(NB: I used the old save, the one where I had lost the game, to continue with my ML once the experiment was over.)

It’s not only the heavy-handedness, but the scripting can appear in such random or meaningless ways.

Four games from the end of the season, you play a mid-table team with nothing to play for and it’s HAAAARD. Then, the last game of the season as you’re playing the #1 side *for the championship*, and they roll over with a puff and a whimper.

Le huh?

When I have the Defaults, or mainly Defaults and a few good players, I’ll tend to try to defend as I would with a team of good players, which the Defaults can’t do. Lacking that extra yard of pace they can’t get properly into position to make the challenges that I still try to make, and draw yellows ad reds for.

With good players I can make those challenges and not get punished.

If I’ve been messing around with other football games, particularly FIFA08 with its more realistic bookings rules, I’ll try to play PES2008 the same way with disastrous results.

You also have to bear in mind that the refs in PES2008 (next-gen) are probably the fussiest, harshest refs we’ve ever seen in a PES game. They’re nothing like the PES6 refs (which were realistic and never auto-red-carded you for any kind of tackle from behind anywhere on the pitch).

My bookings and red cards are starting to come down now as I’ve started to play just PES2008 and nothing else, and as I’ve started to get good players. I always play with ‘passion’ but I don’t go around trying to clog everyone on the park when I haven’t got the ball. I think I get so anxious to get the ball back sometimes and it costs me.

Oddly, in the 30-or-so games I’ve played online I’ve never had a red card, but plenty of my opponents have. I play differently against humans. I stand off more and play a containing game. Against the CPU I think it’s my right to have the ball!

I haven’t had 22 red cards in over a years worth of PES. (Granted I don’t play as many games you but still a good few seasons worth). Its quite worrying, maybe its a bonus because your players get to rest when they’d normally play another game but if I got so many red cards so often I’d be infuriated.

I’m not one to tell someone how to do anything but one too many moments of ‘passion’?

But online is broken and will almost certainly never be fixed. And people online—90% of them—aren’t so much interested in playing PES as playing Barcelona and simply running at you with their star men. Don’t worry, I can cope with that ‘tactic’ (most of the time) but the kind of game that it typically becomes bores me to death.

I’ve been playing ISS/PES for 9 years now and Master League has gradually emerged for me as the most important game mode in the most important game franchise I’ve ever played. Despite its shortcomings this year I am still enjoying it. The House Rules have helped.