Easy-peasy, Japanesey? Comments Off
I got my copy of PES2008 back on Wednesday 24th October 2007. As of this morning, Saturday 24th November 2007, I have played PES2008 for a grand total of 90 hours and 57 minutes. Over 72 hours of that time – three entire days – has been spent in Master League alone.
That isn’t bad for a game that was blatantly published by Konami in an unfinished condition and represents one of the most cynical marketing decisions ever made by any games company in the entire history of gaming. In my opinion.
PlayStation3 owners are still waiting for a patch, which may resolve the many irritating glitches affecting offline play (framerate, I am looking at you) but which will probably ‘only’ be an attempt to fix the horrific lag that online players are so upset about.
I’m not much of an online PES gamer – I’m not much of an online gamer, full stop. But it’d be nice to be able to have my usual one or two games per month online. Some PES gamers like to play nothing but online matches. It is, after all, one of the features promised on the box.
Whether the patch does or does not resolve the offline framerate issues, the big question for me right now is: will PES2008 prove to have any longevity in the long term? Will it last me a whole year, as its predecessors did?
I am suddenly finding the game to be easy. Not very easy – I still have to work for the goals and the wins. But it’s a lot easier than I should be finding it, I think. Ever since my Team Ranking went up to ‘C’, I have noticed a proportionate increase in the time I have on the ball and the things I can do with that time on the ball.
Two matches in particular have come and gone without me having to break much in the way of a virtual sweat.
Everton at home. I won 3-0. I had 14 shots to Everton’s 2 shots. And I scored this free kick with Shaw:
Scoring that didn’t feel very satisfying. No top-flight keeper, virtual or otherwise, should ever be beaten like that from a free kick.
Bolton were next. This one was away from home. The game ended 5-2 to me. I was 5-0 up at 70 minutes. Bolton’s two goals were late efforts that were down to a drop in my concentration. Soft goals, in other words.
Four of my goals in the Bolton match were memorable for different reasons. Here they are, in order of scoring – Schwarz (corner from Marcos); Andy Cole (from another Marcos corner); Reyes (scoring possibly my favourite goal on PES2008 so far; with zero backlift, he floats it over the keeper into the opposite corner; oh, and that’s Marcos again, setting it up); and finally Andy Cole once more, continuing to show great form:
Marcos and Andy Cole are starting to get seriously good. Marcos is a proper little midfield general, and easily my player of the season so far. Andy Cole seems to have a vicious right foot shot that finds the net whenever he gets a chance.
I’m top of the league, albeit by goal difference. While it feels good after all those seasons of struggle, I can’t quite shake off an uneasy feeling. This isn’t how Master Leagues are supposed to be. By the standard of years gone by, Coventry City should still be a mid-table team at best.
Defensively, I’m tempted to say that I’ve cracked it. I can stop all but a few CPU attacks. I don’t think I’m meant to stop the ones that I can’t stop.
Something I read a few weeks ago in a thread over on PESfan has stayed with me. The poster, whoever it was, said something like: Once you’ve worked out how to defend you’ll find you win nearly every game easily. You’ll shoot to the top of the league and stay there.
I hope not. This league table might turn out to be ridiculously premature. I have, after all, only played 11 games this season. We’ll see.