PES2009: six calendar months to go
Posted by: not-Greg in Konami, PES2009, PES2010, PlayStation3, Seabass, pes2008, tags: Konami, pes2008, PES2009, PES2010, PlayStation3, SeabassToday, Friday April 25th 2008, is exactly halfway through the current PES year. If history is any guide, PES2009 will hit the shelves on the last Friday in October 2008—six calendar months away. I’m already feeling excited.
Back on December 3rd I posted ‘10 things I’d like to see in PES2009‘. At the time I didn’t have a clear appreciation of the near-total disaster that was next-gen PES2008. The excellent current-gen PES2008 was still a good way off in my future. Things have changed a lot for me and PES over the past few months. Thanks to next-gen PES2008 I’m disillusioned, jaded, more than a bit cynical. I was never like that before. Every PES was like the sweetest nectar from the gods. Or is that ambrosia?
The sheer travesty that was next-gen PES2008 (sorry, but it was) has paradoxically made anticipation of PES2009 all the keener. What will Konami come up with? Will they be able to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat, and amaze us all with the kind of game that we were all expecting last year? Or will it be yet another soulless corporate cash-grabbing operation?
Despite everything, I have high hopes. I don’t think PES2009 will be the ultimate football game on the new generation of high-powered consoles. It’s far too early in the cycle for that just yet. I think we’ll have to wait until PES2010, or even later, for stupendous excellence.
But I hope that PES2009 will be what PES2008 could and should have been: just a solid game of PES, with HD graphics. That’s all I ever wanted of PES2008. That’s all I ask now of PES2009. I’ll be more than happy to wait another year or two for the next evolution in PES gaming, if I can just have a PS3 version of the game that’s worth the effort right now.
So now, standing on this symbolic day, becalmed between two poles, it’s fitting to revisit my Top 10 list of a few months ago. What does PES2009 have to do to satisfy me? The following bullet points represent my personal opinions only.
- PES2009 has to work right out of the box. No penalty box slowdown. No 150MB downloaded patches. If I even have to change just one setting in my PS3 menu to make the game run better, it’ll be another FAIL.
- It can’t be the simplest thing in the world to score Maradona-style goals on Top Player difficulty with the likes of Gary Neville. For God’s sake.
- Camera panning. It is not natural to play football games with the camera scooting up and down the touchline, box-to-box. It is natural to play with the camera anchored on or near the halfway line. (I don’t hold out much hope for this one. For some reason football game developers have struggled with next-gen consoles much more than their FPS and action-adventure counterparts. Don’t ask me why. EA’s UEFA2008 still doesn’t feature anything like the camera options of the older FIFA games. I strongly suspect that we may have to wait at least another year before we see camera panning in next-gen PES.)
- Master League. Can we please go back to a small Division 2? And how about a Division 3? I know, I know. The fans wanted 20 teams in the lower division. But since when has anyone listened to the fans? What were they thinking?
- Online play has got to work flawlessly. Not a big deal for me, as I’m not much of an online gamer. The current era came along about a decade too late for me. By this stage of my life, gaming is solidly a single-player affair. I’m just not attracted by the whole deal with meeting people inside games and then playing against and even ‘chatting’ with them (*shudder*). But I’d like to have the option. I’d like to do it occasionally, when the mood takes me. And that hasn’t been possible this year. The ongoing disgrace of next-gen PES2008 online continues. For some reason, the good denizens of the internet have refrained from storming Konami HQ with flaming torches and pitchforks. It’s a real puzzle to me why Konami seems to have been given a pass on this. If anyone has any plausible theory why the Internet hasn’t collapsed under the weight of anger of the thousands of players who have to put up with lagging, teleporting, and various other online indignities that make the game literally unplayable most of the time, I’d love to hear it. Or have things changed? It’s been a while since I checked, to be fair.
- Strip selection: I must haz it. The ‘death of a thousand cuts’ that next-gen PES2008 gradually underwent in mine and in many others’ affections could be partly laid at the door of this little baby. The infuriating thing was that it was present in Exhibition modes and in online games. Its absence from all other modes seemed peculiarly spiteful. Even more galling was that neither of the two whopping game patches did anything about it. Curse you, Seabass.
Doubtless I’ll think of more after I’ve published this post—I’ll update the list as they occur to me, or are suggested. Actually, I’ve just come from playing a few games on last-gen PES2008, and there’s something that’s been bothering me about PES for several years:
- The little shuffle forward that the goalkeeper does when he’s carrying the ball: stop it. It wastes time. When I press the button, I want the goalkeeper to release the ball in the manner specified. Immediately. No little shuffle forward. No puzzling delay.
We’re not far from the time when we should start seeing screens and reading the first hands-on gameplay reports. July and August, I think, will see all of that information start to show up. PESfan will slow to a crawl and stay that way until a week after release. The demos will appear (or not appear) for the 360 and the PS3. (I won’t be fooled again this year: no PS3 demo=another disaster of a game=no purchase. This I swear.)
And then, in October, D-day.
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And I would like to add to your list:
1. More editing options, not less.
2. The opportunity to create unique stadia using a modular approach (like kit design was in pre-gen PS2).
So, I got a PS3, and (of course), I picked up PES 2008. It doesn’t have many of the problems you’d described — there is no slowdown in Master League, save for replays (oddly enough). I haven’t been online to play yet (I rarely do). As of yet, it feels a bit more like FIFA 08 for the X-Box than PES for the PS2; I haven’t had any players go ’round or through any defenses yet. In fact, I’m finding it devilishly hard, but if I recall, you had the same experience for a season or two.
ck—enjoy PES2008 on the PS3! I’m sure you will. Remember, for a couple of months I thought it was the business, a great PES. I struggled for about 3 seasons of Master League. I found it very hard to win in Exhibition mode for ages. The technical problems (that they seem to have resolved for the N American release) also really spoiled the first week or two, but then it settled down. I played that game for 100+ hours, and it’s not a bad game at all. Just far too easy in the long-term. That long term was just long enough for me to say I got my money’s worth out of the game, but as you know the fact it hasn’t lasted me all year was a matter of some regret…
No game is perfect, nor am I defending the game blindly. Personally I think only a few tweaks need to be made.
Proper next-gen graphics please.
Less importance on body balance as this is the primary cause of this ‘wonder-dribble’ as you have so dubbed it.
Kit selection.
An additionally division with the full 20 teams in each.
Yes its a hard slog if your not very good at it but practice makes perfect, and you can’t have both a challenging game and one thats easy to get promoted and quicker to play.
The other issues are trivial like the keeper ’shuffle’, it could be slightly quicker but then with that changed you could be complaining about too many run away goals.. Football is unpredictable at the best of times and PES will never be ‘perfect’ and repeat results and events will happen in a game, especially if you play it solidly for an entire year.
Paww - as I’ve said above and elsewhere, I think next-gen PES2008 has got a lot going for it. In a way I’m envious of ck just discovering the game. I don’t play games for over 100 hours that don’t have something going for them!
Few games would bear up under daily play over a whole year, granted, but previous PES games have done that for me, and I think I was entitled to expect this one to as well. All of my criticisms of the game should be seen in that context.
Sadly it didn’t work out for me and next-gen PES. The wonder dribble—as I insist on calling it!—seems to me more a result of them tweaking defenders’ sprint speeds. The old ‘auto-catchup’ that defenders have on all other PES games is absent from the next-gen one. But for that it might well have been The One for me.
PES2009 is just a summer away, and I agree that proper HD graphics and editing are must-haves. I’d love a three-division ML structure with 12 teams in D3, and 20 teams in D2 and D1. Personally I always find that first season with the Default team is just a thankless slog that I can’t wait to finish.
ck - I forgot to mention this: What did we ever do before wireless controllers?!
Well, last week we had to be very careful not to knock our lager over if we were using any body english on a shot, as the cord was at full extension and would whip madly across the surface of the coffee-table.
So far, I’m not finding the arcade-y PES that you’d described. I do remember that you struggled mightily and then the light went on. But so far, it plays more like next-gen FIFA to me than last-gen PES.
My players (and I’ve got some decent ones) are glacially slow. Remember PES7 when you couldn’t outrun a ponderous CB with your pacey wing? It’s like that. The turning radius of these lugs is so ponderous that I really can’t bother beating any defenders off the dribble. As a result, I have to carve chances from build-up and patience.
So on day . . . uh . . . 3, me likey!
I am hopeful, that like last-gen 2008 (and PES7), part of this bad play is due to our teamwork rating, and as we play together over time, “the beautiful” will get reacquainted with “game.”
I do love me some football.
Did you hear, by the way, that your favorite United States college basketball team won the National Championship?
80,000 people went mental in downtown Lawrence, Kansas.
It was . . . epic.
Speaking of wireless controllers I had the same though as you greg just the other day. With my current setup there is no way I could sit where I do to play my PS3 with a wired controller. Wireless controller are one of the better inclusions of the PS3 thats for sure.
I am in full agreement that next-gen PES2008 is a solid game. It’s challenging and fun as it should be for the most part. The issues arise when playing ML over a number of seasons and you build up a brilliant team. This is something I have always enjoyed doing but I went into every game not thinking it would be a walkover, in my later days with PES2008 that became the reality.
ck—just enjoy playing the game. Stinger says it all just above about how and why the game does come to seem arcadey. I was going to link you to some of my early posts and then my later posts, showing how I started out loving it too, but no, that’s a bad idea—just enjoy it yourself (and stay away from the PESfan moaning threads too). When you start getting some good players in ML is when the tipping point might come, but even if it does come you should get more than your money’s worth.
And come PES2009 in October, you’ll be able to play it on your PS3. Region-free games ftw! Woot, etc.
(p.s. Does your Euro PS2 copy of the game work on your NA PS3?)
Stinger - I agree - building up a brilliant team and then going on an adventure with them in ML over many, many seasons - for me - IS what PES is all about. It’s what I’m doing in the PSP/PS2 version right now (I hope).
I agree about the smaller 2nd division whole-heartedly, even though I’m playing on the ps2. I wouldn’t want to have to go through 40 games a season on D2.
There are a number of things I’d love to see in PES:
1 - No more SCRIPTING. Just today I was winning the D1 semifinal’s 2nd leg when the opposition stole the ball in my half of the field and started running towards the goal. All my defenders ran AWAY from the player, and the damn PS2 wouldn’t let me switch to the player that was closer to the ball (I always play with manual switching).
2 - More realistic quick free kicks. How about actually letting me take the free kick when the ref calls the foul instead of rearranging every player’s position before the freekick’s taken?
3 - More realistic throw-ins. Why are my players ten miles away whenever the opposition gets a throw-in?
4 - Better ball physics. It certainly looks funny the way the ball rolls on the pitch as if it’s in a bowling alley, without any bumps.
5 - A substantially improved PS2 version. I know it’s not going to happen, but another thing that’s not going to happen is me getting a PS3.