Wow; In PES 2020 Demo, Messi Feels and Looks Real And More Authentic.(Photos/Video)

PES 2020 wants you to feel like its cover star. Yes, the very guy in the above photo. And in a bid to achieve that, Konami sat down with Lionel Messi’s former teammate Andrés Iniesta to consult on a new mechanic: finesse dribble. (We’re guessing Messi himself wasn’t available, but who better than the most decorated Spanish footballer of all time? More importantly, Iniesta is renowned for his dribbling, but we don’t need to tell you that if you’re reading this.) Now with a push of the right-stick, you can dodge left and right to try to sneak past defenders who have the advantage of PES’ fast-paced play, lack of space, and homing-missile tackling.

Thanks to the PES 2020 demo — released Tuesday on PC, PS4, and Xbox One — we were able to try out finesse dribble for ourselves with the Barça superstar. And well, it works. If you know what you’re doing, naturally. We’ve only had a few hours with it, but on certain occasions as Messi, we managed to slip past a top defender or two — either from Juventus, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, or Arsenal, the four other big teams available in the demo — before driving a curling shot to the far corner. It even went in once. For a game that regularly features goalless draws, that’s good news.

(Sidenote: the PES AI makes tactical changes if you use a particular player too much. As we tried to practice finesse dribble with Messi in a match, the CPU AI eventually triggered ‘Tight Marking’ for the Argentinian. On-the-go tactical instructions aren’t new to PES, but they do act as a deterrent to finesse dribble — amongst other things.)

Better yet, that’s not the only new mechanic that’s coming to PES 2020. Konami is offering ‘No Touch Control’ that allows you to “run beside an incoming ball without making contact”. We’d trouble pulling it off in the demo, but hopefully that’s just a lack-of-practice issue. And then there are more ways to pull off quick stops, traps, and feints, with the latter requiring you to re-learn some skills such as the step-over, a variety of scissors, and ‘Gambetta’, made famous by Diego Maradona. Those mechanics gain more importance given context is more important to shots in PES 2020, with players liable to slip as they take the shot if they’re running too fast and / or under pressure.