The trouble with trebles
Posted by: Greg Downs in Chelsea, D1 Cup, European Cup (ECC), Mattsson, Real Madrid, Treble, away goals, league table, tags: D1 Cup, European Cup (ECC), Mattsson, Real Madrid, TrebleGoing for Trebles in PES can be a nervy business. The league is strangely the easiest component of the three. Once you’re good enough to be going for a Treble, you’re usually good enough to be able to win enough games over a long season to take the title.
The trickiest part of the Treble is making progress in the two Cups.
Even in PES2008, you can’t afford to have a bad Cup game. If you do have a bad game, it’s better to have it in the first leg of the tie, so you get one more game in which to put it right.
If the bad game comes in the second leg of the tie, you’re out, and that’s the Treble gone in a puff of smoke, instantly. No second chances. It can be hard on the nerves.
I’ve played the first legs of the two Cup semi-finals. I had two fairly bad games in both of them.
First was the Division 1 Cup: Chelsea at their ground. The final score here was 2-2. I was lucky not to lose it 2-1; Mattsson popped up with an equaliser towards the end. The return leg at my ground should be tense, but with those two away goals under my belt I’m confident things will go my way.
If you’re going to have a bad game in the Cup, it’s better to have it in the first leg, and it’s even better if it’s away from home. That way, any goal you score in the otherwise bad game is an away goal. Any goal(s) that the other team scores aren’t away goals. Many’s the time I have been kicked out of Cups in PES because I conceded an away goal or two in a bad first leg game.
Which is why I’m shaking in my virtual football boots over the result of the other semi-final. The ECC semi-final against the mighty Real Madrid finished 2-2 as well.
The difference here is that it was at my ground. Real Madrid have two away goals. I will have to score at their ground, and it will be tough. Real Madrid were all over me for much of this first leg. They played incredibly well. I had to exert all my, uh, exertions just to keep up with them They took the lead, I equalised, they took the lead again, and I equalised again near the end. It was a strangely (even suspiciously) similar game to the Chelsea one.
As for the League… it’s hardly worth mentioning any more. Liverpool 2, Coventry City 5. Coventry City 6, Bolton 1. And plenty more. I’ve all but won it. I’m 7 points ahead of Man Yoo with seven games left to play. They might as well call a halt to it now and hand me the trophy. If I manage to lose enough games not to win this title, I’ll give up PES for good.
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whos your leading scorer?
For me in PES, the scripting generally goes like this — you get given one of the domestic competitions, either cup or league (seems to be random), and that competition is reasonably easy. The other domestic competition is stiffer. If it’s the league, you can still battle through, but when its the cup, as you said, one bad game and it’s done.
European competition (at least after the group stages) is always increasingly difficult. I’ve always gotten my best games in Europe, and when I was starting out with PES, I couldn’t win anything in the European Cup.
bostongoals - Schwarz is my top scorer with 28 goals. He’s also the league top scorer by a long way - Tevez in second place has 17. Andy Cole, Shimizu, and Beerens are all on about 10 to 15 goals each. I’ll be posting a full list of my team’s goals/assists at the end of the season. I’ll also be posting a copy of my final save file in case any PS3 owners want to check out my team.
ck - I’ve always found Europe incredibly tough in ML until I get a team good enough to go all the way and win it. I never have anything in-between. It’s either first-round elimination, or victory.
I keep coming back every day in the hope that something will be found/done that will make PES2008 enjoyable to play again. I simply can’t bring myself to go back to it after playing PES6 for a couple of days.
Don’t get me wrong i quite like a few of the new ideas implemented into PES2008 but the most important thing in any game is the gameplay and no matter how many bells and whistles surround it, if the core gameplay isn’t right it ruins the entire game. I simply can’t touch a game where 6 goals a match is the norm, i figure no matter what i do there is no way to solve it. Sure you can restrict the players you buy and the like but i don’t think it will be enough. The keepers are woefully poor and it’s just to easy.
PES6 and FIFA08 all the way for me at the moment
stinger - I agree with you, almost wholeheartedly. The problem with me is that I’m still in denial about PES2008. I still want to artificially handicap myself and enjoy the great core PES gameplay that it does still have in bucketloads. Its faults are massive and unforgivable. 6 goals per game - 136 goals per season - is just not football. It’s an arcadey computer game based on football, but it’s not football.
FIFA08 is by no means perfect, but it’s more like football than PES2008 is. I can’t believe I’m saying this.
I could say more here but will restrain myself. ‘FIFA08 week’ is nearly upon us and I’ll save my ammo for that. I was concerned about alienating hardcore PES fans who might visit this site, and so I was going to downscale FIFA08 week to just a couple of days. But in all honesty, if we care about PES (and I’d hope everybody here does), then we can’t ignore the reality of this year. FIFA08 is the better football game. But is it the better *game*?
Hope you enjoy FIFA08 week. I think I’m going to. I just played six games in FIFA08. I have a great team in Manager Mode and I’m playing on Professional difficulty (the middle one of five levels, for the uninitiated). My average game scoreline is 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, etc. I had a 3-0 win a few games ago and nearly fell off my chair with excitement.