PES Chronicles

I received another bye in the D2 Cup—a great relief, as I want to get off to a good start this season. I don’t need a two-legged Cup tie getting in the way and tiring my players, thank you very much.

In my third game I played one of last season’s relegated teams, Paris St Germain. I was wary. This team has always been a tough one to crack, and now was no exception. I went 0-1 down early on—a familiar story—but pulled it back to win 2-1. Caracciolo got both of my goals, my first ‘proper’ goals in the league this season.

Next up were Sunderland, a team that I’m determined not to regard as my bogey team. Nevertheless, Sunderland always do everything possible to demonstrate that they are my bogey team. One of the many things I have not ever mentioned in this blog is that Daryl Murphy, the famous Sunderland striker, always plays against me like some kind of Super-Pele.

After I went into the lead and was cruising, I started to get worried about not scoring another goal. My PES spider sense was tingling. Anytime now, I thought, Daryl’s gonna pop up again…

And he did. But this abomination should never have been a goal. (Curse you Seabass…)

The clip shows Daryl Murphy clean through on goal. I charge my keeper out and, I think, get there in time to smother Murphy’s shot. But no—the ball passes straight through my keeper’s groin. Then, just to make me feel even worse, the ball rolls into the net after at first clearly heading wide. Apparently my keeper’s phased groin at least had enough material substance to impart a touch of spin to the ball. Ridiculous.

Collision detection in PES has always been ropey. But PES2008 boasts, among its many little faults, the franchise’s worst-ever collision detection. At least if it was consistent and worked both ways it might be more acceptable.

Take a look at this referee:

The ref is standing there, staring the other way. I’m trying to run Leonardo out wide and think I’ve got plenty of room to do so. Then the referee abruptly turns and runs through Leonardo. A second later, Leonardo stumbles sideways as if he’d been shoulder-charged by a linebacker. Leaving the ball in open space, ready for the CPU to come in and collect…

After all of these shenanigans I took on PSV, another relegated team, and lost 0-3. The game was rigged, I swear it! Okay, to tell the truth I simply played badly, with anger and impatience—which you just cannot get away with in PES.

I decided to leave things there for this session and go to cool down. At least I didn’t have anyone sent off today.