A nightmare before PESmas?
Posted by: not-Greg in Konami, PES2009, Seabass, pes2008, tags: Konami, pes2008, PES2009, SeabassSo, it’s been a few days now. A few more PES2009 gameplay videos have appeared. A lot more reports are filtering through from people who’ve actually played the game.
Today, as of right now, I’m deeply concerned about PES2009. I hope that I am wrong, but I can see a nightmare scenario unfolding before my eyes.
On Wednesday I was quite happy, with just a few reservations. I was happy about the early reports that PES2009 is PES5 with HD graphics (as I and many others wanted it to be).
I’ve spent most of the past year whining about the hideously wrong turn taken by PES2008 (on PS3/360/PC). That game was an arcade score-’em-up for the kids. PES2008 in fact sold a lot of units, but it did so on the franchise’s reputation alone. Right? Right?
Surely Konami doesn’t think PES2008 sold well on its own merits? Because if they do think that, PES is in big trouble. The kind of trouble from which there is no coming back.
The more I look at the videos coming out of Leipzig, the more worried I get. Yes, I wished for a Hi-Def PES5, and IF that’s what’s truly on offer then I’ll gladly take it. But I’m looking at these videos, and hearing these hands-on reports from players at Leipzig, and what I’m seeing and hearing is: welcome to PES2008 part 2.
This is the nightmare scenario: that Konami and/or Team Seabass felt no need to change what for them is a winning formula, and pressed on with a tweaked version of last year’s (in my view) disgraceful excuse for a PES game. My greatest fear all year has been that PES2009 would be merely a touched-up PES2008. Almost everything I’ve seen and heard so far from the Leipzig exhibition hall just reinforces that fear.
The only gleam of hope thus far has been the WENB hands-on preview. They also seem to be bemused by the appearance of the game at Leipzig. Debate currently rages across several PES forums as to whether or not the game at Leipzig is an older version of the game than the one played by WENB. And, if the versions are different, which version is the one we’ll get to play? Confusion reigns. There’s some extremely bitter in-fighting going on in the PES community right now. It’s like the Fall of Rome out there.
The acid test will come with the demo, which I now hear will appear for both the 360 and PS3 “in the week of release”. Hmmm.
It’s all very worrying. I don’t know what to think. On the one hand we have WENB’s (and others’) testimony that PES2009 is a next-gen PES5. Once again I have to say that, if true, I’ll take it and be very happy about it.
But is it true, though? Really?
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Hi not-Greg,
I’m genuinely surprised at how little seems to have been done for PES2009, particularly after PES2008 was so badly received (by ANYONE with more than two brain cells to rub together), resulting in Seabass’s publicly humiliating, apologetic interviews.
Yet, the list of improvements for PES2009 are just fixing the glaring flaws of PES2008 (horrendous slow-down, etc.) and beginning to add back into the game features that were already in place years ago (the edit mode, various stadia, Fantasista/Legend mode).
I’d like to know what Seabass genuinely thinks about how things are going, about how much resource he’s being allocated by Konami, how much staff and money he’s being given to really develop the game, particularly when he knows the huge resources EA are putting into FIFA. This years list of PES improvements gives the impression it’s being ‘developed’ by one man and his dog headed friend (one for the animal head lovers there!)
Having watched the Seabass PES2009 interview, he didn’t strike me as an upbeat guy who was hugely confident about the new game, more like someone who’s trying to hide how disappointed he is at the lack of progress achieved.
Just wondering what your thoughts are on the Seabass PES2009 interview?
Havent seeen or heard much about Leipzig yet… now i will probably have a look myself.
i think that this year however, i will switch back to Fifa (i left them for Konami since PES5).
Kiwanis - Right now I’m genuinely surprised too at what little seems to have been done for PES2009. I have yet to watch that interview all the way through. The super-fast PES2009 in the background just makes me feel bad, while Seabass starts coming out with generic video game developer blandishments. I’ll hold off commenting on the interview until I have watched it all.
Re. what we’ve see so far of PES2009, I have to go back to a point I made in the post.
It’s a fact that next-gen PES2008 was a retail hit for Konami. Now, we all know that that was mainly due to the franchise, but what if Konami thinks the game sold because it was deemed a great game?
What if they looked at the sales figures and thought “We’re onto a winner here. Seabass, let’s have more of the same please” - ?
If anything like that has happened, it’s a Doomsday scenario. It’d mean that PES has changed direction - gone younger, faster, more arcadey in outlook and feel - for good (or at least for the rest of this console generation).
I’m still prepared to give PES2009 a chance. But these Leipzig videos all look so fast. I can’t see how that speed can be conducive in any way to the sim-like game of old.
heyendo30 - Ahhhh, FIFA. It’s probably all FIFA’s fault, really. If it wasn’t for FIFA08 being the way it is - slow, considered, a little stiff, but always challenging - PES2008 might not have seemed so poor. I would still have hated it - running from defence with any player and beating every CPU player and scoring on TOP PLAYER difficulty is just not PES, in my book - but I might not have hated it so much.
not-Greg - have you noticed quite how defensive people get in the PES community if Fifa is mentioned? A couple of years ago anyone saying Fifa was the better simulation of football would rightly be laughed out of town - but since 2008 a lot of us PES fans know that Fifa08 was the better simulation. For example at WENB anyone with an intelligent and critical comment on the Fifa versus PES issue is almost immediately banned! Personally I wouldn’t trust Adam and Suff as far as I could throw them - “oh for the second year in a row we have seen a version of PES that is great - problem is no-one else has”
Why do you think Konami are only releasing the demo in the week of launching the game? A cynical move not to damage the early sales/pre-ordered sales - which, no doubt, makes up a fair amount of sales for the year?
Last thing - did you know one of the reasons for the setting up of WENB is that Adam wants a job with Konami in the PR/Marketing section? - kinda puts their odd statements/behaviour into a very interesting context!
You have hit the Worst Case Scenario on the head — that the generally unplayable European PES release will have done well enough that the bean-counters (or whatever people of that ilk count in Japan . . . soybeans?) at Konami will want to make it their model.
But I have two points of optimism for you:
1. Seabass is without a doubt the creative center of that franchise, and while his sales numbers certainly mean a lot to him, I believe that he is fundamentally an artist and the “vision guy” — he has a perfect football game in his head, and has been trying to get it made for the last 10 years. He won’t throw that overboard for better sales — it’s not in his nature.
2. The US release of PES 2008 didn’t suck like the Euro one did. It didn’t feature unstoppable runs, horrible lag, or any of the other deal-breakers the Euro release did.
Not to put too much sunshine into a perfectly good dread-filled moan, but it might not suck after all. Here’s to hoping!
The one bit of rumor floating around that has me genuinely concerned is the one that suggests that Konami will lock editing of the Premiership teams due to the Premiership having their (overpriced and overrated) panties in a bunch about the fan-created option files that feature corrected Premeirship sides.
For me, the editing and fan-created content is a big part of what sets PES above FIFA. If I can’t hack my PES game, to be honest, I’ll probably just give it up for FIFA.
Kiwanis - the effect of mentioning FIFA08 upon a certain kind of PES fan (one whose whole identity seems bound up in being a PES fan) is extremely peculiar. Way back at the start of the year I made a few token efforts to praise FIFA08 on PES forums, but there’s a hard core who are just blind and deaf to all arguments. PES=good, FIFA=bad, and that’s an Eternal Law. I know how they feel because I used to believe it too.
I’m not sure about Adam wanting to work for Konami. Your mention of it is the first time I’ve heard of it. Is it just ‘one of those things’ people are saying on the Internet, or is there anything substantial to it? Even if it were true, I don’t think his rant about the PES2009 promotional clip of a few weeks ago would have done him any favours!
ck - I think your two-point optimism may be accurate and I’m kind of moving towards the plus-side of the equation for the first time in a week or so (see my post for Sunday 24th, ‘Happy as Larry’).
That other rumour you mention about Konami possibly locking the EPL teams for Editing purposes would seriously damage their game, so for that reason I think it’s probably not true Even I, who don’t really bother with Editing, like to Edit the teams in the EPL. I suppose I could get used again to playing with Merseyside Red et al, but I can imagine the majority of PES players absolutely spitting blood over it.