PES vs. FIFA

Speaking of accessibility, FIFA's great hook is, of course, the brand and the likenesses. It's one of the main reasons it's the biggest-selling game in the football-hungry United Kingdom year-on-year. And on that note, one of the most impressive parts of our trip to Canada was touring the motion-capture studio. For the benefit of the readers, there was a pair of gigantic motion-capture stages, each with around 100 cameras that can be arranged all around a 50-foot basketball court. Rubberised turf can be laid over the top for football. They capture in real-time from those little hand-taped balls fastened (by Velcro) all over the players' bodies. They can also attach smaller balls to the face and capture expressions in a weird booth that looks like something out of a Clockwork Orange or Marathon Man. Then they go through and isolate the moves they want and develop them in-game. This is "pivotal" to what they do, they told us. Having also watched how the players behave in-engine, it's hard not to come round to FIFA's side on this. On PS2, when the gap to realism was easier to fill in with your mind's eye, the way the players shaped themselves was well worked - but other areas, notably the crab-like sidestep motion - were less impressive. Xbox 360 brought this into striking contrast - PES looked like an oily mannequin festival scattered across a picturesque rug. Were you as seduced by what you saw in Canada? What stood out about it?

With the look and style of FIFA, there are a few things to consider when talking about the animation. With Konami, you get the impression that animation follows after gameplay development, where the development of FIFA seems to develop both gameplay and animation in equal measure - hence the impressive trick roster. The truth is, with Konami's team concerned almost entirely with the flow of play, the players lack polish in some areas and although accurate, players sometimes resemble zombies when placed against the sheen of EA player models. The FIFA in-game chase-cam which kicks in as you run for goal (in a similar way to Gears of War) shows just how detailed the animation is. FIFA's always looked great - the personal differences which players have with both games are centred around the actual gameplay, though it doesn't hurt to have the best-looking game on the block, either. There's a greater attention paid to replays, cut-scenes and TV-style cams in FIFA, too. It's like watching Sky Sports and then switching to some home-grown YouTube station with PES - it's not bad, but when FIFA is in motion (or LocoMotion as EA would have it), it's hard not to think of PES as the uglier sister when animation is concerned. It's hard not to think of Kylie dancing when the word LocoMotion is banded around, too... I was definitely seduced by that.

Right, well, couple of immediate points. I suspect "Gears of War" is more of an analogy in the sense that the camera gets tight and rumbly; we're not dealing with a steadicam mounted on Ronaldinho's thigh, thankfully. Second, you did a LocoMotion joke, and it involved Kylie. People probably just X'd the browser window. Nobody's reading any more. Are you happy? Are you? Anyway, I think the interesting thing about animation has to do with the transition from current- to next-gen in football games: Konami chose simply to spruce their existing engine while working quietly behind the scenes on a new one (or so the buzz indicates, and EA Canada declares), whereas FIFA is already into its first cycle of refinement. That could be crucial - certainly on the player likenesses front, where EA has struggled at times, but now seems to be making solid progress. It's been a long time since I've been able to accuse them of throwing a "gunge shower" over anyone, and our beloved, much-missed Sven, if they did him now, undoubtedly wouldn't look like the mad scientist out of Doom III. The success of PES' likenesses was mainly founded in the Uncanny Valley principles we discussed with Joe Booth: PES 1-5 were a distance away from reality, so the rough angles and curious necks were forgivable. We didn't even think to declare them dreadful. But now the gap's closing and EA's got practice and tough lessons under its belt, so there's a greater danger of PES hitting that revulsion zone than FIFA returning to it. How did you think they were doing based on what we saw?

The camera is mounted approximately six feet away from Ronaldinho's arse, rather than his thigh. And now you've got me talking about man-bottom. Anyway, he looks very realistic to me but this isn't a great surprise given that EA HQ houses enough artists, tech staff and motion capture-mentalists to make most Hollywood CG studios look like a Soho production company. I peaked in a door I wasn't supposed to at EA and saw over 100 people being lectured on the kind of stuff that makes Ronaldinho's mouth move. It was like a NASA training camp. When you look at the EA resources and the player models in, say, Fight Night, you can't imagine Konami having the same amount of staff or that frighteningly huge motion-capture studio. It will be interesting to see what Konami can produce on PS3 as EA up the art ante once again.

One thing that's come up since we returned is EA's plans for online. They were quite coy while we were actually there, but now we know to expect Interactive Leagues again, as well as (presumably) the traditional mixture of ranked and unranked matches ala Xbox Live. PES, meanwhile, has learned some tough lessons about next-gen online gaming after its rubbish attempts on Xbox 360, and the subsequent patch. It's tempting to say that both games go into this generation on their surest footing ever when it comes to online. FIFA has statistical depth, which we'll get to in a bit, but PES has four-versus-four online on PS2, and we have to expect that to come back. Then you can disconnect and play Master League. As they say on the Internet, "for the win", surely?