Just caught your post, and it is SO true that in PES2008 especially (all PESes did this in ML, but PES2008 seems to do it most) a Cup game is more prone to catching you cold with a blizzard of goals from the CPU than a regular league game.

I played a cup game just last night where I went 1-0 up. The CPU scored a tame header from a corner, then dispossessed me straight from the kick-off and virtually walked the ball into my net yet again. Nothing could stop them - of course, since it’s an AI, it knows exactly what I’m pressing and when, and can avoid every tackle and go round every covering defender if it wants to. And it wanted to.

I really think PES2009 has got to at least make a start in getting rid of this overt scripted nature of some elements of PES gameplay. I first noticed it in PES5—before that point, I’m sure it existed, but was subtle enough not to be noticeable.

Incidentally, it was interesting to see the Konami press release yesterday. PES2009 will indeed be coming out on the PS2. At least there’ll be the fall-back option if they mess it up again on the PS3.

In the first leg, at home, they managed to score two of the softest of soft goals, one of them straight after stealing the ball from me after kick off.

Prieto and Khumalo scored for me in quick succession to make it even. But before the first half was over, they actually score a couple of even softer goals.

When I came back for the second half, I was fuming. I was intent on employing every trick I knew, which I did, and many of them consisted of passing the ball up field to Kim Cyun Hi, and running circles around the opposition.

Kim went on to score 4 goals, to make it 6-4, in the weirdest game I ever played in PES. We wuz robbed too, since Kim was brought down in and around the penalty box a number of times without a single foul being called. He should have scored at least a couple more times.

Groeningen narily got a shot on goal in the second half, as I used every dirty trick in the book while defending, abusing the power of players like Bos and Bradley to jostle the opposition off the ball. I’m sad (but secretly happy) to say that a couple of their players left the field injured.

When the away leg came, I won 1-3, with Kim scoring a hat trick, one of them a beautiful overhead volley, that I got on tape. One of the other goals was a lob from outside the box, that is also going to be in a future compilation I’m making up.

Phew, long post.