Read more: Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 reviewīut let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the PC port. Soon my game became more and more reliant on the risky killer ball or the whipped in cross, less Champions League and more FA Cup. PES 2018 really nails the joy of an expertly lofted long pass, and that feeling inevitably influenced my decisions. In last year’s FIFA I favoured short, quick, possession passes, but the longer I spent with PES, the more ambitious my passing became. When added together, they dictate how you play. These differences aren’t just idiosyncrasies, though. It’s been a couple of years since I last tried Konami’s interpretation of the beautiful game, and my FIFA-ised muscle memory meant I spent the first couple of hours continually dropping passes too short and belting free kicks into the stands. Long passes are more accurate, slide tackles are riskier, crosses are deadlier and keepers parry the ball just a little more often. The experience isn’t necessarily better or worse, but it is different in a hundred tiny ways. Moving from PES to FIFA is like switching from an iPhone to an Android phone, or from an Xbox controller to a PlayStation one.
