E Football: about what I expected

Ultimate Destiny Achieved

Well okay then, I see you Konami; this is our punishment for not buying Metal Gear Survive, I get it. I still don't feel bad about doing so, but I'm really feeling the the general disdain for the video gaming populace that you seem to demonstrate. Though at this point I'm starting to wonder if 'dedicating yourself to making only bad video games forever more' is the correct way to go about this; I mean you could just as easily start your very own subdivision of anti-video game lobbyists like normal weirdoes. This whole 'infiltrate and destroy the artform from within' thing you've got going on just simply can't be cost effective! But then, I guess when you've already sold out your immortal soul to the Pachinko gods, that gives you all the requisite funds to flush down the drain on crap like E-Football doesn't it? At least, all that is what I hope is lying behind the scenes explaining why we got the game we got, because I just think it'll be too sad to think this was a genuine effort from a once storied game studio who have just simply forgotten how to make games.

For the longest time Pro Evolution Soccer stood apart from Fifa as the alternate option to the football space for those that were dedicated to the gameplay of these titles over just having the correct club licences (because PES rarely did. Instead they had a comprehensive customise-a-team suite so that you could make these clubs on your own), and that was the game owned and reared by old-school game-makers Konami, who once knew how to code. This was before the age where Fifa lost all pretence of pride and just decided to become a money-hungry caricature of a game series, a move which would sully football games forever and make EA stinking filthy rich. I'm not sure when it was during all of this that Konami fell of the wagon, but I'd imagine it wouldn't have been too long after Kojima left them, their company was hit with an internal practises exposé, and Konami ended up retreating from the gaming spotlight in order to focus on their gambling club efforts. 

Who could have imagined that their grand return would not be in order to give us that Metal Gear Solid 3 remake that's been 'leaked' constantly. (I believe it less and less every year. At this point I genuinely think it's BS smoke and mirrors to keep us with the name 'Konami' in our mouths) Instead we were given one supremely crappy Contra game, some smaller titles, and then one from 2020; E Football Pro evolution soccer. Yes, that was the beginning of their transition away from the PES title that they had stood by all these years, and toward E Football. An objectively terrible name for a game that will one day live up to that quality standard and then some. But I'm getting ahead of myself, first let me explain what makes PES and E-Football different enough to be worthy of a name switch.

As I mentioned before, E-Football is a free-to-play title that hopes to lure people in with the promise of playing high quality football action without spending a dime. Of course, the toss up is that for buying into that promise you'll be given access to no less than three teams (egads; what a deal!) and be able to play one game mode. Konami haven't framed this as a restriction, but rather a beginning, emphasising that E-Football is 'like a demo.' (to paraphrase) Which calls to question, if this is a demo then why not advertise it as such? Better yet, why even release it if the game's not done yet? Or even better than that, why sell microtransactions for the demo? That's right, you could pre-order microtransactions for this free-to-play wisp of a game with no real release date. So basically take all that we've heard and experienced with 'games of a service' over the past few years and heighten it to the worst case scenario; that was what Konami were proposing with this product.

But that just means if the promise is met then the final game will be questionable, what happens if that promise is not met? No, I don't mean to ask what happens if Konami were goofing and there's a actually an entire full game here to get everyone hooked before they start adding paid content; you know, like every single successful live service in history has done in order to get by. What happens if this isn't a high quality snippet of football game series which Konami have been honing their skills for during several years. What if, somehow, despite being a football genre title, and despite using the already established FOX engine, and despite only being a tiny fraction of a football game, Konami managed to deliver a broken mess. What sort of twisted reality would we have to be living in for that to be the case, how many inception dreams deep would we have to be in order to experience that? Well check your spinning tops right now, because that's this reality, baby!

I guess decades of making entire football games proved too much for Konami, because E Football has entire subreddits worth of posts since it's release, highlighting the many hilariously awful bugs. You've got deformed players, noodle arm Naruto runs, non-players who's entire body refuses to load in so that their clothes are floating, and one horror-worthy clip of a referee sunken flat into the pitch but still chasing after the action like a BT. Then there's the comparisons of how characters look when everything's working right and, surprise to no one, this is pathetic quality. Last generation games would just about get away with this quality, but it would be frowned upon; whereas for this generation it is an unmitigated disaster.

And Konami have not scooted away from all of this without consequence. Rather, their years of wasted development time spent, no doubt, losing money at Pachinko Parlours, has earned E Football the incredible title of worst user rated game on steam. That's no monthly figure, that's of all time. And this happened mere days after launch, before anyone had time to organise any 'coordinated hate ratings' or anything like that. This was just natural, it was meant to be, it was ordained by god. E Football is a travesty and every single sentient soul on the planet, even the typical sports game apologists, can clearly see it. But then, how do you apologise for a game that shot for the bare minimum, and couldn't even manage that? At this point you just have to figure that Konami want to be ridiculed and leave them to their self destruction.

So to answer the age-old question of "What is the line that sports game company's have to cross before their fans are forced to enact something akin to standards"; apparently it's providing a hardly functional nothing-game. Even when it's free. I guess the sheer insult of even suggesting this is 'good enough' for their audience was enough to flip that internal switch of "Okay, I can't rightly put up with this crap anymore." I think it's a good distinction to make, even though it'll likely just be used as fuel to propel Fifa 2022, which is horrible for it's own various reasons. At least Sports fans won't have to worry about two game franchises vying for their wallet for the next year, because I don't really think Konami are going to manage to worm their way out of a launch this embarrassing. (For their sake, I hope they're on their way out of the industry altogether at this point. Sell your franchises and dip, guys. You're a disgrace.)

Oh hey, Konami. Forgot about you

 More like- 'Weird Football'

There's much to criticise about the gaming world and those who make a living providing for it, because as with any industry in the world today, those who try to exploit it typically do so in the most outlandish and obvious ways that it's simply insane how often they get away with their fumbling's. These people are some of the most shameless, and least scrupulous, individuals in suits; and yet they can feed their audience the flesh of roadkill and still turn up to see thousands of waiting plates. It astounds me. And it's when these companies and executives reach this position, as I call it 'the too-big-to-fail stage', and they recognise that they're there; that's when all the penny pinching starts getting kicked into overdrive. Thus has been the case with a company who has been so under the radar lately that it's honestly a surprise to see them again; yet I should have know that when Konami returned to the spotlight, it would be in a stunt both baffling and embarrassing to themselves and all who support them. (Expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed)

But first let me take a moment to bring all of you up to date with the Football scene- yes this is another Sports game story, so be it. Back in the days when Football games actually produced decent entries, there were two competitors for best Football title down here in England, Fifa was favoured because it generally had a monopoly on scoring club licences and thus you could play as actual teams, but PES (Pro Evolution Soccer) was known as the technically superior game. (I can't tell you ways which it was technological superior, but that was the way the fan divide was split) As the years went by and Fifa slowly had it's soul devoured by EA, people began recategorizing PES as the series which still had it's soul, against the competitor who long since sold out to recurrent monetisation and selling gambling to kids. In a move most unlike Konami, they had the moral high ground.

Now I haven't actually kept up to date with PES games of late, I'm not a Football fan, so maybe recent years have seen the dial slowly turning in the opposite direction as Konami's true nature struggled to get out. All I know is that when something as drastic happens as the series changing it's name and core model, that's something worth paying attention to. Previous PES was another football game which operated much like Fifa did, only with a lot more tools to make custom teams and the like so that player's could covertly create the real teams that the company weren't licensed to include. Now that series has been scrapped in favour of eFootball, which isn't just a horribly awful title, it's also a free-to-play football platform wherein you can pay to buy new game modes. What?

I feel like Konami are positioning themselves to be alternate universe Fifa right now, doing things so wild that EA higher ups are slapping themselves for not doing first. ("How could we not think to charge them for game modes?") Now in their defence, and trust me you won't be hearing that often in this little chat, the Free-to-play model does earn a lot of slack for this eFootball game. It's not a £70, premium edition, repeat-of-last-year rip-off game that than tries to wring literal blood from your stone-cold heart. The game is free and thus monetisation is a given. That being said, we still got to have some standards as consumers, don't we? I mean, EA and Konami and their like treat us like mindless drones, but we're not that. Are we? So in proving that some slim shadow of pride still resides in my soul I'm going to go out and say it; giving out a demo, calling it a full game, and then charging people to unlock the rest it piece by piece is a bit much, Konami. Might want to turn your 'money-hungry megalomaniac' dial down a notch.

Hardly a week before launch, Konami have made a concerted effort to let everyone know exactly what they're about and where this free-to-play title of their is going through a pre-order pack with microtransactions. Yeah that's right, you can pre-order a free-to-play game in order to scoop up some of that sweet virtual currency day one and a few free pulls on the one arm bandit; or as they put it, "8 chance deals when you pre-order." Typical methodology for selling games like these is to get the thing out under an air of anonymity, wait for the reviews to drop, and then introduce all the crippling microtransactions. In this light I have to give Konami credit once again; they're being impressively upfront about everything they're doing. Doesn't make it any less concerning, but there it is.

And what are these 'Chance deals'? They're players that you can buy up and sign onto your team in a mode that I can only imagine is specifically worded not to use the word 'ultimate' or 'team' as desperately as possible, because it's an obvious rip-job. I'm glad that Konami at least have their priorities straight with this new Football experiment that they're trying, securing the ultimate team clone before, you know, finishing the thing. Oh didn't I mention? When the game launched players will only be able to play local matches with Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern and Manchester United. That's all. Now I know this is a free game, again, but that is the single most pathetic feature set I think I've ever heard of from a sports game. "But don't worry" Konami begs "Because at a later date you'll be able to buy individual game modes as DLC." Considering they're selling those 8 character pulls for 33$, (That's 5.50 a player, because the extra two pulls come free) I don't even want to imagine how much fans are going to have to cough up before this demo-of-a-game begins to resemble a somewhat complete package.

I'm being a pessimist, sure, but this whole thing just boggles the mind. Truly. Are Konami now so bust with their- nothing else going on, that they can't even put an entire football game together in order to monetise it to hell and back? Surely only the morbidly curious and truly desperate are going to end up going to a game more featureless than an Atari Football title. And I hate to speak favourably about an EA game (you know that) but does anyone really think the price of making this game any where near as optional complete as the latest Fifa is will cost any less than $70? Because if you do than you are truly leagues more full of faith than I. All I can see is a desperate attempt to buy a game that fits the China market of free-to-play dominance in the vague hope their gamers are undemanding enough to become Konami's next whales.

Or, heck, maybe this is a desperate cry for help as Konami are truly trying to get themselves out of the gaming market. They've been at this long enough, and ever since just before Kojima was fired it seems like everything has been spiralling down and out of control. Everything they pursue has turned to dust in front of their eyes and it's got to take a huge emotional (and financial) strain to watch an army of beloved fans turn their backs, and wallets, against you. I'd call throwing a pathetic featureless demo at you fans in the blind hope that they imprint on it a pretty succinct farewell note. And if that is the case then I respect the belated retirement letter, it's been a while coming, and I just need to know who gets the IPs in the will 'cause I can think of one guy who might have a good idea or two for a few of them. (RIP Konami, you crazy nutcases)