What is YOUR FAVOURITE football game of all time?

PES 4 through PES 7 (including WE 9 LE) where arcade too, with a lot of sim elements added to them, but arcade to the core. The Fifa games from that era where arcade too (in a much worse way than PES).

The closer to sim (rather than arcade) PES games start with PES 2009 (Maybe 2008 as it provided the foundation) with PES 2013 marking another peak in the representation of a true football sim.
 
The whole sim/arcade debate is subjective and I don't think we should start arguing about it too much. Plenty of people reckon WE9LE is the most realistic football game ever, others disagree. The main thing is that you enjoy the game. The thing I like about classic PES is it generally strikes a good balance between the two, with some being a little more towards arcade like PES 6 and others with more sim elements like WE9LE. It always appealed to both kinds of players though.
 
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Why not? Different opinions make interesting discussions and people might even learn something new from them... and "expand" their point of view. In today's world people often take different opinions personally. Why?

In my opinion, PES 2017 and new PES generally (since 2010 or so) have been much more "arcade" than say, FIFA 17 because of the crazy "staged" comeback logic. There's no way any team can utilize its corner kicks with 50-80 percentage when it's trailing in the last minutes (as it happens in PES). There's no way most of the games that you dominate CPU needs only one attack to score a tying goal. It's just not a simulation. In simulation those things CAN happen occasionally... seldomly.... but not even nearly as often as in new PES. It's STAGED gameplay.... CPU is cheating. That has nothing to do with "simulation" because it's fundamentally flawed gameplay.

I'm not even starting with the fouls. There should be about 20 fouls in every game. Now you can play a game without ONE friggin' foul. Pretty much all interferences go without referee interruption. Only sliding tackles pretty much count. How ridiculous is that? It's like not being able to knock out an opponent in a boxing game. Nothing to do with "simulation", pure arcade. PES5 is the ONLY football game ever made that has even remotely realistic amount of fouls.

There was a comeback logic in PES5 and PES6 too. But it wasn't that strong and annoying. You WERE able to defend your lead without CPU cheating.

FIFA 16 and 17 are much better in that sense.

Of course all of these games have "arcade elements", especially the penalty shootouts which are pathetic in all football "sims"... but in my mind a real simulation should have realistic percentage of error. Try FIFA 16 and 17 with proper sliders... the corner kicks and shots / goals are in very good balance. Much like PES5.

But yeah... old FIFAs were total arcade. I remember winning my brother 16-15 in FIFA 2001. :D

PS: I played a World Cup tournament in PES 2017. The game changes to even WORSE arcade when the tournament advances. I first won Colombia 4-3 and then Brazil in the World Cup final 6-5 (using 15 minute halfs). Realistic? Yeah right.
 
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IMO, the best football game ever should be one of the PES from the ps2 era. For me, it would currently be PES 2012 on PSP. It has a great master league, pes5/6 gameplay tweaked, the most challenging ai from ps2 era, individuality at his best, etc...

For me, PES died when they changed the stats system they had during ps2 era, since pes 2014, all players feel like robots. Actually, pes 2012 on ps3 was the beginning of the end with the removal of aggression/acceleration/shot technique stats. Fifa has always felt dull for me, for the same reason. Yes, you can feel the more pacey/stronger players, but that's about it. And i don't agree about comeback logic being only in new pes, fifa can have sometimes really atrocious scripting.
 
Your posts made me realize that most of the stuff we hardcore fans want was already there, an edition or the other (good/realistic ai, fouls, injuries, tactic relevance, phisicality, variety). I'm 100% sure they would be more than capable to implement this stuff today, sadly it's just that the market changed and the first objective is to make a game good for the E-Sports/online stuff meta. What scares me, it's that it could potentially get a lot worse than this year.
 
Yes, all stuff is already there. All we need is ADJUSTABILITY with sliders.

That kind of fine tuning has been available for hockey games for AGES. Why can't we have ANY sliders at all for PES? FIFA at least has some and adjusting them can improve the gameplay tremendously, but the essential ones like "referee strictness" aren't there. PES has only game speed slider. That's utterly pathetic.

NHL2K series has four pages of fine tuning like this.

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Why can't the football games have those sliders? Everyone could set the gameplay to their liking.
 
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