For the past five days or so, I’ve been playing PES2008 solely on the PSP. The little handheld console has got its knockers (missus), but I love it. I’ve actually got more games for my PSP than for any other platform. I love it. And I love playing PES on it—particularly the 2008 variety, which is the authentic handheld PES that we ended up having to wait three years for.

The past several days have been unusual for me. Usually I chop and change between the PSP and PS2 version (on my PS3) every day or two. It’s so utterly simple and straightforward to transfer the save file from one machine to the other. Literally the work of seconds. I haven’t really had time to use my PS3 recently, so my PES play has been all on the PSP, in odd moments during transit from home to work and back again, and during breaks, etc.

It’s an amazing luxury to play a proper game of Pro Evo whilst on the move. I often look down at the PSP in my hands, with a full-on football game running on it, and reflect that if I could take this thing back to 1980 or thereabouts, the people back then would think… well, they’d think I was from the future. Ahem.

I powered up my PS3 for the first time in almost a week. First of all I treated myself to a warm-up session on Warhawk and FIFA08. I just fancied a bit of next-gen wizardry before firing up the PS2 disc, with its faithful old chalky visuals. I hadn’t played Warhawk for about 6 months, and I was shocked to discover how expert the regular players have become. Before, I was able to more or less hold my own, but now I was just a walking bullseye.

On FIFA08, I played a couple more games of my Manager Mode career with Dagenham & Redbridge. It’d been a while since I played FIFA08 regularly, so I was just as rusty as I was in Warhawk. After several months now of regular PES2008 play, I’d forgotten how to play FIFA in an attacking sense. I was automatically trying my PES moves and strategies, which simply don’t work.

I went online for a game against a human opponent—my first in 6 months—and came up against a player who chose a four-star Mexican team. In my position, 99.99% of players would have instantly picked Barcelona, but I’d have been embarrassed to be seen as one of them. I flipped through the English Premiership teams and settled on Birmingham City, also a four-star team in FIFA08 (yeah, right).

FIFA08 online really does play as smoothly as offline (read ‘em and weep, Seabass). There was no lag, no teleporting, none of that stuff. I took the lead with a pretty soft goal in the second half and got to the last few minutes by defending well. My opponent persevered, however, and scored in the 89th minute with a fine 25-yard shot straight into the top corner. I was gutted. I hardly ever win anything online. You should have seen my one (and so far only) attempt to play Halo3 online. Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

The match went to extra time. I rashly conceded a penalty during the second period. He converted it and that’s how the game ended, 2-1 to him. Yes, gutted is the word.

And so to PES2008.

It seemed that my time away from the bigger console had cost me dear. I couldn’t re-adjust back to a properly-sized controller. The extra two shoulder buttons seemed weird. Playing PES on the big screen seemed weird. I played three league games and drew them all 0-0. That happens in PES from time to time. Even after you’ve been playing a version for months on end, you’ll stumble into strange spells of scoring no goals and conceding no goals. I quite like it that this happens. I just couldn’t understand why I was finding the transition back to the PS3 so weird after only a few continuous days on the PSP.

Things picked up in Europe. After my Treble-winning antics of last season I didn’t have to qualify for the Champions League-equivalent, so the main group stage came around in the usual Week 9 or so. I played Almela, whose presence in the group took me slightly aback. Weren’t they a minnow team? How did they get into this competition? Anyway, whatever, I finally scored a goal—a scruffy affair from Camacho—and won it 1-0. Phew.

Then, to round off a busy night of gaming, I played a league game against Real Madrid and lost 3-1. Saviola was rampant—he’s good in PES2008, at least for the CPU. That result left me slightly out of touch in fifth place in the league, seven points adrift of the leaders Valencia. But there’s a long way to go.

Osasuna. They’ve only gone and done it again. I’m officially declaring them my bogey team. Forget Valencia, Barca, Real, Deportivo—when Osasuna are in town, I tremble. They’ve pulled off yet another one of their patented 1-0 victories over me. I was cursing the place down at ten o’clock in the morning. Is it ever too early to swear?

I think it’s the third season in a row that they’ve managed to do it, and each time the game has always played out the same way. They got their early goal and somehow resisted all two million of my subsequent attempts on their goal. Their goal came from a cross that ricocheted off my defender—Maldini, one of the top defenders in the entire game, whose astronomic stats were unable to stop him becoming a statue and letting the ball simply bounce off his knees, ignoring my repeated and determined hammering of the Square button to clear it. The ricochet travelled across the six yard box direct to the feet of Osasuna’s lone striker, who strangely blasted it back across the area instead of into the net. Happily for him, though, my other top-rated centre-back, Fernandez, was keen to deflect it into my net off his knees for an amusing own-goal. So that was fine.

The rest of the game, despite me having the regulation bazillion chances, was curious. Osasuna had some good possession and created further chances of their own. They had 12 chances overall, which is about 11 more than they usually make against me. I knew the game was going to end 1-0 to them almost from the start. Self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps. But no, probably not.

Newly-promoted AIK gave me a tough game. Who the hell are they, anyway? I literally cannot remember ever playing them before, although I know that I must have, even if the last time was down in Division 2 all those seasons ago.

After the Osasuna farce I really wanted a win to stay in close touch with the top of the table. So I really focused hard and set out to keep another very determined CPU team at bay. If I could shut them out at the back, that’d be half the job done. It worked and I was 2-0 up heading into the last ten minutes. Then, of course, they had to get their regulation, automatic CPU goal. It had to be 2-1 for the last few minutes. There’s just no way of avoiding it sometimes. (Too many times.)

I held on for the win. Then came the season’s first league fixture against Barcelona. I hammered them 6-3. Pulverised them. Andy Cole got a hat-trick in this game. Kim Cyun Hi got two goals. I forget who got the sixth. I was 6-0 up by 65 minutes. Again, the CPU started scoring automatic goals, but not even a script could threaten to overturn this result.

At the moment, the best all-round striker currently on my books is Andy Cole. He’s neck-and-neck with Kim Cyun Hi for top scorer. In the long term I suspect Kim Cyun Hi will easily eclipse him, but for now Cole is the main man. Giggs isn’t too far behind either. In fact, come to think of it, all of my players are great. I haven’t got one turkey. Even Larsson, who I’ve had for about nine seasons now but have left underused and thus underdeveloped, has started to come through. Perhaps only Donk is a weak link, but he never lets me down on the rare occasions when he stands in for one of the other CBs.

I’m going through one of those spells with PES at the moment. I’m still playing with enjoyment and absorption in my ongoing Master League story, but my mind is partly elsewhere. It’s PES fatigue—the result of playing the game too much for too long.

PES fatigue is affecting you when you see what is average and poor about the game all too clearly, and you see what is good and great about it very dimly—or not at all. I’ve had spells of fatigue before during this PES year, and I’ve had them in previous PES years as well. The solution is to play the game a bit less, of course.

Right now there’s just so much going on in the PES world and in the world of football gaming in general. PES2009 is but a relative hop, skip, and a jump away. I’ve got HIGH hopes. And what’s that coming over the hill? It’s a monster—it’s FIFA09, the game that could potentially change everything. Konami and Seabass had better be really, really focused this year or they’ll pay the price. I’m sure of it. Their many friends in the gaming media are very unlikely to give them another pass, as happened last year.

I also have unfinished business with FIFA08. I never have mastered that game on any difficulty level higher than Professional. It’s time for PES fans like me to stop feeling ashamed of our newfound regard for ‘the dark side’. The dark side is no longer dark. Those PES fans who insist that the dark side is still dark have got their eyes firmly closed.

Away from the world of football gaming, I have other gaming needs that aren’t being met right now. Is it a crime to have unplayed copies of Halo3, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4, GTA4, and others? Yes, it is a crime, or it darn well should be. I also have Ninja Gaiden 2 and MGS4 arriving over the next few weeks. So, all in all, a natural break is coming.

The daily blogging will carry on. The difference will be that I’ll talk a lot more about other football games, particularly FIFA. Inevitably this means I’ll be slower to get through the PES seasons…

…of which today’s post is an example. I have only one more league game to report on, rather than the usual clutch of games.

It was my second game of season 2017. The opponents were Atletico Madrid, a decidedly odd team. They were relegated to Division 2 a few seasons ago, but came back up at the start of last season and have been one of Division 1’s best sides ever since. They thumped me in a key fixture last year.

This season’s corresponding fixture stank to high heaven. I was talking above about how PES fatigue makes you see the bad side of the game all too well… This game ended 4-4, not the kind of scoreline I like to see in PES. I think the reason why high-scoring games are relatively common this year is that defending has been made harder—or arguably impossible in certain circumstances. The CPU will get its goal(s) and that’s all there is to it. This is probably unfair, probably inaccurate—but hey, PES fatigue and all that. I’m afflicted.

At least all my strikers got on the scoresheet again. Cole played in this game and broke his duck for the season. Giggs got another tidy finish from the outside left position. Kim Cyun Hi got his 5th goal in two games. And Dos Santos rounded things off with my fourth. Atletico wrecked it all by keeping pace with me, scoring almost immediately whenever I scored. The spoilsports.