quiet about this for now, aside from mentioning the addition of new menus and a new player transfer system.
MyClub, which is Konami’s answer to Ultimate Team, will be back for its second outing, introducing player level systems and players which will be exclusive to the mode. There will be a number of pre-order bonuses for those who wish to gain an extra advantage in MyClub this year.
Finally, new commentators have been included in both the UK and Germany, which will hopefully improve on last year’s outdated lines. PS4 owners who love to spend time in the game’s editing features will be overjoyed to hear that image importing will be available this year.
Now that’s what I call a reveal! Konami have given us a huge batch of information Band they’ll be discussing more at E3 2015 over the next week. There’s a lot of new features here, more than I had expected considering last year’s late release date.
That late release meant that a lot of gamers had already secured their football/soccer fix in September with the FIFA series, but with Konami’s announcement that PES 2016 will be launching a week in advance of EA’s footballing powerhouse, both companies are ready to enter into fierce competition this year.
We reviewed PES 2015 last year, and found it to be a return to form for the series which had previously struggled ever since its transition from the PS2 era. As previously mentioned, Neymar Jr. will be the cover star for this year’s game, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we get to see a feature trailer over the next few days. It was also announced yesterday that the series will be retaining the UEFA Champions League and Europa League licences for another three years.
PES 2016 will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. It will be launching on Sep 15th in the US, Sep 17th in Europe, and Sep 18th in the UK.
Check out the new trailer below.