PES Chronicles

It’s the most famous phrase in PESFan history. Every regular visitor or poster on the site must have read it dozens or hundreds of times: Go play FIFA.

Every time there was a gripe or complaint about a PES game; every time anyone said they didn’t like the passing, or the shooting, or the through-balls, or the advertising hoardings: “If you don’t like it, go play FIFA.”

Over time it became an all-purpose phrase, coming into play on the slenderest of pretexts. I came to see it almost as an in-joke, a celebration of the fact that the place was called PESFan, and we were all PES fans. The game we loved was unassailably great, and FIFA was some soulless EA nabob’s puerile idea of a football game. FIFA was a joke. Less than a joke: you’d rather play nothing at all than play FIFA. Thus, over time, the phrase became a kind of all-purpose, almost friendly put-down:

Poster A: “Brrr, the weather’s awful today.”
Poster B: “Go play FIFA”

The phrase is remarkable on so many levels. Not least because it represents the creeping Americanisation of British English. Hundreds – thousands? - of PESfan posters, predominantly British, have blithely typed (and thought – linguistic philosophy tells us that they’re the same thing): Go play FIFA.

In orthodox British English, it should be: Go and play FIFA.

I don’t get out much.

———-

Go play FIFA is, for once, an entirely reasonable thing to urge a dissatisfied PES fan to do. I’ve spoken about and praised FIFA08 so many times on this blog that I won’t repeat myself again. Not much, anyway.

I want to get the disclaimer in early: I am and will remain a PES fan for the forseeable future. FIFA08 is a great, but flawed game. PES2008 has greatly disappointed me, but FIFA08 is not yet about to take the place of PES in my heart. Disclaimer ends.

Some five days ago I concluded an amazing, enthralling, entertaining, eye-opening season in my FIFA08 Manager Mode career with Coventry City.

I played the whole season on Professional difficulty – the middle of five difficulty levels. To the uninitiated (and, if you have never played next-gen FIFA08, you’re one of the uninitiated) this might sound as if I was playing it on an easy difficulty level. Not so. Professional difficulty on next-gen FIFA08 is approximately as hard as Top Player difficulty on PES6.

I won the Quadruple. As a PES man, the Treble was always the ultimate achievement. FIFA08 allows you to go one better. (And, with a Community Shield and a European Supercup, six trophies in one season would be the ultimate goal. Would that be a Sextuplet? I think it would be. Too lazy to check Google, is what I am…)

Without further ado, here is a five-minute video showing some key moments and goals from the Quadruple-winning season. If you’re one of the clever chaps who have subscribed to me on YouTube, you probably saw this last night…

A couple of things. First, apologies again for the mobile phone video footage. It’s terrible, I know, but you can see what is going on (most of the time). EA implemented an online replay save feature for FIFA08. I have never managed to get it working.

Second, a goals highlights video is a very poor way to convey how next-gen FIFA08 actually plays. You can no more judge how FIFA08 plays from this video (or from any video) than the word ‘water’ can make you wet. When it comes right down to it, you have to get your hands dirty (or wet).

Some incidents of note throughout the video:

At 1:36, you can see a super-long-range goal scored from near the halfway line. It might prompt the thought: “Huh! Same old FIFA…” But that would be wrong. In 450+ games, that’s the only goal of its kind that I’ve managed to score. And it came in a Cup match against the lowly Brighton & Hove Albion.

At 2:10 is an angled shot from Mathieu above a crowded penalty area, and into the opposite corner of the net. It’s possibly my most favourite goal of them all. A true FIFA08 rarity. So difficult to pull off.

At 2:27 is probably the most important goal of the season, from a Quadruple-winning point of view. I had to win both of my last two games to take the League title. In this penultimate game against Blackburn, the score was 0-0 in the 90th minute and I’d all but given up hope. Cue the mother of all aerial through-balls to Oliveira, and a nice trap and finish.

After the Quadruple season was finished, I started the next on the highest difficulty level – Legendary. I started really well, but then the CPU teams started taking the proverbial… I couldn’t get the ball or keep the ball for very long throughout game after game. I’ve bumped the difficulty down a notch to World Class for now. Currently, in February 2014, I’ve been knocked out of every Cup competition and I’m fifth in the League.

I’m enjoying FIFA08. It’s the allure of the new in many ways. There has never yet been a game like FIFA08. PES2008 is still around – how could it not be? – but, for the first time ever, I’m splitting my time between PES and its rival.

Earlier in this post, I said that my Quadruple-winning season was eye-opening. I meant that it showed me just what is possible for a football computer game on a next-gen console. Apart from several gnarly issues (player response times, AI stupidity, goalkeeper spasticity, frequently anti-intuitive shooting, etc.), FIFA08 would be the greatest football game ever made. I’m serious. Even as it is, there’s enough quality in the game to tempt me back time and time again.

Go play FIFA? Okay then.