A.I., Robot Comments Off
Sampdoria 2-4 Singers FC
I took myself by surprise with my performance in this one. For once all of my key players were fit at the same time. Also for once, the Regulate Condition feature turned lots of orange form arrows into red form arrows. I have been using Regulate Condition very sparingly. When overused, it can make your entire squad permanently tired.
Camacho got a goal in this game. A nice one-two, and a strong run. He’s certainly coming along, is Camacho. Ten games ago I think he’d have been muscled off the ball. The finish is through the goalkeeper’s legs:
I was wearing my away kit – predominantly black, with sky blue trimmings – in this game. I so rarely get to wear it. Perhaps seeing my players in the black kit gave me a little boost? Who knows. I might use it as my home strip next season.
D2 Cup: Singers FC 1-1 Parma (agg. 3-3 -I win on away goals)
Yessss… I had to struggle through this home leg tie against Parma. I really want to win the D2 Cup this season, so I played a wee bit over-cautiously in the first half.
Even at 0-0 I was already ahead on away goals (it was 2-2 at Parma’s place). Consequently the CPU was in supercharged mode for the entire game. I held them off with some skill and a lot of good fortune. Jackson was superb for me in this game – clearing everything with his head, tackling back, slide-tackling effectively. But the pressure was too much. Parma got their goal in the 70th minute. That, I thought, was that.
Ah, but my team is made of stronger stuff these days. Gutierrez came on as a substitute. Fresh and full of running, he received the ball just outside the box on the left. I took a hopeful snapshot – and the ball ricocheted into Parma’s net off a hapless defender…
3-3 on aggregate and I went through to the Quarter Finals on away goals. A bit lucky, but I earned my luck. I’ll take it.
Singers FC 0-0 Feyenoord
Feyenoord are one of the division’s top teams. They thumped me earlier in the season. Here I was coming off the back of a strenuous Cup match and most of my best players were out. This dour 0-0 draw was the best I could do. I put some pressure on their goal late on but there was always a defender around to stop me getting through.
Speaking generally about PES for a moment, I’m tired – so very tired – of seeing cleared corners at both ends of the pitch always falling neatly to a CPU player.
When it’s my corner, the cleared ball goes to the CPU and they launch a counter-attack (usually an almost unstoppable one). When it’s the CPU’s corner and I clear it, does the ball nearly always fall to my player? Does it hell. The ball always falls to a CPU player, and they continue to press. It’s not realistic and it’s not right.
Clearly, this kind of thing has been deliberately programmed into the game. It is one of the many advantages that an artificial intelligence needs in order to level the playing field against a human opponent.
But surely it’s possible in the 21st Century to design an AI that doesn’t need such a transparent helping hand? It’s very odd that we’ve seen amazing advances in gaming technology – in graphics, in sound, etc. – but almost no advances in the quality of computer AIs. This is an issue that affects strategy games in particular, but it’s starting to feel very old in sports franchises like PES.