As a man thinketh
Posted by: not-Greg in Komol, goal replay, league table, tags: goal replay, Komol, league tableThere’s an age-old philosophy—perhaps it’s the only true philosophy, and everything else is derived from it—that goes something like: whatever a human being believes is reality is reality. That’s a very boiled-down version, but it’ll do for my purpose here. In PES terms, I went into the last 7 games of season 2013 probably needing to win almost all of them, and lose or draw no more than one or two, in order to keep hold of my top 6 place. Qualifying for Europe next season is everything to me right now. Missing out would be a crushing disappointment.
So I decided that my new PES reality was: win every game. And concede less goals. I was getting tired of 3-2 results. I wanted to win 1-0 or 2-0 for a change.
So I made that ambition my new reality. I used the techniques of contemporary personal development gurus. I played all seven games in one mammoth session, and spent some time leading up to it in visualising success, and imagining what and how I would feel post-success, and I drew a ten-point action plan on a whiteboard in multicoloured marker pens that I frowned at in concentration for an hour. That last part about the whiteboard and marker pens isn’t actually true. But the rest is. And the crazy thing is, it worked.
The short version of the end of season 2013 is that I won six of the seven games and drew the other. I scored an average of two goals per game and—just as importantly for me—never conceded more that one goal per game. I actually kept clean sheets for four consecutive games at one point, which is unheard-of for me in this PES2008 so far. And it was all to do with my ruling attitude during the games. So now I’ve decided to write a self-development book using PES2008 as the backbone of my system and become a guru and have five wives and lots of sex. Watch out for it in 2009.
This replay isn’t a stupendously great goal like the Dos Santos one that I lost on my knackered PC. But it is a significant goal, and those are the criteria for posting goal replays on this blog: they’ve got to be stupendous or significant, or ideally both. This long-range first-touch strike from Komol sealed my top 6 place in the penulitimate game of the season. It’s not a bad-looking goal in its own right either:
I’ve achieved my goal for the season. In season 2014 (where does all the time go?) I could, theoretically, win the Treble. Ah, but first I have to navigate past the pre-WEFA qualifying tournament. That’s got to be one of the toughest periods of games you can ever face in a Master League. Two fixtures every week for the first third of the season is a test even for the strongest squad, and mine isn’t the strongest squad. That can be remedied. I’ve got a massive surplus of points to spend—30,000—and it’s time to start spending them.
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Good to see you still carrying on and finally having some success. Also really like the new layout (haven’t been in to check things out for a while). Your stories of having great fun with ‘last gen’ PES2008 has inspired me and yesterday i went out and picked it up.
All I can say is this is how PES should be. It’s much more like the older versions and is 100x better than the poor excuse for a PES game that is the next-gen version (which i traded in a few weeks ago to get GT5:Prologue)
Have only played 3 games in my Master League but i can see this being my main game for the next 6 months or so.
stinger - once I got over my newfound PS3-related graphics snobbishness, I have come to love ‘last-gen’ PES2008 like few PESes before it. In time it might even overtake PES5 in my estimation. Every match I play is a pleasure and I have to force myself to stop playing it and get on with other stuff. If you’ve also got a PSP and you ever pick up the PSP version, be very afraid - I really have had to force myself to leave the PSP at home when I go out.
In many ways, the last-gen version makes me feel the tragedy of the next-gen version even more keenly. I would have been satisfed with a version of old-style PES with a lick of next-gen HD graphical paint. I think what happened at Konami towers was that they tried to remake PES gameplay for the next generation of consoles, went over their deadline, panicked, and just shoved it out as it was—manifestly unfinished. The ridiculously overpowered dribbling could only be explained by this, surely?
I’m glad you like the new blog layout, which was only supposed to be temporary - a ‘holding layout’. I’ll be updating it a bit over the summer but the core elemets shouldn’t change.
Greg you almost did it!
I was about to praise you and say well done for moving on but it didn’t take long to get back in to the slag-fest :p
But I haven’t done the europe thing this time yet (I doubt I will for a while after setting myself an unthinkable challenges lol) - A sample of this being; can only shoot from outside the box (I got bored of tap-ins lol)
But that style of posting is refreshing, I like it. Keep up the good work, all positive is better than the negative bits.
Paww—I’m trying to ration myself to one all-out attack on next-gen PES2008 per week. But it’s very hard….
Even as I get deeper and deeper into the last-gen version, I can’t help but notice that I’m playing it on a PlayStation3, and it just serves to remind me of what happened with that whole ‘best PES ever’ thing last year.
Still, PES2009 feels as if it’s just around the corner. I really do believe this is make or break for Konami.
I must say I’m actually a little disappointed that PES2009 is only just around the corner. It now means I have to cram my whole PES year into just 6 months, and i would really like to have a long running Master League as I usually do.
I guess we’ll just have to see what happens and i’ll try to get in as much playing time as possible
stinger—there’s no guarantee that PES2009 on PS3/360 will finally be the next-gen, greatest-ever PES that we all expected PES2008 to be.
In fact, if some indications coming from Konami towers are anything to go by, we may have to wait until PES2010 before we get to see Seabass’ full vision on the the new consoles. PES2009 was already a long way into its development cycle when PES2008 was released.
Personally speaking, if PES2009 does turn out to be a stopgap game, I’d be deliriously happy with fluid HD graphics and challenging gameplay—-a last-gen version with next-gen graphics would honestly satisfy me for a whole year. That’s probably what they thought they couldn’t get away with for PES2008, so they tried to tinker with the gameplay engine and ran out of time.
Oh, and camera panning had better be back for PES2009 as well. I really dislike the up-and-down ’sideline cam’ that all the next-gen footie titles seem to adore. I don’t like this trend and it has got to be nipped in the bud immediately.
‘Wide’ is the ony camera angle to use, end of story.