PES Chronicles

As ever, Sunday is other football game day on PES Chronicles. Except… apart from a token few matches on next-gen FIFA08, I haven’t really played any other football games this week.

I’m currently going through a dark time with next-gen PES2008. It turns out that my draconian House Rules (well, I think they’re draconian) might not be tough enough. Once again I find myself more or less going through the motions in far too many games. This might be down to me being very busy with other stuff away from PES over the past week or so. I’ve got a few days off work next week so I’ll see how the leisure time affects my play.

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Dagenham & Redbridge are near the top of Coca Cola League 2 in my second next-gen FIFA08 manager mode career. Playing this game so infrequently nowadays means that I’m struggling to do anything except draw 0-0 or 1-1. My previous two games were both 0-0, then it looked like the last game of the session was going to end 1-1. Not good enough really, and it was all going to cost me in the end. If I slipped down to fourth place and missed out on promotion I’d probably quit the entire manager mode career and go back to my Coventry City galacticos.

Ah, but in the last minute of stoppage time, Huckerby popped up in the box:

A fine looping header over the keeper. I know that I keep saying it about FIFA08, but this goal was another rarity. Most of my headers fly past the post or over the bar for no apparent reason. Did the game want me to score that goal? Are football video gamers amongst the most paranoid people on earth?

Apart from these three games on FIFA08, I haven’t touched any other football game.

I’m still waiting to get a new PC on which to play Football Manager 2008. That’ll be sometime in the summer.

I’ve still to play LMA Manager 2007 on the Xbox360. Maybe I’ll give that a whirl sometime this week.

Sensible Soccer might as well not exist for me. It was the most pointless £7 (or whatever it was) that I’ve ever spent on a game. I’m sure Sensi is a lot of fun for its dedicated fans, but as I said a few weeks ago I missed out on the game the first time around—in the mid-90s—and it’s possibly too late for me to get into it now. I will definitely give it another try for at least a couple of continuous hours. (So far I’ve only managed short bursts of twenty minutes here, half an hour there.) That will be the last test. Sensible Soccer is drinking in the Last Chance Saloon. At least it won’t be short of company at the bar…

Maybe I’ll finally lose my patience with next-gen PES2008 and admit defeat and just get the vastly superior (it now seems clear) PS2 version. I know that at least one reader of this blog will be nodding and thinking I told him so…