Funtastic Comments Off
Every Sunday on PES Chronicles is devoted to Other Football Games. It’s been another week without much action on that front. While I’m wrapped up in a PES Master League there’s never much action on any other computer games, never mind other footie games.
On my shelf at the moment I have all of these games, partly played or completely unplayed: Halo3, Mass Effect, Oblivion, Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty 4, Crackdown, Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars, and others. There are loads of old PS2 games (including the really-must-be-played-soon titles God of War 2 and Okami) that are in a similar suspended state. Football games account for 99% of my gaming life.
Sadly, I don’t think I am ever going to learn to love—or even like—Sensible Soccer on Xbox Live Arcade. Every play session goes much the same way. I start out full of good intentions. I am going to get into this classic game, I think. And for twenty minutes or so, I do get into it. I can fully see why the game earned its reputation. Goals are plentiful and, bizarrely for a retro game with simplistic graphics, the gameplay is deep. Sensible Soccer is more difficult (for me anyway) than either PES or FIFA.
But then I start to lose interest and engagement. It may be too late for me to get into Sensible Soccer. Perhaps you had to be there the first time around in the mid-90s. And I almost hesitate to say it, but fun is not enough for me. I look for something more (or less?) than fun in a computer game. If fun was the sole value criterion for a computer game, then something like Sonic the Hedgehog would be the greatest game ever made, and it’s not.
The frequent periods when next-gen FIFA08 is decidedly not fun are why I keep coming back to it. In the past few weeks I’ve been PES-ing all the way, so my time has been limited on EA’s much-discussed new iteration in its justly-lambasted series (has there ever been a FIFA that’s got the PES community buzzing like this one has?).
I’ve played another handful of games in my Manager Mode career with Dagenham & Redbridge in the Coca Cola League 2. This week I’ve dropped the difficulty level down a notch. Dare I say it, but World Class was proving to be so tough with the players at my disposal that I was spending most of every game just chasing the ball. It was not fun…
Back down to Professional, then, and the games pick up. I have more of the ball, spend more time taking my time and indulging in the gameplay that I have come to admire and respect. And love? Possibly.
Here’s a couple of goals from this week’s play:
The first goal in the clip is an example of the bad in next-gen FIFA08. I get a shot away with Baiano that hits the crossbar and loops into the air. As it comes down I vaguely challenge the keeper for the ball, and it rebounds off his hands into the net. The game credited Baiano with the goal. Groan. It’s just one of many little niggling faults with the game.
The second goal in the clip is one of my favourites. An extended dribble down half the pitch, holding off the defender at my heels, and then an arrowed shot into the corner of the net. Remarkably, in FIFA08 such goals are a rarity.
I’ve got Dagenham and Redbridge up to 4th in League 2. A notorious bug in next-gen FIFA08 (a stupid oversight, really) means that there are no division playoffs, so I’ll have to finish in the top 3 to go up to League 1.
Promotion is a certainty unless I buckle and put the difficulty back up to World Class—which I’ll probably do, come to think of it. It won’t be fun trying to re-learn the game at that level (especially as I’m spending 95% of my time on PES2008), but it will be challenging. That’s what I like in a computer game.