FIFA 12 vs. PES 2012: Which Game Is Worth Your Time and Money?

Welcome ladies and gentlemen for the annual iteration of FIFA vs PES!

Here we examine the upcoming FIFA and PES games, the enhancements over the previous version, the developers hypocrisy about how this game is twice better than last year's game,  and the potential both games have.

So, without further ado, it's time to see which football game is actually worth buying and shelling out no less than $60 (unless you're buying it on the PC, and in that case, you're one unlucky gamer).

FIFA 12: Improving Defence

According to David Rutter, you''re getting twice the value of the game mainly due to defensive improvements, promising that this time defenders will not frustrate or disappoint and will act realistically.

Of course, this coming from Rutter, a bigger hypocrite than even PES' Seabass is in no way assuring. Many promises were meaningless before, such as the magical 250 improvements in FIFA 09 (seriously, he said 250), as well as the personality plus feature, which really was more of a lack of personality, due to the fact that the AI players didn't act like their real life counterparts, but were recorded movements of other FIFA players recorded by the development team.

Regardless of what Rutter said, FIFA 12's defense actually looks better than that of FIFA 11, and while the game looks identical to FIFA 11 from a graphical standpoint, there does seem to be more life in the players this time around, albeit barely. 

PES 2012's Teammate Control System

Getting used to second place by now hasn't stopped PES 2012 from improving their game. And it's quite remarkable progress really, from the insipid PES 2008, to the abysmal glitch fest in PES 2009, to the ridiculously slow tempo of PES 2010. They finally found their footing with PES 2011, and now they plan to carry on that momentum finally to game which looks like a real football simulator.

While it too looks identical to it's previous iteration, the improvements are in the engine room, rather than facial, Konami's going for what matters this time around.

The latest addition to PES' gameplay mechanic is the Teammate Control System, you click the right stick in the direction of your desired off the ball player, and you move him to the area of your liking.

While this is difficult to master, Wii owners who played PES on the Wii will probably relate to it much faster than the PS3/X360 owners, as they've been there before quite a few times in the past few years.

This gives greater control over the character, and while in FIFA you counted on your computer's AI (which is almost always a 50-50), here you have control over your own destiny, so to speak, and the results are much more rewarding.

FIFA 12: Career Mode

While the developers of FIFA 12 claim that they "revolutionized" the online gameplay, let's leave that annual load of bullocks and focus on something they actually improved considerably.

In FIFA 12, the variable factors have more life this time around.

What this means, is that players will get upset, depending on their salaries, whether they play or not, and what the team is achieving. They can talk to the press if they're pissed off and gather interest from other clubs, and talk about dressing room issues, etc...

Morale plays a stronger role this time around, and it seems you might find yourself feeling that you're surrounded by rumors, transfer gossip and the like, you can even receive e-mails from the players, stating how they felt about the previous match, and your relationship with them will affect their commitment to the club and it's cause.

While it's bewildering as to why EA didn't implement these simple features before, it's better late than never.

What is also worthy of pointing out and commending, is the fact that transfers in the final day of the transfer window are now calculated as hours, rather than it being just another day in the transfer window, with a timer clock ticking and telling you how far you've got until the deadline is reached.

Your Chief Executive will even inform you of potential last minute transfers, while rival clubs try to buy your top players for bargain prices. And with players moral a crucial factor, your player might actually play like garbage and you'll find yourself forced to give in to his demands and sell him.

What will be interesting to see however, is whether or not the developers will develop the game with an open mind.

In FIFA 11, Barcelona were treated with more than what they deserved, almost all of the first team players were too "loyal" to leave the club, regardless of the triple wages you offered them, which is idiotic at best. The only chance you had of playing with Messi was to either play with Barcelona, or transfer him from the edit player menu.

Will the developers treat Barcelona, Chelsea, Man City, Real Madrid, etc., all with the "above the law" treatment? It seems so, but perhaps Adebayour and Robinho claiming that Manchester City was "awful", is proof that money isn't always the road for happiness.

Then again, this wouldn't be the first time FIFA's developers did things unrealistically, and ignored logic.

PES 2012: Fixing Defense

Instead of wasting my breath, I'll copy and paste this beautiful info from Wikipedia:

"The "catch-up bug", where defenders would catch dribbling attackers too easily, regardless of the attacker's pace, will be addressed."

Oh PES. Sweet beautiful PES. I finally find myself loving you once again.

The biggest messed up glitch in BOTH (all capital letters mind you, as this was one ridiculous bug) FIFA and PES. The fact that one of the developers pointed it out loud and stated it is music to our ears.

Finally, no more John Terry catching up with Theo Walcott (seriously, how did it take them so long to find this one out?), fans will be able to place Walcott, Ronaldo and the like in the striker position, knowing that speed will prevail against the likes of John Terry and Puyol in case their positioning is wrong...at least in PES 2012.

FIFA 12: Essam El Shawal and Abd Allah El Harbi

If you're not an Arab, then you couldn't care less (hell, even I couldn't care less), but once those two commentators were announced, the Arab world went wild.

Almost everyone on the streets stated their intentions to buy FIFA 12 after finding out that the most popular Arab commentators are going to be lending their voices for the new FIFA game. Even those who don't own a PS3 plan to buy one, and if you google FIFA 12, their names in Arabic are amongst the first things to show up in the list. It is that big to the Arabian football fans.

While the video shows how lifeless commentators are forced to be because of the development team restricting them to read mediocre comments from a paper sheet, rather than expressing themselves the way they usually do, which is the reason the fans liked them in the first place (Martin Tyler and Andy Gray will forever be shoved in the back of our memories).

Let's put it this way, EA had the ability to make Martin Tyler and Andy Gray sound insipid and boring, it was that bad!

Regardless, one can expect FIFA's sales to increase dramatically in the Arab world, and if they consider adding Arab teams, most notably Egyptian giants, Ahly and Zamalek, it's safe to say their profits will only increase more.

PES 2012: Animation and Movement

You're watching the FIFA 11 vs PES 2011 video comparison, a video that has become so legendary in stature on YouTube, that it's quite difficult to find the original video that spawned it all.

Assigning the famous song, "Doumo Arrigato Mr.Roboto" by not Styx, but Alvin and the Chipmunks to add insult to injury, the uploader points out how robotic PES' animation are when compared to FIFA 11.

It appears even Seabass noticed that video, because he and his team have stated that they'd like to enhance the animation to their engine, and bring life to the players.

It's good to learn from one's mistakes.

Here's hoping the developers at FIFA and PES actually listen to the voice of reason (which they keep ignoring), and give fans the freedom to choose which shorts and socks to choose when choosing the team's attire, as it's getting more difficult to play with teams wearing the same colored shorts or shirts on a regular basis.

FIFA 12: Fixing the Messed Up Mechanics

Edit: This slide was added after the article was published, after it was realized that some crucial points had to be addressed in FIFA.

*Clears throat*

Dear David Rutter,

Boy, do we have a bone to pick with you. In fact sir, we have a fight to pick with you, as some of us want to hurt you physically, others want to take things further, by subjecting you to even worse punishment.

Your messed up game.

There are three points that are killing FIFA, and are sure to drive FIFA fans such as myself away from your product.

1- Personality + :

You promised us that players would act even more realistic than ever, by making them act like their life counter parts.

Of course Mr.Rutter, knowing your lies, I expected it to be a farce of sorts, I just didn't expect it to be absolute sh*te.

This is what I stated in last years edition of this article:

"While indeed, this might sound like a revolutionary concept, it's safe to say that EA didn't build the personality of each player from the ground up.

That would take an eternity. But rather, they created a new "Traits system" of sorts, where each player's traits are assigned to him (ex: Rooney would have an increased aggression and hard-working traits, while van Persie would have the injury prone and technical traits assigned to him), all of which can be assigned with flexibility in mind to make the players closer to their real life counterparts. That way, while Rooney has aggression added to his personality, van Bommel's aggression is on a much higher scale."

Well what to you know? I was so perfectly spot on, that even I was amused by my assumption.

You get in the team management menu, and check the players "Traits", such as injury prone and long shot taker, exactly like I called it.

So why am I disappointed?

Because your Personality + was actually not the real life players behavior, but a recorded gaming session of other FIFA gamers.

Don't believe me? 

How about this, all the players can dribble and use skills (if they have four stars), long passes have been decreased dramatically unlike in past iterations, because real life gamers don't make long passes that often.

And most of all, the fact that during your piece of sh*t goal-kicks, the players stand in-between the goalkeeper and the defender, steal the ball and score the cheapest goal in the world, which because of you, happens at least once a day for every gamer.

Which brings us to our next point.

2- Rewarding the cheats:

For over four years, this community has begged you to fix that bullsh*t goal-kick feature, but you never listened to the voice of reason.

But is that the only thing? Not even close.

Mr.Rutter, I was playing against a friend and the game was at 3-3 in the second half of extra time, he scored the winner in injury time and I won.

Yes, HE scored, and it was ME that won by four goals to three. How on earth did that one happen?

I was playing with that same friend, and we were playing with Inter and Bayern, I took the goal kick, and passed it to one of the four Bayern players in front of me, and lucky me, there wasn't a single Inter Milan player in sight.

Mr.Rutter. I was playing with Inter.

Where the hell were my back four??? Seriously, till this very day I keep wondering where the hell are they? They were all up front, but what were they doing?

Then there's the name glitch which many of us faced (unrelated to cheats, but still worth mentioning), selecting your team, shall we say Arsenal, and placing Richard Val Patrick as the striker, next to the wingers Anthony Alexander and Timothy Wesker.

Wait, what???

Those don't sound like football players, those don't even sound like real human beings!

Suddenly, the entire game changed the player's names, just having the same initials, but a completely different name.

Inconsistency at it's finest.

Finally, the clowns that play online, they choose either Barcelona, Chelsea or Real Madrid (for certain inflated players), and when you beat them fair and square with a team like Roma, they quit.

How do you punish them, by counting them the match as a loss? They were losing anyways, why couldn't you ban them for a week or something? We're guaranteed that whomever we'll face will do the same thing once they're losing, not to mention the racial slur and curses that come from the sourest of losers.

Just ban those pierrots already!

Also, celebrating sucks, I skip once I score, but rarely find someone who does the same, if I wanted to celebrate, I'd wear a team's shirt and run around my house wearing the shirt and a boxer, with two different colors of socks... Don't judge me.

The catastrophes are endless, it'd take forever to write about all of them, so we'll leave it at that, but the real catastrophe is that you still haven't fixed any of them, but rather make a new collision engine and brag about it, which we're sure will lead us to bigger glitches, and adding to the overall inconsistency of the game.

3- The possession system:

The biggest piss of all.

By possession, we mean the fact that almost every time it's the same stupid story.

95% out of the games played, possession is around 50-50, the other 5% are around 60-40.

Does that sound like a bad thing? Not yet, be patient, it only gets worse from here on out.

You have the ball in your box, you clear it, but it goes to the exact location of one of the opposition's players, you take the ball back, you pass it to one of your players, the ball goes in a different direction than the one you passed the ball at, and goes to one of the oppositions players.

They always have to get the ball back, and if you don't pass it or clear it, they tackle you with super human aggression, take the ball and again the possession is messed up.

Even if you pass it to Walcott, the fastest man on earth, the computer will catch him with Puyol, a slowpoke in real life.

Look at it this way, in real life, Barcelona play against weak La Liga teams and the only time they get possession is goal-kicks and kick-off after conceding goals, resulting in a 70-30 possession, if not more for Barcelona.

Now try to do that in FIFA 11, using the exact same teams and players, and you'll see it's almost impossible to do, possession will once again be around 50-50, even if you win by six goals, it makes no difference.

If we're better than the computer, shouldn't we enjoy the fact that we're killing them, rather than have them come off as super-enhanced.

And speaking of which, that's all the difficulty setting at Legendary ever does, they're just the exact same gameplay with enhanced attributes. Also, the computer on Legendary loses by six goals to nil, you might want to fix that as well.

Thanks for your time Mr.Rutter, hope you one day do what's right, and listen to the voices of gamers, the voice of reason, rather than those strange crazy illogical ideas that occur at your EA offices in Canada (why is a footballing game developed in Canada?).

Your truly,

The FIFA community (AKA the one that speaks but you never listen to).

Conclusion

It all comes down to personal preferences, so the winner can only be decided by the buyer. Hopefully this article has helped you decide which game to buy.

FIFA has been the leader for the last four years, and they plan on making it fifth in a row, while PES have been trying to regain their favorite position in the football simulation genre by taking risks and trying out new ideas.

The only thing that matters in both games, is to fix the defensive bugs (thank you, Konami), enhance the career mode, and get rid of all the @$$wipes who keep cheating online by choosing the strongest team in the game and then disconnecting when losing. And counting that game as a loss isn't good enough, ban them for a week or something, they're making our blood boil.

Thank you, and hope to see you next year, when FIFA 13 adds a new "Be a Referee" or something.