Patchtastic?
STOP PRESS: The PS3 patch for PES2008 is now available – as of 15.30 on Monday 26th November.
At 130MB, it’s got to be a pretty substantial set of changes, Shirley? I’m hoping for things like kit changes as well as for an improvement to the offline game’s framerate. If they’ve fixed the online lag, I might have myself a few games with some actual ‘people’ later.
I’m downloading it right now as I type. It’s downloading very slowly. 14% after 5 minutes, and I’m on an 8MB connection. I should probably clear off here and give the data stream some room to breathe…
I’ll update later with what I see and don’t see, post-patch.
Fingers crossed for PES2008. And for Konami…
EDIT: 17.24, 26th November 2007
Well, I finished the download and played a full game to test things out. I set up an International Tournament to see if kit selection has been put back in the game. It hasn’t.
I played an Exhibition Game in the Bernebeu, with rain, and with the circular pitch pattern that always makes me groan when I see it in my Master League. Early results look good. I saw none of the Bullet Time I’m used to seeing under such conditions. There were occasional stutters, but really no more than 2% of what they used to be.
That’s all I had time for just now. Later today and tomorrow morning, I’ll be playing my Master League for a long period under all kinds of match conditions. I will be a lot better placed to report on how the patch has affected the offline experience.
Regarding online play, I have yet to try it out for myself but early reports from various forums on the internet are a mixed bag. Some say the online lag is still present. Others say it’s gone or vastly reduced. Hopefully I will get the chance to see for myself later.
hope the patch sorts out all of your problems. Personally I have the PC version so all is well (except the names on unregistered teams – how awful!
ML first season in Div1 finished with me 2nd to barca by 6points (way ahead of all other teams), i had top scorer and top assists (makinwa got both awards lol) and i won the cup (top scorer, top assists), i have 70,000+ cash and saved/stopped playing in negotiation period 2. I think the next season will be easy as pie; ill win everything and get even more money.. its become predictable!
So I restarted… Top player, hardest settings for ML, default team, and i put ALL the best teams in my eventual Division1, with the next best teams in Division2. Ive had the chance to play two games but I have a very busy week ahead of me now so I wont continue for a while…
I lost 3-2 (after being 2-1 up, i scored lovely goals lol) in the first game, and in the second game I lost 4-0 lol. This is gonna be VERY hard. The defaults are seriously SO poor: you can be an excellent player but when your passes get intercepted at no fault of your own and with a keeper who doesnt know the word ’save’, your ’skillz’ are no worth. I’ll try my best to make some cash for the negotiations- bring in 3 or 4 youngsters + 3 or 4 exchanges..
anyway this is your blog, ill stop writing about my experiences lol.
david – my mouth is watering. If/when I feel I’m done with my current ML, I’m planning to do exactly the same as you – ALL settings to maximum difficulty, and two custom divisions made up of all the game’s best teams. I cannot wait. I’m thinking that I will wait, though, until I’ve won at least one Treble in my current ML.
Oh, and don’t ever be shy about posting your own ML experiences. At some point in the future I’ll invite guest posts from anyone who wants to make one.
^ There’s that G-17 league they’ve been threatening to create!
I can’t take credit for the G-17 (its 17? i thought it was 14 by name lol) – i saw on it on this site, but what an idea!
AC milan, Inter, Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool, Barca, Real, Seville, Arsenal, PSV, Ajax, Lyon
ohhh yeah.
No way I will be able to buy Rooney or Ronaldo just because they dont have no other teams bidding on them (as it happens to be with the default team selections)!..
This is no push in the park. This is death-defying sky-diving with no parachute!
anyway lol. ill try to finish the work I have to do for tomorrow so i can get a game in tonight
… and I got the idea from some random thread over on PESfan. Long-term I think it’s teh way to go.
I’ve just finished a session of playing PES2008 online. I enjoyed it – apart from the horrific lag. It has to be seen to be (dis)believed. Players literally teleporting from one side of the pitch to the other. The ball disappearing and reappearing. Horrendous.
Hi greg,
I’ve been reading through the entirety of your blog over the past few days and have finally caught up to where your currently at. I’m playing the ML in an almost identical way to yourself and am so far enjoying the experience despite finishing 2nd bottom in my first season (just starting the second now).
Anyway the reason i am posting is to give my views on the difficulty of the Master League. As you have experience the first few seasons tend to be quite tough and a real struggle but then you just seem to hit a point where things just turn and you start competing at the top of the league.
The most frustrating thing I’ve found in this version and in PES 5 and 6 is that there seems to be a fine line between the game being stupidly hard and stupidly easy. A fine balance between the two is quite difficult to find. You are either annoyed because the AI seems untouchable or frustrated that you are walking through games easily.
I share your views that Konami have blown this version of the game big time and i find FIFA equally as good if not better (other than the frustrating control system). I do also feel as though there is an element of scripting withing some matches. Now this is not a personal attack on you but do you feel that the amount of scripting that is in the game has been played up so much by people on internet forums and the like that now anybody who loses any game is far to quick to blame it on the game rather than their own mistakes?
Hi Stinger – thanks for your comments, and to take your last point first… I do go on about scripting a lot, especially now that I’ve more or less got to grips with the game. Every year I go through this phase between being lousy at the new PES and being competent (or even good) at it.
In between the two stages, every goal I concede looks scripted to me! It’s a traditional feature of my PES year and a lot of other people’s years. I notice that my complaints and other people’s complaints die down once everyone has got to grips with the game. If/when we get to PES2009 on this blog, I’ll go through the exact same process during November.
Scripting to me is most annoying not when the CPU scores a goal that – yes – I could and probably should have been able to stop, with better defending. There’s always at least one point during a replay where I think I should have made my defender(s) zig rather than zag, or not charged my keeper, or something like that. So, yes, I take your point. (I exclude corners and free kicks from this.)
Scripting for me is, for example, when you have a corner, the CPU clears it, and the ball drops in midfield to the CPU player *every* time. That’s scripting: the code is written in such a way to ensure that the CPU clearing header will always be directed perfectly to their player. There’s nothing you can do about it as a human player. It’s something you either have to accept and deal with, or not play the game. After the initial frustrations die away, I accept and deal with it.
I’m gathering material for a big article in a week or so about scripting in PES. It’ll be a bit of a self-critical article about myself and PES fans in general being too hung up on the notion of scripting. But I’ll also be pinpointing the *exact* moments during games against the CPU when scripting is undeniably taking place. There aren’t too many of those completely undeniable moments, to be fair, but they *do* exist. It’s a big, big topic for PES so I want to do it justice – like I said, it’s a week or so away.
Over the last week I’ve become less bothered about scripting (‘alleged’ scripting, I should say: Seabass has always denied it exists) but I’d hope this comes across as a dedicated PES fan’s general day-in, day-out grumbling – with a hopefully humorous, self-satirising angle – about conceding any type of goal at all (*Curse you Seabass!* etc.).
Regarding your other points – alas, Konami really messed up PES2008 on the PS3. Technically it’s poor – arguably the graphically-poorest, glitchiest game yet released on the console. Gameplay-wise, there’s lots to love. But the difficulty curve is shallow this year.
FIFA08 on the next-gen consoles is a fine game, I think. Different, and strange (R2 to sprint? eh?!) – but a mighty fine game all in all. I’ll be breaking things up here from time to time to play FIFA08 for a day or two.
> ’alleged’ scripting, I should say: Seabass has always
> denied it exists)
Seabass just lies about this issue. It’s not even a question of “if,” it’s a question of “how heavily.”