PES 2014 is an odd beast, a strange hybrid of its straightforward arcade roots and the ever-growing complexity of the FIFA series. In some respects, this complexity is warranted; never has a PES gamelooked quite as realistic as 2014 does. And for the most part, it plays well too. But that realism comes at a price. For all the flashy animations and physics tweaks that have been added, some of what makes a game of PES so direct and so much fun has been lost. This is very much a case of two steps forward, one step back.

That much is clear as soon as you start passing the ball around. Where PES has always been about snappy passing and a feeling of direct control over players, 2014 adopts some of the automated nature of FIFA, but without the technical prowess to back it up. A lot of it is down to some lousy AI implementation, which means that passes often don’t go to the player you want, because the game seemingly thinks it knows better than you. Then there’s the addition of sloppy first touches, which theoretically offer a more realistic representation of how players perform in the real world, but leads to frustration when all that stands between you and a world-class strike is a well-placed pass.

Minimum system requirements
Operating System: Win Xp 32, Vista, Windows 7
Graphic Card: GeForce 510, Radeon HD 5450 512MB
CPU: Pentium D 820 2.8GHz, Athlon LE-1640
RAM: 1 GB
HDD: 10 GB
DirectX: 9.0c
Recommended system requirements
Operating System: Win Xp 32, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8
Graphic Card: GeForce GT 440, Radeon HD 5550 1024MB
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7400 2.80GHz, Athlon II X2 255
RAM: 4 GB
HDD: 10 GB
DirectX: 9.0c