PES Chronicles

Back to PES2008 today. I’m returning with a lot of anticipation after my week or so of playing pretty much anything but PES2008.

I’ve gone on (and on, and on) about my various disenchantments with the game. There’s no getting away from the fact that next-gen PES2008 is a major, major let-down on so many fronts. I just cannot accept it and have to keep re-stating the fact to myself to believe that it’s actually true.

With the horrific lag, there isn’t even the option to play the game online. Here at the end of January, it now seems likely that Konami aren’t going to do anything about the unplayable state of PES2008 online (on the PS3) – probably because they can’t do anything about it. How are they getting away with this? How? I’m going to be picking at this particular scab from now until October.

And where the hell is the PSP version? The release date keeps getting put back. It’s January 31st on Amazon UK at the moment, but it’s March 7th on Play.com. What does it all mean? Who the hell knows.

We’re now (probably) just a few months from the release of Metal Gear Solid 4. I won’t be pre-ordering it. I believe that the release of MGS4 (and possibly the PSP version of PES2008) was put back after the storm broke over Konami’s corporate head following the hideously premature release of next-gen PES2008. Caveat emptor.

After all the FIFA08 and Sensible Soccer time I’ve been putting in, I actually couldn’t wait to get back to playing PES2008. I’ve still got my Singers FC Master League career going.

It’s going poorly, and getting worse. I started up the game this morning and it was as though I had never played it before. (That’s a good thing.)

It wasn’t the pace of the game. It was the AI. Every loose ball fell to a COM player. Every ricochet went its way. These things are so commonplace in PES games of recent years that they’re barely worth mentioning. But I’ve come off the back of a week or so of FIFA08, where such things don’t happen so regularly and so predictably. Loose balls going to the AI 99% of the time: this, for me, is what PES scripting is all about. (FIFA08 has its very own methods of stiffing the human player – of which more in the future.)

But I’ve put in over 150 hours on PES2008. It didn’t take me long to get back into the rhythm. You end up weirdly accommodating the scripting when you play PES. You take it into account before the game starts. You know it’ll happen, and you accept it. Yes, I had my PES head back on after a game or two.

Never mind that I played three games and didn’t manage to score a single goal…

Blackburn 1-0 Singers FC
Celtic 1-0 Singers FC (Matuzalem sent off)
Singers FC 0-2 AEK Athens

Yes, I’ve been away for a while. But this just wasn’t good enough. I was lazy with my passing and shooting. Instead of working the optimum chance, I was trying to blaze it in from all angles and distances. After playing a football game that forces you to move the ball around, work the space, and play the long, patient game (I’m talking FIFA08 again), I think I had the idea in the back of my mind that I was coming back to PES2008 for a break from all of that disgraceful simulation kind of thing. PES2008 – good old arcadey PES2008 – would make a refreshing change.

But PES2008 isn’t all that arcadey, really. Yes, with good or great players at your command, it gets ridiculous at times. But otherwise, with balanced teams? It’s not all that far from FIFA08. You need the measured build-up and the cool finish. PES2008 is only absurdly arcadey in comparison to its own ancestors.

Similar posts:

• Twilight of the Idol?
• Master League – starting over
• FIFA Madness
• Ring out the new, ring in the old
• Singers when you’re winning