PES Chronicles

I’m still in a mood with PES2008 on the PS3 and have not played it since last week. I might never play it again. I absolutely hate it. I loathe it, in a way that I’ve rarely loathed any computer game, including the old FIFAs. Just the thought of playing so-called next-gen PES2008 again makes me feel dizzy with displeasure.

That mood is not helped by the arrival of the comparatively excellent PSP version. This version, although ‘last-gen’, strikes me as being quintessentially PES-like. It’s true to its roots. The ‘next-gen’ version is… well, I don’t know what it is, but it ain’t PES.

I’ve been entranced by the PSP version over the weekend. After playing my usual test games against Scotland and Germany, I skipped the customary warm-up tournament and jumped straight into a Master League career.

Naturally, I started my new Master League with the Default players on Top Player. My players are terrible and I’m finding the difficulty to be formidable. Am I some kind of masochist? What possessed me to start ML with the Default players again? On Top Player? Sheesh.

The scripting in this last-gen version of the game seems, if anything, more overt and more annoying than the next-gen one. All versions of the game over the past few years have featured a phenomenon I will call CCOP, or CPU Continuity of Possession.

This is where the CPU will maintain possession in and around your penalty area no matter how heroically you defend, no matter how many blocking tackles you make, no matter how clearly it seems that you’ve finally cleared the ball and/or won back possession. The CPU will always get the ball back immediately and keep the little spell of pressure going and there’s nothing you can do about it.

In Master League the length of time the CPU can get away with this is relative to the quality of your players and the difficulty level. (And, allegedly, how good you are at the game…)

At least I’m playing as Coventry City again in a Master League that I enjoy. Being in a second division with just 12 teams again is also very fine. The first transfer window rolls around just when you’re starting to get bored with losing 0-1 to goals conceded in the last five minutes. I got Camacho again. And I just signed Podolski in the end-of-season window. Whoo-hoo, etc.

PSP loading times are less annoying that before, but they’re still annoying. The most annoying blank screens are the ones that come during a match when the game takes an infuriating time to load a yellow card or a substitution cut-scene, or even just a free kick scenario.

Why don’t they simply remove all of the cut-scenes for the PSP versions of this game? Watching your own distorted reflection in the blank screen (is that really me) and listening to the UMD drive grinding away for several seconds is not what I signed up for here. Yes, it is only several seconds each time, and it is less than in previous PSP versions of the game, but they all still add up.

Over the course of a game with 5 bookings, say, and a couple of injuries, you’re looking at a total of a few minutes of time wasted loading up (IMO) redundant cut scenes. Just drop them completely next year. No one’ll miss them.

And then getting back to the main menu after completing a game takes a grand total of 80 seconds each time (I counted). Grrrr.

It should be borne in mind here that my PSP is a launch-day model from 2005. I understand that the latest PSPs feature improved UMD drives with much better loading times. Despite all of this signature moaning from me, the loading times for PES2008 on the PSP are still a lot better than before and not an issue for me right now.

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Now I’m faced with a dilemma regarding this blog.

Do I make the leap to the PSP version permanently, or do I go back and give the PS3 version another chance?

I hate the PS3 version now—make no mistake about it: I HATE THE PS3 VERSION OF PES2008.

But I can’t imagine myself blogging long-term about the PSP version—not unless I also get the PS2 version to complement it, and transfer my Master League career back and forth to…

Decisions, decisions.