WE7 Intl - 1st Impressions

I finally had sometime to spend with WE7I last night so its time to give some impressions.

Let me preface this by saying that I have never played any of the Winning Eleven games in the past (PES, WE, whatever)......I always played EA's FIFA soccer. For the most part I enjoyed the games up until around FIFA'98......after that I slowely migrated away from it because FIFA slowely grew old & stale. I didn't even touch 2004. Also, I grew up playing competitive soccer since around the age of 7 all the way through high school, so I consider myself somewhat of an experienced player & fan.

**These impressions are after playing a total of 3 games (15 min halfs - all losses) & messing around with the other options for a couple hours.**

Let me start with GRAPHICS:
Simply amazing! I've never experienced a sports game with such detailed & vivid graphics. The player faces & models are extremely detailed, its like actually watching a real live TV soccer broadcast.
-Edgar Davids sported his long hair & glasses!
-Beckham had some fancy blonde hair-do.
-Roberto Carlos was short & build like a brick *#*#*#*#*# house.

You can even see the tinest detail on the players shoes/the ball & the stadiums are great. I've heard the graphics would be good, but I really didn't expect this......it really shows that Konami spent some time getting the details correct. I am impressed.

The camera options are pretty good. The default camera was too close to the players IMO, when on a break with Owens I couldn't see the goalie charging me & he easily stopped a great chance. I changed to a further away view (Broadcast??) & it seemed much better, although the player details were less noticable. (9.5 out of 10)

AUDIO:
The menu music is pretty bad, but that's just my opinion. I've never cared much of a games music selection. The announcers, although difficult to understand w/ Brit accents, do a pretty good job. Most players seem to have their names in the database and the liscened clubs/nat'l teams are announced correctly. The only thing I noticed was a slight pause (ala Al Micheals in Madden) when inserting team names ("Now introducing.......England...."), just not a smooth flow, but not a big deal. The crowd atmosphere is great.....I heard numerous crowd chants & they got loud & rowdy at various points. I don't know enough about Euro soccer traditions to comment on the authenticity, but it sounded great. On par w/ NCAA series in terms of stadium/crowd atmosphere. (8/10)

GAMEPLAY:
In one word, AMAZING! I played 3 games (on 2/5 star difficulty level) and lost all 3 games without scoring a goal yet I didn't feel robbed or cheated or hustled by the CPU in anyway. In fact, I deserved to have been scored upon on every goal. I made mistakes & the CPU AI capatalized on them. When ever in Madden (or NCAA or that matter) could you loose a game to the CPU 28-7 and not feel you were robbed? My answer would be never.

The gameplay just doesn't feel scripted, it has a smooth flow to it. At first I thought it felt smoother because I was comparing it to EA football games, which are an enitrely different game.....but then I remembered my days of FIFA & don't ever recall such a true-to-life feel. The vast range of animations help with this feel. Player shots look/feel differnt on every one. The ball itself seems to rect perfectly to what is done by the players. Passes can feel crisp & on target or poorly hit & inaccurate, depending on the circumstance. The way the ball responds to dribbles, feints, traps, headers, etc. is etremely realistic IMO.

As far as the CPU AI, it was challenging on the 2 star level I was on. I need to grasp a better idea of the controls until I can formulate an opinion of the best level to play on, but I emagine that 3stars would be a great competitive game after some practice time.

Also, keep in mind there is no slider settings. Finally it seems a company tested a game thouroughly enough to release it 100% playable right out of the box. Sliders are great, but they basically only allow for the user to correct mistaked made by the programmers.....with EA games I find myself struggling a long time to find the "perfect" set of sliders. That is not necessary with WE7I, its pick-up & play. (9.5/10 - could be a perfect 10, but I need more time to judge depth/replayability at various levels)

CONTROLS:
WE7 really stands out in this aspect. Previously I thought that ESPN NHL Hockey had the most in-depth set of player controls (puck grab, board pinning, dekes, protect puck, shot options etc.) but WE7 simply blows it away. The passing options alone speak volumes, you have short passes, long, through balls, crosses, directional passes & different 1-touch give & go type passes! I only experimented with basic shot passes & through balls in my 3 games.....can't wait to get the hang of all of them. The possibilites for setting up plays & scoring chances will be almost infinate. I haven't even explored the shooting options (evident by not scoring in 3 matches!), but you can curves the rock, chip the goalie & perform various moves. You have numerous options when performing a simple task such as dribbling......regular dribble, super fast dribble, fast dribble, proctive dribble.....its just amazing.

The only thing that was confusing was the switch player function. It seemed to be switching automatically for me & that caused some confusion, but I was able to change to manual switching. Even in manual it felt different than EA style games, but that may not be a bad thing, it will just take getting used to. (10/10)

ROSTER OPTIONS:
Although the rosters are reportedly out of date, I'm not an expert on what team such-&-such plays for so its not a huge deal to me. You will find tons of info on transfers, who to create, who to update ratings on etc. if you look around the web. It does suck that only a few teams are officially liscensed but you can easily find out who the fake teams should be changes into. In total theres around 60 club teams from various Euro leagues & about every National Team you could want.

The best part about editing the "fake" teams is that you have complete control over uniform look, colors, stadium & team flag. The options are pretty much limitless. Manchester United is only a few edits away for you! As for as the players, it seems most are actual real life players, aside from anyone from The Netherlands (Kluivert, Overmars, Davids, Vandersarr etc. need to be edited), even so its easy to tell who should be who. Gamefaqs.com has a comprehensive list of who's who.

The player editor interface (one of my favorite options) is the most in-depth I've ever seen in a game before. You can edit any of approx 50 individual player skill ratings, assign specialty skills to players (1-on-1 ability, passing, playmaking, free kick taker etc.) to really create a unique & true to life representation of any player. Player faces are unlimited, including some sort of CREATE-A-FACE option, which I didn't play with yet. You get almost 200 different hair styles to choose from! The only thing lacking somewhat was skin color (4 choices) & body models (4 or 5 choices). Its so in depth that I will spend countless hours tweaking each of my favorite players! Roster editing gurus like Blacklover would be in heaven! I wish EA would take notice of this & include something similar in all their games. (10/10)

MASTER LEAGUE (Franchise type play):
Didn't even mess around with this yet. I will add my impressions on it tonight. I keep hearing its what makes this game so great....but I can't imagine it being as in-depth as everything else.....I'll have to waite & see. (no grade at this time)

OVERALL = 47 / 50.....94% rating!

I really can't wait to get more time with this game. Try it out, for $40.00 its well worth the money even if your not a soccer fan. Anyone will be impressed with this game.

 

i really hope one day stupid fifa fans realize it is no worth to be resilience against what konami offers and simply accept what is the best. actually played fifa 04 for the first time 3 days ago just to see how they changed since 02. amazing graphics i adimit but other than that i thought they are now copying winning eleven's game play and claiming it is the "best soccer game" in their filthy disgusting website. what a cheater and misarable *#*#*#*#ing loser those ea bastards. konami should sue ea and i hope they all die. it'll take probably another 5 years to creat what we call the ultimate soccer game which contains the game play of winning eleven and great library and managing option of championship manager. but first of all we should destroy ea and and imprison all of those cheaters or we won't see the ultimate game anytime soon

 

i posted in the other thread but I will say it again here.

Best *#*#*#*#ing videogame ever made. much better than we6.

the cool thing is that they must have gotten the Italian Serie A license because all the teams are real and the kits have the real sponsor logo's on them.


this game will eat away hours of your life. It's so addictive and realistic.

my favorite things about the gameplay:

-doing the 360 move. yeah it barely works but it's cool and Thierry Henry can occasionally pull it off. I guess that's the beauty of WE7 is that the things that happen in real life happen in the game with the same frequency.

- chipping the keeper. it's always been a cool thing unique to Konami but anyone notice that Del Piero has a different chip shot than everyone else?

- fake the shot which sometimes freezes the keeper. when you pull it off it is stunning.

- dummy the ball. difficult to pull off but a strong attack with a dummy to a player making a run is worth saving on the replay.


- the array of animations. any possible way you can contort your body to score a goal is represented here. you almost never see the same goal twice.



anyway this has to be the greatest videogame ever. I know it just came out yesterday but I played all night last night and I couldn't wait to get out of work to play this son of a bitch. This weekend I will edit all the rosters and team names and then attempt the MASTER LEAGUE - which is the heart of the game.

I must say though, I don't understand the master league yet. Last year you had 3 divisions. This time you have west and east or whatever. Why didn't they just stick with D1, D2 and D3?

 

They also got the Brazil players names this time.

 

Is this the American version you are talking about?


The new Japanese one is coming out and called the same name, but updated from WE7.


Also wasn't this series called Pro Evolution in America, won't it confuse people calling it by the Japanese name now??? People must wonder where the hell the 7 comes from!

 

I have to say that I am a big Konami fan, I always felt like the WE series was great, but this version disappoints me. The game engine is what everyone loves, and the gameplay is certainly the most realistic amongst soccer games. That being said, I feel like the folks at Konami made no attempt to change what has been some continual glitches with it. The change player function on defense has always been a problem for me, it will change your player when you don't want to and at times you can't become the player you want. This hasn't changed. Also, it's still to easy to dribble the length of the field even on difficult settings. The tackling feature is a tad shaky too in my opinion. Overall, the gameplay is very good, but I'd like to see some adjustments that haven't been made.

Also, I feel like the graphics are average and the announcers are terrible. They say the same things over and over and don't seem to have the depth that other sports games have. And I know that you can edit everything, but there is no excuse for not having updated rosters and full licensing agreements. It's 2004, I don't want to have to create teams and edit their uniforms. So if you can't tell from the tone of this post, I am pretty disappointed with WE7. I think their MLS versions were superior and nothing has really changed for the better (except the editing options). The options are fairly slim and overall the game is solid, but nowhere near the greatest game ever. I know many of you are gonna think I am nuts, but the quality of the game engine is not enough to satisfy me, and I wouldn't necessarily rank WE7 over FIFA 2004.

 

The American version is called WE7 and last year we got it for the first time and it was called WE6. So at least they didn't change the name. I don't know how much different it is from the original WE7 that got released in Japan in August, but I don't believe that it is the same as the newer version of WE7 that just got released this week in Japan.

 

This game is pretty hard. I thought I was a god in WE6, but I have a hard time scoring with my Master League team. The new transfer rules in Master League make it more difficult to build a team. I like that!

Is it me, or does EVERY player have a transfer fee?
I'm about 12 game in the Master League, and I've added LD, DMB, Convey, and Howard. None of them were on teams, but I still paid a transfer fee for them.

 

Can someone post a link to a guide that will help me convert all the teams to thier real names! Thanks in advanced

 

Best soccer game ever made, without question. So please don't view this post as a negative knock on the game, but rather as suggestions for future games.

This game is total soccer realism. That said, and this will deeply offend purists, I've always felt the game would be much more appealing if it were played 9 v 9 as opposed to 11 v 11. I don't care about more goals, but more open play, less congestion in the box and more scoring chances would make the game awesome in my view. But to it's credit, it's just as hard to score a goal in WE7 as it is in real life. The box is one big cluster, just like it's true counterpart.

Aside from that, isn't it time we have icon passing in this soccer game? One of the most frustrating things to me in this game is that quite often, my pass will not go to the player intended. This happens because your only option is to press the direction of the pass on the directional pad, or attempt the seemingly impossible manual passing. It's time we had icon passing, so we could press the button of the player we want to pass to.

Aside from that, there is the obvious no MLS in the game and also no online play. Hopefully at the very least next year we'll be able to play it online.

 

this game must be good as evidenced by all the typos in the posts.

nobody wants to take time to proofread because they want to get back to playing!

 

even without that you can actually pass it to whoever player you intend to, almost.
try spending some time in the training section, especially in the challenge mode (the one where you have to win the stars)

 

Actually, you can set it so that you change the player yourself or the computer changes the player for you. It's in the top left hand corner of the screen (I think) on the controller select screen. Dribbling is a bit much, although it really depends on who you have. You can dribble down the wings with some of the fastest players in the world, but it's still somewhat difficult to get through the middle on 5 star dribbling. Also, if you play with lesser squads, you'll find that dribbling is a lot harder. (Interestingly, they've improved the dribbling in the Japanese version of WE7I...it's much harder to dribble around players now...takes a lot more skill.)

Your points on rosters and sound are well-taken. There's no excuse for Konami having rosters that are 4-5 months old, especially since the Japanese version of WE7I has fairly updated rosters. And they do need to improve the PBP...it needs lots of work. But the gameplay is still in a class by itself...far better than FIFA.

 

I hate the ball! I liked the WE6 Ball much better. The grass is more detailed now and its easier to get the almost flickering ball lost in there. Of course, I have a 15 inch TV but it was less of a problem with WE6.

I also don't like the player running animations. They just don't look as good as WE6. I can't really explain it other than saying it looked more realistic in We6.

Otherwise, I'm getting fired from my job as I speak as I take my third day off to play this game. My mom's getting mad because she wants to watch her soaps, but too bad for her. Have you guys ever seen a real ass-groove on a sofa? Come over to my house...three days baby. Of course, I have to attended my younger brother's wedding later, but I guess you have to learn self-control at one point or another.

Oh also, it takes much longer to load than WE6...about 5-10 seconds longer. I know it doesn't seem like much, but when you gotta play it seems like eternity.

 

scoring seems to be my problem so far. in we6 i played master league with 5 stars and scored average of 4 goals per game making total goal scored about 120 (highest was 143 or so) in a season. my highest was 13-0 and i'm not bluffing. but now i'm really having tough time scoring, mostly depending on luck. again in this game just like we6 3 stars and 5 stars don't make much difference. i beat 5-star usa 3-0 but tied 3-star usa 0-0.

 

maybe we can get a good FAQ for WE7 and sticky it in this forum. I have a feeling the question of what the real team names are is gonna get asked alot. From www.pesinsight.com:

Bruselles - Anderlecht
Praha - Sparta Prague
North London - Arsenal
WM Village - Aston Villa
Lancashire - Blackburn
West London Blue - Chelsea
Merseyside Blue - Everton
West London White - Fulham
Yorkshire - Leeds United
Merseyside Red - Liverpool
Lloyd - Manchester City
Trad Bricks - Manchester United
Tyneside - Newcastle United
North East London - Tottenham Hotspur
East London - West Ham
Azur - Monaco
Bourgogne - Auxerre
Aquitaine - Bordeaux
Rhone - Olympique Lyonnais
Languedoc - Marseille
Normandie - Paris St. Germain
Nord - RC Lens
Rhein - Bayer Leverkusen
Rekordmeister - Bayern Munich
Westfalen - Borussia Dortmund
Hanseaten - Hamburg
Hauptstadt - Hertha Berlin
Ruhr - Schalke 04
Weser - Werder Bremen
Peloponnisos - Olympiakos
Athenakos - Panathinikos
AC Milan - AC Milan
AS Rome - AS Roma
I Dotti - Bologna
Rondinelle - Brescia
I Mussi - Chievo
Longobardi - Internazionale
Piemonte - Juventus
Lazio - Lazio
Parma - Parma
Tiberina - Perugia
Triveneto - Udinese
Museumplein - Ajax
Feyenoord - Feyenoord
Stadhuisplein - PSV Eindhoven
Lisbonera - Benfica
Puerto - Porto
Esportiva - Sporting Lisbon
Valdai - Spartak Moscow
Old Firm Green - Celtic
Old Firm Blue - Rangers
Manzanares - Athletico Madrid
Guadalquivir - Real Betis
Galicia Sur - Celta Vigo
Galicia Norte - Deportivo La Coruna
Cataluna - Barcelona
Chamartin - Real Madrid
Donosti - Real Sociedad
Naranja - Valencia
Constantinahce - Fenerbahce
Byzantinobul - Galatasary
Marmara - Dinamo Kiev

 

how can u have five stars is masters league? isn't is supposed to be "extreme"? or is the version of the game different.