Dangerous liaisons Comments Off
In my quest for a football game to play all year (it’s a bad year for PES) I was going to play PES6 today, FIFA08 tomorrow, and PES2008 on Thursday before making up my mind to play one, some, or none of them from now on. There’s been a slight change of plan.
I last played PES6 several months ago. My old Master League save is stuck on a PS2 memory card. I’m not going to pay £10 or £15 or whatever it is for a PS2 save converter that I’ll only use once. So there’s nothing going on for me in PES6 right now. I’d have to build it all again from scratch.
FIFA08 is a different matter. I wanted to play it this morning. I had to play it this morning. I’m in the midst of an ongoing narrative in FIFA08. I felt the urge to carry it on. I’m invested. I have a great manager mode career going with Coventry City that’s in its 6th season. Here’s my current First XI in FIFA08:
I’m playing on Professional difficulty – the middle of five difficulty levels. It’s hard enough for me at the moment. My record in the current season so far is won 15, drawn 6, and lost 6. I’m 4th in the Premier League with 11 games to go. I am also still in all the other competitions: European Cup, FA Cup, League Cup. The Quadruple is on.
Even with my team of quasi-galacticos I have to work hard for every result. Manchester City turned me over 1-3 in my last league game, denying me the chance to go top. I failed to take them seriously and tried to ‘PES2008′ my way to victory. It didn’t work because you just can’t play FIFA08 that way. Almost every goal has to be the result of thought and skill in some combination.
Take this goal for example. Van Persie applies what looks like a simple finish, but just watch the build-up:
I’ve just played and won the League Cup final. My opponents were Chelsea. It was a great game, one of the best I’ve played on FIFA08. It ended 3-2 to me – a rare kind of scoreline. I was 2-0 up but let things slip to 2-2. Then, in the first period of extra time, I scored another FIFA08 rarity. Goals like this do not come along very often in this game:
The shooting mechanic in next-gen FIFA08 is one of the reasons so many PES fans hate it. Everything has to be just so, otherwise the shot will balloon over or go straight to the keeper. In the above replay you can almost see me, the ghost behind the machine, waiting for the ball to bounce just right, and then guiding the shot toward the far corner.
No other FIFA game has affected the PES community like FIFA08 has. The forums over on PESfan show a lot of confusion and anger flying around in all directions. Some posters love next-gen FIFA08; others hate it; still others are somewhere in between, as I am.
People are very categorical when it comes to games. “FIFA08 is the most realistic football game ever, no question.” “FIFA08 is crap!” They interpret their own estimation of any game as an objective, infallible, universally-applicable measurement of the game’s worth. But it is not so. Check this interesting PESfan thread (membership required to view) for abundant examples of frayed tempers, partial judgements taken to be objective truths, and sheer aggro. I’ve stayed out of all the arguments, despite being tempted. My days of arguing on the internet are long gone.
I think I could play next-gen FIFA08 for the rest of the year. I don’t think I’d play it every day, as I have done with PES games in the past, but at the moment it’s the leading candidate. There are gameplay issues that rankle, but PES has issues too, and I never had any trouble loving PES (until this year).
But I can never quite shake the feeling that liking next-gen FIFA08 is shameful in some way.
I can feel my cheeks almost burning with shame and peculiar embarrassment to admit that I prefer next-gen FIFA08 to PES2008 (at the moment; PES will still get one more chance). Liking FIFA has for so long equated to being a frivolous and shallow football gamer that it really does almost stick in my throat, despite this year’s next-gen version being a wholly original and refreshing change of style.
Tomorrow I will be playing PES6. If I can drag myself away from my pursuit of that Quadruple…