I love the football in PES 2019. Not the game of football, the actual football. There's an impressive realism to the way it moves, the way it bobbles along the grass after a pass, the way it spits out of a tackle in some random direction, the way a low driven through ball skims across the pitch like the Tokyo to Kyoto Bullet Train kisses the track, the way it spins like a planet in fast forward after a wallop from the outside of your striker's boot, the way it pulverises the back of the net - which, by the way, is much improved this year - rolls out of the goal, is scooped up by your striker and hurriedly carried to the centre circle, the comeback now on.
PES 2019's football demands respect. Unlike FIFA's football, which often feels like the asinine, laser-guided result of some complex equation scrawled onto a sphere on the end of a string or, you know, a pinball in a pinball machine, PES 2019's football has soul. If Konami's development wizards have mastered anything over the course of the 20-odd years they've spent making football video games, it is how to give a virtual football a weight and a presence not just felt on-screen, but in your hands. Kicking the thing takes more than a button press - it takes a force of will.
I love the animations in PES 2019. I love the way goalkeepers explode into a dive, flapping at a shot that looks like it's already passed them only for a hand to turn the ball around the post at the last millisecond. The chip shots - oh, PES 2019's chip shots! - are a joy, a soupçon of Lionel Messi and a smidgen of Davor Šuker. Outside of the boot flicks, for shots, for crosses and for no-look passes, are as effortless in PES 2019 as Romário made them look at the 1994 World Cup.
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