I started my first Manager Mode career too quickly, never mind my second. I should have waited a few more days before starting with Coventry City on the PS3; I should have waited a few weeks before daring to start one on the Xbox360 with Atletico Madrid. Or maybe I just shouldn’t have tried to play a 360 Manager Mode career in parallel with a PS3 one. I don’t know.
The other night I played a game online using Atletico Madrid and I really liked their style. They’re Spanish, and I’ve never played Manager Mode in Spain. They had an attractive stripey kit—bonus.
Hey, I know, I’ll pick them as my Xbox360 Manager Mode team, I thought. I’d stick with my PS3 settings: Professional difficulty, with semi-manual passing and shooting and crossing. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh dear. I’ve played 6 games. I’ve drawn 5 and lost 1. I’ve only scored a few goals. My job security rating is down to the 40% mark. If I don’t win soon, I’ll be in danger of the sack.
When people criticise FIFA09 as being tiresome, thankless, dull, too realistic, and all the rest of it, they surely have games like these in mind. I think I had one shot on goal in one of the games. In the others I had a few more shots, but they were mainly typical of my ambition right now: vastly in excess of my ability. Somewhere in virtual reality, some of those shots are probably still rising. I still haven’t got a great FIFA09 goal to show off.
For all the grim struggles of those games, I really enjoyed playing them. My idea of fun is not endless 5-4 scorelines and festivals of long-range shooting. I do love me some long-range shooting, but I also love pizza and I couldn’t stand to eat pizza every day.
I was considering dropping down a difficulty level on the 360, to Semi-Pro, just to get some confidence back. To hell with the humiliation of it all. But I’m sure my problem is just one of adjustment. I did start this career on the Xbox rather suddenly. I was still finding my feet on the PS3. What I think I’ll do is go back and play my Coventry City career some more. Not that I’m doing much better there…
After a pretty good start with Coventry City—the through-ball bug notwithstanding—I’m still in the top half of the table. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how useful my Coventry strikers feel. The likes of Eastwood and Mifsud, for me, feel more dangerous in front of goal than Atletico’s Forlan and Pongolle et al. Curious.
Entries (RSS)
I stepped straight into the MM when I got FIFA 09 as it gave me the chance to get familiar with the game using Celtic as the teams I would be playing against are somewhat inferior. I continue my Celtic career, simulating the league games after the first season and play the Cup and Rangers matches. With the goal to win the Champions League or ECC as it’s known.
I started my Valencia career last night and after reading yourself and NOT GIVEN saying you play 10 minute halves, I tried it out and bang it enabled me to play a more patient style due to the increase in match length. I usually play 5 or 6 min halves which sometimes feels like I have to force the issue. Last night seen a totally different game. I will be sticking with 10 minute halves for this MM.
As for your Coventry MM there is no pressure to finish in the top 3 as the play-offs have been implemented this year. Although I have read that the games are still played at your home ground. Good luck.
heraldo - I find that 6- or 7-minute halves can be a good halfway house between the rushed 5-minute halves and the longer 10-minute halves.
I have not gone back to my Cov MM career this morning as I was curious how I’d do in the Atletico one. I’ll be posting tomorrow about that. (As you know it pays to get ahead of the blog, otherwise it’s all rush-rush-rush.)
The 360 is annoying me. Yesterday morning and this morning it’s crashed at half-time in my first match, saying the disc is unreadable. Both times I’ve simply restarted and played on without any further trouble. It’s this kind of thing that’s kept my 360 mostly unused all year. The PS3 has never frozen on me once in a year’s gaming. The 360 freezes at least once in most game sessions. God knows how I ever got to the end of Bioshock on it.
That was the beginning of the end of my 360 unfortunately. It’s usually a sign of the RROD coming..
I love 10 mins each way, in fact I am debating with myself whether to step up to the full 20 mins. Although it’s already going to take the guts of 250 hours for this full MM alone, so thats perhaps not the best idea. I remember playing through the World Cup 98 on full 45 min each way. Those were good times..
Played an online match there (yes i actually connected), he was using Nottingham Forest, but it had the likes of Torres Rooney and Ronaldo. It was an ML dream team basically. Great match though, a real European affair, ended 0-0 AET and he won by one penalty. I loved every moment.
Looking forward to hearing about your Spanish League progress, both of you. I always tend to play it more, on PES and now FIFA- theres always more variety in who challenges for the league. (in real life and in game)
Touch wood nothing like that has happened to me since I bought the XBOX 3 months ago.
I have just played my first POMPEY MM game on the PS3 (dog sitting, the pup would wreck the joint if I went upstairs :lol:). Charity Shield Man Utd upped the ante to WC, heaviest defeat since switching to FIFA 4-0. I had the lions share of possession, United or Rooney lethal in front of goal (hat-trick). Once Defoe got carted off I held no threat upfront, Crouch wins his headers but through balls, no chance.
Not Given - beginning of the end?! If so then the end has been beginning for 11 months now. My first freeze was on Day 1, playing Halo3. I just thought random freezes and ‘disc unreadable’ messages etc. was just part of normal life with a 360? I know a few people with 360s who tell me they get the same kind of freezes, and none of theirs have RROD’d yet. Should I be taking this console back to the shop/shipping it to MS?
My 360 has always suffered random freezes, but they’re not so regular that the console’s unusable. Playing FIFA09 online the other night, it was on for 3 and a half hours straight without any problems.
I’ve mostly neglected my 360 for the past 6 months, in truth. Maybe I’ll give it a rub down and stick a lens cleaner in the disc drive and see if it likes that.
I’ll also have a quick scoot around the Xbox forums and read up on the matter a bit more. Thanks for the heads-up.
heraldo - speaking of Crouch, I always liked him in 08, but now in 09 he seems oddly ineffective to me (when playing with England - which is realistic, come to think of it….).
Well i’m just speaking from my own experience, so hopefully i’m wrong! My XBOX was fine for a year, no disc read errors. When it started, it was as good as dead in about a month. I am going to give it another try with another game here and see how long it lasts.
Are you using the finesse shot in one on ones? It’s sent my finishing rate from about 5% to 60% now. I never used it for ages, but it helps finishing inside the box a lot.
Not Given - now I’ve gone from being slightly miffed about my 360’s freezes to being totally paranoid. I just assumed it was normal. I’m going to give Google a few visits tonight, oh yes.
I always use the finesse shot - probably a bit too much. I think its effectiveness in one-on-ones has been toned down from the demo, where it was a pretty much guaranteed goal.
It’s started doing disc read error 10 minutes into play every time, and getting those red lights sometimes. Only since Euro 2008 has been wedged in hasn’t left the console though? I may try other games and make sure it’s not just the game. The red lights aren’t all the time.. pffft xboxs…..
Bit worried here, away from home against Deportivo, 1-5 up.
You’re always going to get scorelines like that occasionally. Watch how tough you find it to score for a few games now… FIFA09 has got its own little ‘tricks’ up its sleeve.
Re. the 360, it’s got to be the worst-engineered console ever created, and one of the worst electrical devices overall. Have you felt the heat they have to vent at the back while in operation? It’s a wonder any of them survive at all.
p.s. I remember you saying you couldn’t find your receipt to send yours off for repair. I’ve read in my travels that you don’t need the receipt to return the console to MS for repair and return. Just the serial number.
I think that’s only if your getting those permanent RROD though. The disc read error is my main problem, when I get the red rings I don’t think they are THE RROD. I think it’s over heated and melted something in the disc tray or something..
Yep experienced it last season. Hammered Barcelona and couldn’t win in the next games. I can say goodbye to these scorelines (and the league), I am going to play on full manual controls. Even if I lose every game until I am sacked. The only way to learn them is to be thrown in at the deep end and get used to them. The controls make you realies how much the game spoon feeds you on assisted and to some degree, semi.
Glad I don’t have an XBOX360 and instead went for a PS3 (even if the main reason - at the time - for going “next-gen” was PES2008….grrrrrh). I am still learning FIFA 09 but once I get up to speed I’d be up for an online game Greg (and others).
Oh and one question - do you have any slowdown on the Stadion Maj.23 ? It’s the home ground of Slavia Prague and seems unplayable on my PS3.
kiwanis - even with the occasional freezes I still wouldn’t say I have a problem with the 360. I just hope the freezes aren’t the first symptoms of RROD coming (at any time). After reading up on it all over the past hour I’m a bit more worried than I was, though.
I don’t think I’ve played at that stadium yet, but I’d heard it might have problems. After a long weekend on the PS3 playing International tournaments and the start of a Manager Mode, I went onto the 360. I’m definitely heading back to the PS3 for some more of my MM career there before PES2009 comes out, so I’ll hopefully check out that stadium while I’m there.
Just to let you know, i have spent the last 3 hours working on my router. All relevant ports are now open for PS3 and FIFA 09 AND it’s now NAT type 2. So if the problem was mine (i’m sure it was), we can play now. Also online, the only time i’ll get that error message is when the other person hasn’t opened the correct ports.
NotGiven - I don’t have most weekends free as I work odd hours. My weekend is usually Monday & Tuesday, if you see me on the PS3 late Sunday night, or Mon or Tues afternoon/evening I’ll usually be ready for a game. I like the 360 online setup more but still plan to play loads on PS3—the silent and reliable console…
Off-topic, I took my PSP and PES2008 to work with me today and played it for the first time in a month. Picked up where I left off and went straight into a second-leg cup match where I was 1-0 up on aggregate. I’m genuinely shocked at how BENT the whole game felt. And the ridiculous goal-mouth scrambles! The CPU was like some kind of Special Attack animation in a beat-’em-up game. Seriously, I have to wonder now if I will like ‘proper’ PES again. When I turn back to posting about PES next week I’ll have to go into thsi in detail. If you can, pick up and play an old-style PES game now, and it feels… just weird.
I know what you mean, I felt the same when I played 08 on the PSP this week. Football gaming has just moved on from PES now, it was good in it’s day. I think it’s disgusting that in a year you can almost guarantee that PES 09 will be much of the same. They probably had 09 finished up by last XMAS….