PES Chronicles

Bayern Munich have been a strong football side with a formidable reputation for as long as I have been alive. I was looking forward to meeting them in the Superleague just as much as the likes of Barcelona and AC Milan. As it turned out I had to wait until week 16 for it to happen, and when it did there was a definite air of anti-climax: Bayern Munich 0-3 Singers FC.

A good win, and I was hungry for all the points I could get as the mid-season negotiations loom up ahead. The Arsenal were up next. A tiresome, dour, battling game ended 0-0.

The Division 1 Cup 2nd leg. I was at home after the first leg ended 2-2. Those away goals were very nice indeed. However, Barcelona turned up and decided to play. It ended 0-1 to them and I was eliminated. This was the Barcelona that I’d expected from the outset in this league. They played well, but it was still one heckuva fishy game. I’m afraid that I had 3 players sent off as I struggled to get the one solitary goal that would’ve taken me through.

No matter. The Treble is all that really matters to me, and it’ll be next season before I’m able to go for that. Winning or not winning the Cup this season was neither here nor there. The only reason to stay in this season’s Cup would be to accumulate points for transfers. With my transfer embargo in force, there’s no point in that either.

Game number 18 and the last one before the mid-season break was against Aston Villa, a.k.a. the ultimate scum. I am happy to report that I thrashed them 1-0, although John Carew gave me a scare almost every time he got on the ball. Funnily enough, his real-life counterpart is currently enjoying a rich spell of form in the English Premier League.

Last night’s 5.3-on-the-Richter scale earth tremor that hit most of England found me playing… not PES2008 or any other football game, but the opening level of Okami.

For a good few months after a new PES comes out I always have a large backlog of other games to work through. The rather lengthy cut-scene that opens the game was just coming to an end when I felt my bed and then the whole room start to vibrate. It was over within a few seconds.

I knew what had happened but wanted some confirmation that it wasn’t an asteroid strike or something similar, so I turned on the radio and tuned it into the nation’s supposed leading talk-based station, Talk Sport. They were just receiving the first calls and emails and text messages from the public. The presenter and his co-presenters spent a couple of minutes tittering about the common phrase “the earth moved for me”—it was just so hilarious!—before confirming that people had noticed a mini-quake all over the country and it wasn’t an asteroid strike

So it wasn’t the end of the world. I returned to playing Okami, and enjoyed the first couple of hours. Why wasn’t I playing PES2008—or at least FIFA08, or LMA Manager, or something football-related?

Call it football game fatigue. It happens to me occasionally.

Next-gen PES2008 has not helped the situation this year. It’s a poor, poor game by the PES series’ own illustrious standards, although it’s a decent enough football game in its own right. If it wasn’t for the PES name on the box, I doubt I’d still be playing it regularly. But, like some kind of wind-up toy, I’ve always played PES games nearly every day, so here I am in 2008, mindlessly doing the same. Will this clockwork ever wind down?

It just might, you know.