FIFA 14 vs Pro Evo 2014: Which Football Game Should You Get?

There are two football games on the market. The vast majority of people will only buy one of them. So which one should you buy?P

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Last year, it was a tough call. This year, it is not.P

Instead of reviewing each game separately, I'm going to compare each of them with regards to the important stuff. See where each one shines with regards to the competition. That way, even if you don't want to heed my final advice, you can at least break each game down and see which one is the right game for you.P

Some things to note before we begin. FIFA 14 feels in many ways to be a "best of" album. Don't expect too many changes or improvements. The next generation of consoles has required a new generation of sports games, and I excuse EA if they've had to spend most of their time and money on the Xbox One/PS4 versions of the game.P

Pro Evo, meanwhile, is all-new, thanks to a shift to Konami's in-house Fox Engine. In many ways, it feels like a next-gen game on current-gen systems. In other ways, though...P

SEXPAND

VISUALSP

FIFA 14: Have you played FIFA 10? 11? 12? 13? This basically looks the same. A creaking engine bids farewell, and not a moment too soon. In 2013 the cartoon player models and twitchy animation is starting to look very dated, and no amount of fancy pre-game intros can change that.P

PES 2014: It is, for the most part, beautiful. A new engine does wonders. Player models for big stars look terrifyingly realistic, kits are detailed, crowds are alive and stadiums look wonderful. The animation is butter-smooth (UPDATE: I played it on PC, but I'm hearing of frequent stutters on console). If you squint, you'll think you're playing a next-gen game a few months early.P

Winner: PES 2014.P

ON THE PITCHP

FIFA 14: See above. Not many changes this year to a tried and tested formula. A new shooting system works a lot better than you think it will, providing more satisfying efforts and more varied - and realistic - trajectories. Aside from that, though, it's your standard arsenal of quick passes, skill moves and the first-touch stick.P

PES 2014: Hrm. In the middle of the park, it's perfect. Smooth animations and a "heavy" feel to the players lead to physical contests and a more realistic competition for possession. The fact the ball is totally separate from the player's feet also leads to great contact between players. In attack, though, it completely falls apart. The game's too slow for the intricate attacking moves you need to score on anything other than the counter; both shooting and passing sometimes feel like they take an eternity to let loose.P

Winner: FIFA 14P

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCEP

FIFA 14: You know what? Mostly the same as last year's. There's a pattern emerging here. Through-balls felt smarter though, which was a nice change from the last few years.P

PES 2014: Perhaps the biggest problem with Konami's effort. Passes routinely go to the wrong player. The AI will select the wrong defender at a crucial moment. Defending in the box is a comedy routine. Certain throughballs will ALWAYS go out of bounds. For a series that used to be the smarter one, it's a real disappointment.P

Winner: FIFA 14P

SEXPAND

LICENSINGP

FIFA 14: The usual array of domestic licenses, including the all-important Premier League, make this the game to get if you need to be playing as the real stars in their real kits. The state of national team licensing needs to be sorted out, though; it feels like every year less and less of them are fully licenses, replaced by replica teams in awful fake jerseys.P

PES 2014: Yes, it has the Champions League. And some other major European leagues, like Spain and Italy. But the fact the Premier League and Bundesliga aren't there will kill this game for many. Its national team licensing is as bad as FIFA's.P

Winner: FIFA 14P

COMMENTARYP

FIFA 14: Sure, there are plenty of recycled lines, given we've had the same commentary team for a few years now, but there were also a surprising number of new ones as well. The best part? I heard Martin Tyler tell the same silly anecdote about Norwich twice, only he recorded it in two different ways.P

PES 2014: An embarrassment. The worst commentary in modern sports gaming somehow gotworse, thanks to the addition of a system where the game tries to create organic sentences by mixing team names with canned lines, but comes off sounding like Stephen Hawking after six pints.P

Winner: FIFA 14P

MENUSP

FIFA 14: Surprisingly, it got a complete overhaul. And it's awesome. The best menu in sports video games. Rather than a bewildering array of buttons, it's grouped more like the Xbox 360 dashboard (with a dash of Google Now), everything laid out in giant contextual tiles. It works perfectly, making getting through career modes a breeze. Well done, EA.P

PES 2014: Shocking. The PS2 would be ashamed of this menu system. It somehow got substantially worse than last year's, which wasn't great to start with. It looks like something a JRPG from 1997 would have used. It's not intuitive, is slow, and leaves many important features buried where you'll need to check the internet to find them. God help you if you're going to be spending 100 hours in career mode...P

Winner: FIFA 14P

CAREER MODESP

FIFA 14: Some slight improvements in terms of communicating your progress and standing, but largely unchanged from last year. Manager mode is fine, but player careers need some tweaking; I was playing for England before I was starting for...Bolton.P

PES 2014: Another area where Pro Evo didn't just fail to improve, but took a step back. Master League and career mode have been stripped of equipment and press conferences, and I quit my first player career after sitting for twenty minutes cycling through the menu without ever getting picked for a game.P

Winner: FIFA 14P

MULTIPLAYERP

Note: I reviewed Pro Evo on PC, where multiplayer is practically non-existent. I didn't think it fair to compare the two because of this, but note that a lot of stuff above, like teammate AI and menus, makes as big an impact on multiplayer as it does in singleplayer.P

OVERALLP

Winner: FIFA 14.P

FIFA 14 wins in a landslide, helped by a number of own goals from Konami. Despite an ageing engine and lack of many real updates other than a new menu, FIFA 14 feels like a refinement, a final perfection of current-generation football games.P

Pro Evo, on the other hand, seems to have put all its eggs in the basket marked "New Engine". While it's visually stunning, and in some ways plays a more beautiful game of football, it's undone by several fundamental issues both on the park and off. The fact many peripheral aspects of the game have even regressed doesn't help the game's cause.

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GTA V Game Review Michael Learns to Rockstar

Grand Theft Auto is a title that everyone knows. It’s the name of a series of games that helped define a generation, and in the 12 years since the third core game in the series helped push gaming into a larger spotlight.

Gaming has changed though. It’s been five years since GTA IV burst onto the scene, and in that gap between major GTA sequels, the genre has evolved. GTA V proves that it has what it takes to not only still be relevant , but to take survival of the fittest to a new level. It’s the kind of game that knows it comes from an older generation. But instead of trying to recapture that youth, GTA V instead runs with it and embraces that theme of old dogs staying true to form and celebrating what makes the franchise so damn popular in the first place.

GTA V is the game that once again sets a new benchmark in excellence.

Set back in sunny Los Santos, GTA V takes place across three distinct characters and storylines. Michael is your former career criminal who cut a deal to save his own skin and that of his family, living a high life of luxury that has brought him nothing but pain. His wife is banging anything with a pulse to get away from her husband, his kids hate him and his anger is barely kept in check.

Franklin is your thug from the hood, but a man with his eye on becoming more than just a dimebag-dealing hoodlum stuck in the ghettos amongst friends and family who embarrass him more than anything else.

And then there’s Trevor. Freakin’ Trevor.

While Michael and Franklin are pretty much believable characters stuck in a rut in life, Trevor is an unstable force of nature with a quick temper, drug habit and sociopathic tendencies that would make Jack the Ripper look like a saint in comparison. And he’s pretty much the best character that Rockstar has ever unleashed in a game.

Trevor is brutal, unforgiving but honest to a fault. He’s the spirit of GTA V, Jack Thomson’s worst nightmare and the poster child for gratuitous violence and explicit sex in video games. And in GTA V, he’s perfect.

But moving on, what Rockstar has managed to do is to make three characters who are clearly distinctive personalities. You can see this when you do something as switch between them. Michael may be getting a crap cup of coffee, or Franklin may be walking his dog. Trevor will most likely be sleeping off a hangover of note and wondering why he just woke up wearing a skirt.

And that switch between three characters forms a large part of the appeal and evolution of GTA V. Barring certain mission circumstances and consequences from completing them, you can switch at any time between the unholy trio of hell-raisers.

It’s a quick and intuitive process, that can be done anywhere and anytime. And while it’s a neat feature, it really comes in handy during missions. Switching between the three during shootouts, getaway drives and heists. It’s something that becomes second nature, and a welcome way to spice up combat.

So what has really changed in the years between GTA IV and V. Well for starters, driving a car is now no longer a labour worthy of Hercules himself. Handling has been massively improved, but to a degree that tows a fine line between arcade physics and realism. It’s a welcome return to form that sits in the middle of the driving experience from GTA III and IV, with control and decent handling balancing some of the trickier aspects of outrunning cops.

Your three leads also have access to their own special abilities, which can be recharged and lengthened the more you play with them. Michael can enter a slow-mo bullet time, but minus the Max Payne dramatic dodges, in which he can precisely aim for a headshot and save his own skin.

Franklin gets to drift around corners in slow motion in a manner usually reserved for Fast and Furious sequels, while Trevor can anger up his blood and halve the damage he receives while dishing out even more than usual. Pulling a page from the San Andreas book of gameplay, characters now have several stats, spread across stamina, shooting and other categories that will improve the more you partake in certain activities that are tailored towards them.

Sprint more, and you’ll up your stamina. Fly more often and you’ll avoid turbulence. Aircraft controls though, especially in helicopters,are still fiddly at best when compared to the vastly improved driving mechanics.

Getting into a gunfight reveals some old school DNA in GTA V. You’ve got a weapon wheel and infinite pockets, but honestly, I loved the idea of having a dozen weapons on me at any given time. There’s some Max Payne influence in these segments, especially when playing as Michael, as characters move and react more realistically. Despite that pedigree though, combat can still be awkward at times, while the returning cover system still falls just short of hitting that sweet spot.

Weapon upgrades do help address this issue though, with the arsenal on offer feeling heavy, meaty and realistic. Plus the mini-gun finally makes a welcome return.

Getting into mischief has also been slightly overhauled in GTA V. A wanted level of one star can easily escalate to two stars when the cops are after you, and you’ll need to not only outrun them, but successfuuly hide as well when they start searching for you.

The more destructive your crime spree, the more resources the fuzz will spend on tracking you down, using helicopters and multiple cop cars to sniff you out. Staying out of their cones of sight will become second nature to you as the game goes on, while the increased AI of law enforcement means that they’ll be far less forgiving and more than willing to use lethal force.

It’s also all part of the new stealth system, which may not be Metal Gear or Splinter Cell in execution, but is capable enough for several missions. That being said though, cops seem to react a little too quickly to events. Punching a hobo by accident earned me three squad cars on my ass and a shotgun to the face, while trying to cause some destruction in a remote location had all manner of hell descend upon me from the thin blue line.

Missions are also now graded as players work their way through them. Finishing a level without hitting any of the goals available will earn you a bronze medal, while going back to get those extra headshots and timely exits nets you silver and gold medals. It’s a great way to keep players coming back, to tackle those challenges. Challenges which Rockstar is even kind enough to allow you to choose to skip, should you fail over and over again.

Los Santos is a massive slice of America. Divided up into three distinct sections, players will spend a lot of time cruising the streets of Vinewood, exploring in the forests surrounding the state or causing anarchy in the desert in the border regions beyond civilisation and marriages between people that aren’t related to one another.

There’s several landmarks present here, all stolen from with glee from Los Angeles and Santa Monica, that people who have been there will easily recognise. Vinewood boulevard, the Los Santos beach and the Route 66 pier are just a few of the real world locations that have been rendered into GTA V.

It’s a beautiful region to explore, and the Metropolitan areas feel more alive than ever, as cops chase down people other than you for once. There’s also new events that will pop up out of nowhere, where players can retrieve some stolen property, or get lured into an ambush. Events that are separate from the main storyline that is unfolding.

And what a story it is. It’s no longer the soul-crushingly depressing narrative from the GTA IV days that unravels itself here. Sure, there are plenty of serious moments as GTA V spins a yarn, but its done in a manner that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and yet still manages to throw in oddball miscreants and criminals. By the time you’re done reaching at least one of the multiple endings though, you’ll be left satisfied with how the story has reached its conclusion.

Special mention needs to go to the voice actors present for GTA V. Rockstar has done an outstanding job casting their three leads, from Michael, Franklin and Trevor through to random strangers and the other dozens of voices present.

They’re all believable characters, even Trevor with various mental problems on show, and I think it says something of the quality present here when someone walks past my room and wants to know what film I’m watching.

Graphically, GTA V is pushing it.The game looks fantastic, and for the most part, is firing on all cylinders. Facial ticks, animation, consistently smooth frame rates and some phenomenal environmental effects are all present and pushing the PS3 and Xbox 360 to their limits.

It’s not without a few concessions though, as you’ll occasionally find the odd muddy texture popping up or find a background object failing to load. But for one of the last great big hurrahs of this console generation, it’s a game that is firing a massive salvo of graphical might before the rest of the competition arrives.

The other big addition to the game arrives in the form of heists. There’s only a handful of them present in GTA V, but they’re varied and lengthy enough when it comes to substance. As a former bank robber, Michael quickly gets roped back into his old career, with Franklin and Trevor joining him for the ride.

You’ll need proper preparation and planning for these heists though, as they escalate from a jewellery store robbery through to a mission that can only be described in Baysplosions. Along with your core crew, you’ll also need to recruit a capable extra pair of hands. The more skilled your hired gun, the larger the cut they’ll take when a mission is pulled off successfully.

These heists also require extra equipment, which ranges from stealing insecticide gas through to acquiring some janitorial uniforms. You’ll also get the option to tackle these heists by being smart and sneaky, or by being loud and armed to the teeth. Crew members also get a chance to level up and increase their skills during heists, but the handful of these missions available gives them scant opportunity to do so, making it a wasted effort to keep a cheap underling alive.

And yet, there’s still more content in GTA V. Trevor gets to perform all manner of hate crimes as he guns down everyone from Mexican gangbanger to drunk rednecks in the return of Rampage missions, property can be bought and interacted with in order to earn extra coin, characters can be customised and the list just goes on.

By the time I started writing this game review, I’d clocked almost 30 hours so far in the game. And I’ve only just scratched the surface. And that’s not even including the fact that GTA V goes online from October 1. I’ve dabbled in hanging out with my friends, got beyond drunk with Trevor and found so much more just by exploring Los Santos between missions.

Despite all these accomplishments and additions though, GTA V isn’t a huge leap forward for Rockstar. Instead, it’s an evolution of all their previous work, all combined into one sandbox experience on a massive scale. But it’s a satisfying path that the franchise has taken, kicking other genre games off the throne that it helped build.

GTA V was reviewed by Darryn Bonthuys on the 25th of September , 2013 at 3:30 PM on Xbox 360

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Game Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 review

Game Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 review - On the surface it looks like not much has changed in the yearly updated world of Pro Evolution Soccer, but a lack of big new tournaments or flashy features masks the huge work that’s gone into improving the football itself.

After the rigmarole of picking a team (mostly unlicensed, so you get the real Manchester United, but Aston Villa are West Midlands Village) you’re on the pitch, ready to guide your team to victory.

Attacking players have more of a pulse this year. Instead of tottering level with the ball carrier waiting to be marked out, they’re far more inclined to take a run behind enemy lines, dashing down the wings and even making the occasional slanted run in the middle of the pitch.

He can stay like that for hours.

Gone are the days when you’d stand outside the opposition’s box with one foot on the ball, shouting at your men to sodding do something, only to be kneecapped by the sliding boot of a defender moments later. If your men are starting to loiter, you can command one to start running with a quick point and click of the right stick (play with a joypad, people!). It’s an essential move that bypasses occasional AI lethargy and gives you much more precise control.

But all that new attacking movement can leave defenders stuck in the mud. For the most part they’re sensible, but their refusal to dive in for a necessary crunching tackle means that a pressing team can get away with too much. On one occasion a simple clearance from a corner reached my pacey young striker, Gabby Agbonlahor. I’d caught the opposition on the counterattack and Gabby had the entire pitch to run into. The two Liverpool central defenders had taken up sensible positions, and dutifully dashed in to sandwich my lone striker as he powered towards the box. They ran alongside him for a full ten metres without delivering so much as a shifty elbow. I scored an easy goal when I should have ended up in the dirt at the halfway line.

Rooney's face is more detailed, for better or for worse.

No surprise, then, that matches in PES 2012 tend to be high-scoring affairs, but it’s forgivable given how much better the football feels this time around. Everything is faster and more precise. While FIFA’s trick stick has players performing ever more convoluted manoeuvres, PES is about passing and team movement. Matches are far more lively and competitive as a result.

It would be wrong to point to one big factor as the reason behind PES’s revival. It’s the result of a number of incremental improvements on the pitch. Players are more responsive on the ball, a tricky attacker feels different to a lumbering defender, the animations are more convincing, the crowds noisier and attacking play is enormously improved.

PES still struggles to offer anything its monolithic competitor FIFA can’t do with more polish, but 2012 is an incisive diagonal run in the right direction. If only the defenders were a little braver.

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Game Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 review

This latest version of Pro Evolution Soccer feels oddly preordained. Where a match played on its great rival FIFA is at the whim of an object as bouncy and round as, well, a football, a match on PES 2013 feels like you’re performing actions set in the stars by footballing gods.

Passes ping between players with unerring accuracy. Real football sees mis-hit shots flying off into space, or passes bouncing off clumsy legs to run free until they’re collected. Every one of PES’s booted balls seems to nestle in the instep of a player as if they were feet-seeking missiles. They’re all accompanied by a soft little pop, the kind of noise a corner shop penny floater makes when hit perfectly.

Konami’s vision of football feels divorced from reality in other ways. Sprint with the ball and it’ll ride back against your runner’s feet, relentless backspin killing almost all pace. Deliver an acceptable forward pass and chances are the eventual shot will be strangely scooped, too high and soft to trouble the keeper. PES determines the power of its kicks by the amount of time the button is held – I say ‘button’ because even the purest of PC purists should be using a pad – but the opportunity to accurately hit even a simple shot is seemingly measured in picoseconds.

Tackling is similarly unsatisfying: players have a tendency to sashay past each other, not through individual foot-skill, but thanks to a strange ethereality that’ll suddenly place both the ball and its attached man on the other side of a defender. Great when it’s in your favour, infuriating when you were sure you had told your defender to slide just before that shot got away.

You can also play in the lesser-known Zombie League.

These complaints sound damning – they’re not. PES responds best to players who’ve had hours honing their control with some of its more esoteric sub-systems, like the close control options that allow skilled ballsmiths to take it around other players, and it can be smooth and responsive enough to allow for beautiful, creative passages of play.

But they’re few and far between compared with the Barcelona-shirted FIFA elephant in the room. That game produces several moments of panic and elation a half; PES is lucky if it can bang out one in a game. FIFA also has the edge in performance: PES 2013 makes little use of the PC’s grunt, chugging out a muddy, bleak vision. Matches are littered with replays by default, demanding a visible loading time and two instances of the game’s logo per video.

There’s more than enough stuff to do in this year’s PES: knockout cups, online matches, a peculiarly weak training tutorial, even a licensed Champions League. But no matter how many menu options, there’s still only a slightly underwhelming representation of football at the end of them. Not copying the sport to the letter is fine, but Konami have lost the chaos and magic of football in their translation

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VTC Online Indonesia Rilis Website Resmi Tantra 2

VTC Online Indonesia Rilis Website Resmi Tantra 2 - VTC Online Indonesia selaku publisher resmi dari Tantra 2 Indonesia telah mengumumkan website resmi dari Tantra 2 Indonesia.

Pada website tersebut kalian bisa mendapatkan informasi dari Tantra 2 Indonesia, seperti Guide yang berisi Latar Belakang dari Tantra 2 Indonesia, penjelasan dari Karakter-karakter didalam Tantra 2 Indonesia, Newbie Guide, Beginner Guide dan Top Up Guide. Pada website Tantra 2 Indonesia juga terdapat info yang sepertinya wajib dibaca sebelum memainkan Tantra 2 Indonesia, yaitu FAQ, Rules dan User Agreement.

Selain merilis website resmi Tantra 2 Indonesia, VTC Online Indonesia juga mengumumkan masa Alpha Test yang akan diselenggarakan pada tanggal 24 Desember 2013 pk 12.00 WIB s/d 30 Desember 2013 pk 12.00 WIB. Untuk dapat berpartisipasi pada masa Alpha Test, pemain tentunya membutuhkan Alpha Test Key. VTC Online akan mengadakan event untuk membagi-bagikan Alpha Test code yang terbatas jumlahnya. 

Perilisan website dan pengumuman tanggal masa Alpha Test Tantra 2 ini tentunya mengobati rasa penasaran para gamer yang sudah tidak sabar ingin memainkan game ini. Buat kamu yang masih penasaran bisa langsung meluncur ke link ini to.vtconline.co.id. Bagi GameQQ Readers yang ingin mencoba game Tantra 2 Indonesia, kalian bisa langsung mendapatkan Code Key Tantra 2 di website resmi Tantra 2 Indonesia: to.vtconline.co.id. 

GameQQ juga akan membagikan Alpha Test Key kepada 15 orang beruntung yang menuliskan komentar terbaik pada bagian bawah artikel ini. Cukup login menggunakan Facebook sebelum menuliskan komentar di bawah, nanti Alpha Test Key akan kami kirimkan pada tanggal 23 Desember 2013 melalui Message Facebook

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