And don’t call me Shirley Comments Off
Here at the start of March—barely 5 months into the PES year (reckoned from October to October)—I find myself at something of a loss. I’ve finally abandoned next-gen PES2008 for good.
This time I mean it. I did try the House Rules route, which extended the game’s life for a while, but the quality of the game is just too poor to sustain a long campaign until the next release.
It’s the first time this has ever happened to me. Every year since there’s been a PES I’ve played it solidly, almost every day, for the whole PES year.
Perhaps that is my problem with next-gen PES2008: playing every day. I know there are many people still playing the game with great enjoyment. I suspect they’re playing occasionally, as their routines permit, perhaps a couple of games once or twice a week. Perhaps my daily play habits did not do the game, or me, any favours.
My opinion on it is only my opinion, but I believe that PES2008 on the PlayStation3 is a disgrace to the PES name and should never have seen the light of day. It’s a decent enough football game in its own right—I played it for over a hundred hours—but it’s a shockingly poor excuse for a PES game.
So it looks like I picked the wrong year to start a PES blog. Ouch. What is to be done now? I’ve just got the PSP version of the game, which offers a way out if I want it: back to the last-gen version.
I’ve been playing it over the weekend and it seems very, very solid indeed. After getting well and truly burned with the next-gen version I’m understandably cautious to rush to final judgement. But it’s looking good.
I might—just might—get myself a copy of the PS2 game (from a bargain bucket so that Seabass & co. don’t get another penny of my money). I might keep the daily PES habit going that way. It depends on me continuing to find the PSP version playable over a longer period. I’m going to give it a week or two and a few Master League seasons. I’m already in season 2 of a career with Coventry City. The gameplay is so utterly different that I’m having to (re)learn PES all over again. I’m loving it.
As well as the PSP/PS2 version of PES2008 to fall back on, I have several other football games that I could devote space to: Football Manager 2008, Football Manager Live, FIFA08, LMA Manager 2007, and even Sensible Soccer on XBLA. In particular I am very, very excited about Football Manager Live. The competitive season starts tomorrow (it’s been all friendly matches until now) and Beta testing will start in earnest.
I don’t know where the future will take me or this blog, but one place it will never take me—as God is my witness—is back to the semen stain on the fabric of reality that is next-gen PES2008.