FIFA 11 > PES2011

I got around to playing a couple of matches in my Master League mode on PES2011, and that was all it took for me to realise how glitchy and, well, ridiculously bad PES2011 is.

Firstly, the Master League problems I've encountered. My youth team was full of ridiculously good players, most of them better than players in my squad, and this really shouldn't be the case. The transfer window at the start of the mode is far too short, the transfer window at the end of the mode is far too long.

Now onto the gameplay problems. There's no way to to turn off the old passing and play with the PES2010 passing. The AI gives the computer a ridiculous advantage, especially on Top Player difficulty. My side-backs run up to be centre-forwards. Players with the ball are far too slow. Players move like robots. The list goes on.

I signed up half the youth team, replacing a number of the default players before playing my first match, against Portsmouth. About 35 minutes in, they scored a ridiculous goal from about 40 yards out, with my goalie just standing in the goal and moving far, far too late. They then scored a fantastic team move, and I could have no complaints about that one. Just before half-time one of their wingers was running into my half, I pulled my side-back over to tackle and made a perfect slide tackle, getting all of the ball and none of the player. Free-kick to them. WTF? Whatever, I thought this would be a minor annoyance and tried to defend the free-kick. They lobbed the ball into the box, but none of my players moved, leaving their midfielder to head the ball in unmarked at the near post.

In the second half I managed to pull two goals back but a few key decisions went against me and I lost, 3-2.

Next up was Doncaster Rovers. After my good second-half performance against Portsmouth, I thought I might have been able to edge this one. But no. At half-time, they were 3-0 up, all 3 goals coming from free-kicks and all the free-kicks were obviously not free-kicks. I switched the console off, fuming. I don't often rage quite, but this was absolutely ridiculous. I'd had enough.

After a quick look on the FIFA forums I found that the Xbox 360 patch had been released 5 days earlier, so I quickly loaded up FIFA to get back into my beloved Career Mode.

I'll tell you what's happened in a couple of days!