The fine balances also make comebacks more interesting. Kepa simply got up and started yelling at his defenders – not something that goalies would be able to do when hit smack on the face from point-blank range. The last time, the ball hit Kepa Arrizabalaga on his face with full force and bounced out of play. In one of the games, Marcus Rashford waltzed into the box in smooth, lyrical fashion, only to hit the woodward twice and then, on the rebound, struck straight at the goalkeeper, twice. There is also the odd annoyance where you keep hitting the same target from point-blank range. Smaller teams such as BSC Young Boys and Eibar do tend to threaten you on the counter like a world-beating squad. There is also this odd irregularity where lower ranked teams suddenly spring up and start playing like Champions League contenders. Pushing out from the back after breaking a corner attack feels natural. The accurate passing play means that you now take longer to pinpoint your balls from the midfield, which in turn leaves you more vulnerable to being tackled, or in case of defending, mistiming your tackle and facing a completely needless yellow card. David de Gea has a habit of saving more with his feet, van Dijk will always stand his ground even during a counter-attacking wave, and all of this makes for a lot of fun. The authenticity is further heightened with how the players behave on the pitch. Lionel Messi will always look for space, and PES 2021 rewards you with much improved dribbling controls to use his strengths. Thomas Mueller at Bayern Munich makes the ultimate false runs to throw your opponent defenders off their tracks. Manchester United’s Paul Pogba plays like the footballer he has the potential to be, which means that he puts in a cantering, midfield-bossing shift every time you play with him. Have Cristiano Ronaldo in your team? He’s almost always likely to lay off a deft touch when you play quick, one-touch passing, and by the time you have a support player on the ball, you are likely to see Ronaldo lurking around in a scoring area, waiting for you to slip in a through or lob a cross over. It is also this part of the game that really rewards your team’s best players. Launching counter-attacks like these is a joy. This allows you to do things like time the poaching striker’s run to perfection, or come out with an impeccably timed sliding tackle that takes your opponent out, gets the ball and sets you up for a counter attack. Like in the real world, you have players taking time to eke out the perfect defence-splitting through ball. The refinements to PES 2021 Season Update come in the gameplay department, where the overall pace of the game is slower than before. The real Ronaldo and Messi finally stands up While I’m still not convinced about PES 2021’s performance with the ancillary bits, there is one thing that the game gets very right this year – the pure football gameplay at the core of the game. At the end of the day, what keeps drawing thousands of football fans not unlike myself to these games is the promise of even more realistic football, and an ancillary experience that grows better with each passing year. The result, in most ways, is a positive one. On Xbox (via Games The Shop), it costs Rs 2,199, which really is nothing for a brand new (and also fairly popular) game. Its pricing actually is a big draw – on PC, PES 2021 costs Rs 800 (via Steam). This year, then, we appear to be left with promises of improved football mechanics and a lower price tag. Konami has channeled all of its energy and resources into a 2022 overhaul of the football video game, a genre that can almost definitely get repetitive even for the die-hard football fan. About a week ahead, I came to learn why PES 2021 is called a ‘Season Update – because that is exactly what it is. PES 2021, or should we say, eFootball Pro Evolution Soccer 2021 Season Update, had such a circumstantial and matter-of-fact build-up to the release that I was not even very familiar with exactly what Konami was up to this year.
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