Whom the PES gods destroy…
Posted by: not-Greg in Barcelona, Real Madrid, Valencia, league table, scripting, tags: Barcelona, league table, Real Madrid, scripting, ValenciaWin every game: it’s the only way. I’m 11 points behind the league-leaders, Valencia, in season 2016 of my Master League career. By this stage I’ve won every trophy separately, in different seasons, but never together, all at once, in the same season - the Treble… This season I’m doing well in both Cups, but a string of poor results in the league has left me with a lot of ground to make up.
In PES, this means that I’ll probably be a beneficiary of the game’s macro-scripting. Assuming that the end result of the macro-script is an exciting last-day scenario, with two or more teams pushing for the title, Valencia should soon start to drop points like confetti. And my own results should pick up at the same time. Whenever I’m on top of the league and ahead by a lot of points, that’s what usually happens to me, enabling at least one chasing CPU team to get within striking distance. So I’m expecting the PES game world to do me the same favour in reverse.
But the PES gods help those who help themselves. I still have to win every game. It’d be no good seeing Valencia’s form mysteriously collapse if I don’t capitalise with wins of my own.
Which is where my averageness at PES comes into play. The PES gods decided to mess with my head some more. Or something. I played a couple of games, won them easily, and yes, Valencia drew one, lost one, drew the next… Mwahahaha. Thanks, PES gods! But then I played a match that was right up there (down there?) with the most frustrating, aggravating, and flat-out ridiculous single matches I have ever played on PES.
Hanging around with me in the chasing pack behind Valencia is a little team called Real Madrid… They’re pretty good. They’ve got Mark Noble, for one, which is enough to send a chill of foreboding up and down anybody’s spine. Having said that, despite the mighty Noble I’ve rarely had any problems with Real. I’m not saying they’re easy to beat—no team in the whole game is easy to beat; the nature of PES itself guarantees that—but they’re not as tough as I think they should be. The same goes for Barcelona. I don’t know what is wrong with either of them in this Master League.
So I was more or less banking on a regulation 3 points from the game against Real. After Valencia’s poor run, a win here would take me to within 6 points of the top spot. If I then beat Valencia in our remaining head-to-head game (coming up immediately afterward), I’d be just 3 points behind. I started to get excited.
It could be argued that I went into the Real Madrid game with the wrong attitude. I was looking too far ahead. I wasn’t paying attention to the here-and-now. I was focusing too much on the league table situation and on my next opponent. My eye was off the ball.
But, still: it was one very, very dodgy game. I played pretty well, taking an early lead that I held onto comfortably for all of the first half. Until the 45th minute. A Real player’s harmless-looking run from midfield took him into my penalty box. Maybe it was the legendary Mark Noble, I can’t remember now. All I know is that I advanced my goalkeeper with plenty of room to spare. The Real player’s run was at an angle from the wing; there was no actual danger. I thought.
I had a player chasing from behind, who unaccountably went into full-on sliding tackle mode and hacked down the Real player in the box. It was nothing to do with me. The only button I was pressing at the time was Triangle. I had been pressing Square, but that was several seconds previously, when the Real player was further up the pitch. The game ‘helpfully’ likes to remember your button-presses for you at times. This delayed reaction—a feature of PES that should have been eliminated years ago—cost me dear. My player was sent off and Saviola converted the penalty. 1-1, and I was down to 10 men.
I wasn’t too downhearted. Yes, the nature of the Real equaliser was infuriating, but that’s the kind of thing you live with when you play PES. There are so many individual moments of infuriation in every match that you have to let it all slide, or you’d permanently be steaming and threatening to erupt.
Partway through the second half—as usual I played better with 10 men than I had with 11—I scored another goal. 2-1 to me, and I assumed that that would be that. I’d reorganised my team and I was holding Real at bay without much effort. The 90th minute came and I conceded a free kick about 35 yards out. It was a bit too far for the CPU to bag one of its trademark automatic free kick goals. All I had to do was defend the ball into the box, and clear it. The final whistle would go as soon as the ball crossed the halfway line again.
Real Madrid’s free kick taker lofted the ball toward Saviola, who was standing on the edge of my box. Saviola chested the ball to one side, half-turned, and volleyed spectacularly over my keeper into the top corner of the net. 2-2. The final whistle went mere seconds after I kicked off.
Saviola hadn’t been unmarked, but his chest-trap moved the ball to the side and gave him the space to shoot. It was a great goal, really, the kind of goal that human players try to get, and you rarely see the CPU even trying for, never mind scoring.
My gripe about it is that it was unstoppable. The CPU might just as well have awarded itself a goal the moment that it won the free kick.There was nothing I could have done to prevent it. Even if I’d man-marked Saviola (in the Formation screen settings), his marker would either have been in the defensive wall, or Saviola’s chest-trap would have beaten him just as easily.
The result gave Valencia an opportunity to widen the gap, and they took it. They won their game. Saviola’s last-minute automatic goal meant I was still 8 points behind the league-leaders. Sigh. What can you do? I saved the game and went for a quiet lie-down in a darkened room.
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“-or you’d permanently be steaming and threatening to erupt.”
PES makes me like that.
Another horror story with PES scripting! It looks like you have done a Liverpool and the league is slipping away with cup success.. You have seemed to stop buying players in the last few transfer windows. But this isn’t PS3 pes, so have a massive talented squad next year, and punish the game.
I’ve stopped buying players because I’ve got loads of great ones already - a few too many, really, as they never get a regular game. Maybe that’s my problem? A lack of team chemistry? Might be worth a look next time I’m in-game…
I’m going through a rough patch with the game. You’ll see it all pan out over the next few days.