PES Chronicles

One match. Sometimes just that one match is enough. Which is fortunate, considering it’s all I had time for on Sunday morning.

And I won 1-0, as per the screenshot above. It was another match where I was down to 9 men by the end of it. I have a custom referee strictness setting that means almost any yellow-card-worthy tackle is now a straight red.

I’ve spent 15+ years in recklessly sliding and arrogantly throwing my players around to get the ball back whenever I want. So much so that it’s seeped into the DNA of what I expect in a football game. It’s a shock not to be able to do that any more. It’s a shock to have to show restraint and circumspection, to allow that CPU players to go on the dangerous run without slamming in the ‘reducer’ tackle to break up play.

Well, I do still slam in those ‘reducers’, but they’re a red card, each and every time. Must stop. It’s the hardest habit of all to break.

One general cloud on the horizon: I’ve moved up to Superstar. I moved up a few games ago, actually. And the game feels very easy, even with 10 men or 9 men.

It shouldn’t really do, as I’m using Anderlecht with the Matrix stats. As seen here, they’ve got some very good team attributes, and overall are above average. But I shouldn’t be coasting through matches the way I am.

I could have a twiddle with the custom settings, but will wait to see how the game plays in the top division. I’m playing here in Division 2—a custom Serie B—with very average teams who play like average teams.

As I’ve said before, I don’t want or need this ML career to be a 20-season blockbuster. I’m not looking for that. I reached the point of exhaustion with that some time ago. All I’m looking for is a good game of football from one session to the next.

So I tested it all out in a custom Exhibition game, Anderlecht vs Real Madrid, Superstar, 10 minutes. I know this isn’t a true test—I know that Exhibition games play differently in numerous big and little ways from ML games.

But as a general yardstick, it was a useful exercise. I lost 1-3, in a titanic, see-sawing encounter. The kind of match I’ll probably face a lot of up in Division 1.

PESJP2013 is looking like being the game now. The game that gets played and talked about on the blog. Probably until the end of this ‘summer’ thing that we’ve got going on here.

For those who have not played PESJP2013, don’t want to play, cannot play it, have already ‘moved on’, etc.—it’s not so different from PES2013. For me there was little or nothing wrong with PES2013, as such. The only two gameplay values that I’ve changed are ball-weight (up by 10%) and referee strictness (also up by 10%).

Ball-weight is a significant change. Passing and shooting values change accordingly. Players’ first touches seem ‘bobblier’. Numerous control values all change in accordance with player stats. (I’m using the Matrix database for player stats, which I probably won’t see the full benefit of until I start Master League.)

I motored through the qualifying group of my warmup tournament. I drew the final match against Brazil. I finished each one of the group games with 10 or fewer men, thanks to the referee strictness, which really does change everything.

The change to referee strictness is easily the most significant difference between this PES and every other football game I’ve ever played.

Any tackle that doesn’t get the ball is a yellow card. Many are red cards.

It costs me possession %, because obviously I’m not diving in with double-tap tackles and slides with anything like the eagerness of before. A mistimed slide or double-tap is very likely to be a straight red. Just imagine the effect of this knowledge on your decisions whilst trying to defend. Very, very dicey!

In my first knockout match against Ukraine, it was 1-1 and heading for extra time. Ukraine’s winger went on one of those long runs down the wing. I had two covering defenders with him, but was terrified of putting in the challenge, and settled for just shadowing him and trying to block any cross. On vanilla PES2013, the leg-breaking slides would have come in and that winger would have been going DOWN, no mistake.

Here, he got his cross in, and a striker was waiting in the box to head the ball in, and I lost 1-2. Out at the first time of asking.

I wasn’t too bothered. Warm-up games and tournaments are all about exploring the mechanics of a PES, and this tournament has certainly allowed me to do that.

Next up: the return of Master League. That’s for Wednesday now.

I haven’t reinstalled the game yet. I was experiencing crashes a week ago, and thought a reinstall would help. What I’ve done is stopped fiddling with the custom camera settings in-game. That’s helped, but perhaps the most significant change is disconnecting from the Internet before playing. Nothing can phone home, or try to, and no other installed programs can interfere by popping up notifications either.

Stability reigns.