Easy-peasy, Japanesey?
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.
When I moved back to Kansas and started supporting the Wizards (Kansas...
I know you’re a ‘one ML’ kind of guy, but I’d be very interested to hear what happened if you took your hard-won knowledge of defending back to the defaults and played another half-season to season of Master League.
Basically, what I wonder is the various “weight” in terms of your play experience that these three factors have:
1. Player quality (i.e. sorting out how to attack/defend)
2. Team quality (i.e. scores in the 60s vs. scores in the 80s)
3. Master League rating
If #3 has much weight at all outside of the transfer market, then they blew it.
I was watching Staines vs. Stockport in the FA cup first round last night and I realized that the balloon misses that annoyed me so much in PES6 have their place! I’d like to see more granularity in the player ablitlies– I’d like the difference between 65 and 75 be larger, in essence. Then, stretch the salary of players up to 20,000p for the high end players.
With the broader range of ability and cost for players, limit more severely the quality of players willing to come in for a side. If you’re a ‘D’ side, you get ‘D’ players, full stop.
^ I would also make the defaults less disposable. Make a few more of them useful at the lower levels, and not so far behind what you can pick up in the next transfer window.
What you would have there is a system where the Staines of the world (i.e. the ML default team) simply can’t afford Raul Garcia, even if the game system puts him out there on a free. You would have multiple tiers of game play– possibly three full divisions (they’re just numbers in a database for Christsakes), and getting out of each division would be a challenge requriring a few seasons as you slowly built up the quality of your side.
Making money would be tougher– no Div 2 or 3 side would ever have the capacity to afford top-flight players on their top-flight salaries.
I love the Reyes goal very nice.
It seems quality players makes all the difference.
After getting frustated with ML for a while I’ve competed in a few Cup’s with England (International – got inspired to see if I could do better than earlier this week) Austrailia (Asia Cup), Argentinia (Americas) and Nigeria (African Cup). All on top player of course.
Managed some amazing things with quality players (Got beaten by some ‘better’ teams’ but dominated some games with ‘world class’ players. Seems they do make a difference!
ck – While I am a ‘one ML’ kind of player, it may be the case that I have to be more flexible with PES2008.
In other words, if I get to the point where I only have to turn up to win games, yes, I’ll start all over again. This time with everything on Very Hard for the Master League difficulty settings, and – a great idea I saw on PESfan somewhere – a custom league packed with all the best sides in the game throughout both divisions. All the best Spanish, Italian, English, Dutch, French, and other sides in two divisions of death! No Boltons or anyone like that – all Barcelonas and Milans and Arsenals. With the Default players I think that’d be pretty challenging for a good many seasons, and yes, as you said it’d be interesting to see how I do with the Default donkeys second time around. It’s such an attractive idea that I think I will definitely do this at some point.
There’s a good many seasons to go with the current setup yet anyway – and a good many months until PES2009….
At some point I will definitely also breakaway from PES2008 for at least a couple of days to play FIFA08 intensively for the first time since before 24th October, and write about it here. (A year is a long time and I need to pad this blog out somehow!)
If I tire of PES2008 completely I’ll start PES5 or PES6 again.
Like I said in the post, though, the fears about finding it easy may be premature for me right now. I had an intriguing session on the game this morning – put it that way for now (more tomorrow).
Paul – the Reyes goal is my favourite because of the placement and the lack of backlift. It’s something I’ve tried to reproduce since by stopping my players dead so that the shot isn’t ‘driven’ but placed as that one was. It seems to work. Alas, not everyone has Reyes’ technique.
And competing in the Cups is a necessity this year if you like playing with Classic Players in ML (I do!). I’ve only unlocked Classic England so far and will have to win every regional tournament with a few teams to get all the players we used to get in the PES shop.
There’s plenty of life left in PES2008 yet.
p.s. ck – I keep forgetting to mention a book to you. I thought it’d be of particular interest as it is about CCFC, and is written by an American academic. It’s called Staying Up and by Rick Gekoski. He wrote this behind-the-scenes account of Coventry’s last good season in the Premiership (1997/98). I found it a really funny and thoughtful book. It gets very interesting indeed when the players and staff start to turn on him – especially wee Gordon.
Link to info on Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Staying-Up-R-Gekoski/dp/0751528595/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195926251&sr=8-3
Lovely! Thanks for the recommendation, I’m definitely going to give it a read.
Everybody loves American journalists at first, then they find out we actually have zero reverence for all the things we’re supposed to have reverence for, and then they turn on us.
Have you read The Miracle of Castel de Sangro? It’s hilarious, and really shines an amusing light on small-town Italian football. Mamma mia! It’s so good!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miracle-Castel-Di-Sangro/dp/075152753X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195935612&sr=1-1
Thanks for the tip in return. Looks like my kind of thing, I’ll be investigating further…