Hit and myth
I had an excellent start to season 13, but then suffered a peculiar run of league matches. I kept losing 1-0, two in a row at one point. Then I drew 0-0, then lost 1-0 again. I didn’t score at all for about five matches. This was all in one particular session of play, I might add. PES has always had this session-to-session change in character. It’s nothing new. Talk of gameplay patches—lacking official confirmation of such—is and always has been misplaced, IMO. Speaking of myths…
I stormed to the top spot in my Champions League group, qualified easily, and I had the luxury of playing Castolo from the start in both of the last two matches. That’s invaluable experience for a youngster, but every time I play with Castolo I wonder why I’m bothering. Of course, I’m bothering because of the myth of Castolo.
How goes Project Castolo? Not too well. Nursing him through his brief appearances is a mini-game in its own right. It’s as if the burger van man has been given a kit and told to go out and play. He’s gained a few points of OVR rating. His turning speed and first touch and general movement are all terrible. He plays like a twat, really.
I was never under pressure in either of Castolo’s full matches and so I never needed him to be more than he was, which I suppose was adequate. He got an assist for a goal in the second match. I’ve also brought him on as sub a lot in the league. He actually appears on the pitch a lot more than some of my mature squad members. As I’ve said before, I want to see some tangible results sooner rather than later. I won’t keep Castolo for longer than 5 seasons. One thing I might do after the end of this season is splurge some money on skill cards for him. That could help. But I’ll only do this if I’ve got money to burn after taking care of regular business, i.e., my staff and player salaries and any transfers I can pull off.
In the league, I went on the customary winning run. It was only punctuated by a frustrating Man Utd tie that I seemed fated to lose 0-1 (again), and did.
I’ve played several more matches than is shown here. I’m comfortably ahead in the table, 6 or 7 points clear. It’s my title to lose.
Here are a couple of goals from the current phase of league games. The first is a waspish finish from my created player, not-Greg, that clatters in off the post and bar—it was a late winner and it meant a lot. The second is a sweet volley from Nakamura that I tried to post on Twitter the other night, but somehow it vanished into the ether on the way:
Link: 
The mid-season transfer window has been and gone. I picked up two players, first an experienced DMF called Clement (85OVR) who’s a bit like Mathieu, albeit without the shooting prowess. Second was a Youth teamster called Jaromton. He’s a CF, currently rated 64OVR, and he’s already everything that Castolo is not, i.e., good. He handles well and has already got a few goals in a couple of appearances, unlike Castolo, who struggles to stand upright a lot of the time.
In the Champions League, the draw for the Second Round has been made. That confused me for a start. I thought the Champions League goes from a group stage straight into the Quarter Finals? There’s no last 16 stage in reality, is there? Is this more Japanese eccentricity, or is it me failing to notice?
Anyway, the draw paired me with… Stade Rennais. I’m terrified. This is not a joke. Last season I was dumped out by RC Lens. The season before, by FC Sochaux. These minor French teams are my Champions League Kryptonite. Friday’s post will have the whole story.
I’ve had the same 5 game scoreless experience – in both my last two seasons the game has (literally) not allowed me to score for the first 5 matches. It was so blatant I was actually quite amused, as my highly rated CFs repeatedly ballooned over from point blank range.
As for the Champions League in reality, are we not in the ’round of 16′ at the moment, the one that’s taking about a month to get through?
You’ve given him the famous number 10 jersey?!! How can this be?
Had the equivalent of the goal less run on BaL, but afterwards I think I broke some kind of goal scoring record with 4, 5, 5, 1 and 3 goals in successive games.
I’m hoping now that West Ham come in for me as I had the aim to become World Player of the Year then shocking the Football World by signing for the lowly Hammers! Stuck at Arsenal after stints in Italy, France and Spain. Helps the experience points to play abroad.
Were you victim of the PS3 leap year problem on Monday?
not-Greg,
I just went through a barren period on PES6, but luckily I managed to clinch promotion in second place (even though I lost the final game). I’m still on regular (I can’t believe how much harder it is – it’s a lot better imho), but my first team consists of teenagers (and Ruskin), which should be good for a few seasons.
That volley is a nice goal – and it seems like you’ve got the slightest curl on it too. In PES6, the curl is what I love. It’s magical.
abbeyhill—yes, we are currently in the Round of 16 in the Champions League, my mistake. I genuinely thought it went Group Stage>Quarter Final, though.
The scoreless experience is blatant, and Im amazed that anybody would dispute that it is a definite factor in ML. The game really does restrict your scoring, or reduce it completely to zero, if it suits the bigger picture. In PESes past, if you scored more than 3 goals in any game, the games immediately after were tough to score in. It’s a bit different this time, from what I can tell, and seems to depend more on the league positions and what kind of scenario the game wants to engineer. You know, sometimes I think I hear Master League talking to me, inside my head. Sometimes, I think it’s telling me things…
Liam—I never bother with player numbers. My signings end up with whatever number the game gives them. It doesn’t bother me that Castolo has the no. 10 jersey, whose fame is more of a South American thing anyway Now, if it was the no. 9 jersey, I’d be straight in that Edit mode…
Is BaL any different from last year? Is there a ‘skip to end of match’ option after being substituted? I suspect it’s the same as last year, but that’s fine. If/when I get around to it this year, I’ll know better what I have to do to get established and not be substituted, etc. It took me several seasons to acclimatise to the mode last year.
The PS3 problems didn’t affect me, no. I’ve got a 60GB so I was braced for impact, so to speak, but nothing happened. I can only think it was because it’s an August 2007 model, not a launch model. I got mine just before they started phasing them out. I bet lots of people got PS3s in that month, with the first next-gen PES just around the corner. PES2010 partly makes up for that year’s crushing disappointment, IMO.
Darshan—thanks, I do enjoy a volley as you may have gathered… (I’m currently in the process of clipping out my most-favourite-ever PES goal, a Bergkamp volley from PES5, in order to shamelessly gush about it on some future post.)
Again it’s great to hear that PES6 is keeping you active in the game. With all the constant talk everywhere about the joys of yesteryear compared to the shabbiness of today’s PES (and we all do it), it all begs the question: if the games from years ago were so great, why not just play them and be happy? Plenty of people are playing them, of course. Have to say though, PES5′d be my choice.
Hi not-Greg, my PS2 experience continues with odd draw and even rarer win. I just wanted to ask, did you move back up to top difficulty when you eventually got promoted or did you stick with professional? I was thinking of shifting up to the top difficulty to reflect the move up to division one (I’m getting ahead of myself, I know) but I’m sure I read somewhere in one of your posts that the AI just presses too hard on top player which would definitely be to the detriment of the gameplay.
On an interesting sideline, I had a few games of FIFA 10 on a 360 the other night and, I must say, I actually enjoyed my following PES session on my lowly PS2 MORE!? Maybe my current PES addiction has blinded me but FIFA seemed frantically paced and certainly no more fun in comparison, even on slow.
love the post not-greg an mayb u should give the other young cf a longer run in the team than castolo
Chris—FIFA10 faster than PES2010? I’d have to disagree with you there, particularly when it’s the PS2 version of PES2010 that’s the comparison. Maybe it’s the style of gameplay in FIFA10 and the direct-to-feet passing that makes it seem faster?
Re. Professional/Top PLayer, I played one season on Professional in D1, then moved to Top Player despite not really wanting to. I was happy on Professional and having a great time, but the old PES snobbishness of ‘it doesn’t count if it’s not on Top Player’ resurfaced in me and I just had to move up.
As far as I can tell, Top Player consists of greater AI pressing, greater overall speed to the gameplay, and more instances of shenanigans. You know, where you know you’ve won the ball and you know you’ve got it under control and you know you should be able to play a simple pass to a team-mate, but the AI player(s) will swarm and nibble at you and snatch balls they have no right to. There’s a lot more of that kind of thing, IMO.
ryan—Jaromton is already 10 times the player Castolo is, but I’ve started this Project so I’ll finish it. He’s got 5 seasons, and 1 of them is already over.
I know exactly what you mean not-Greg, I fear that snobbishness will arise in me also. It’s funny this feeling of ‘cheating’ even though we’re playing single-player and thoroughly enjoying the current level of difficulty. Winning the league just doesn’t have the same feeling of achievement on anything other than top player I guess.
I know it sounds bizarre about the FIFA 10 speed, I can only surmise it’s a combination of playing a relative novice on FIFA who did a lot of dribbling and poor defending and the fact that I’m in my first Master League season which means everything is at the slowest pace possible.
I can also relate to your Castolo frustration, in his original incarnation he missed two sitters in an important game last night and yet he will continue to play for me and will only be culled when I have a squad of new signings. Why is this???? What power does he hold? Maybe he got in on Alex Ferguson’s deal with the devil?
Chris—Over the past few months I’ve been on FIFA10 for a few matches here and there and the general gameplay pace is slower. Not by much, but it is. What’s different is the passing model, of course. In PES2010(PS3), a lot of the time you’re fighting to keep possession with an unpredictable passing system; in FIFA10, it’s a lot more reliable (arguments rage over which model is superior). Thus the ‘ping-pong effect’ is more pronounced in FIFA10, possibly giving an extra impression of speed – ?
The myth of Castolo is totally crazy. There is no longer any justification for it whatsoever. Yes, in a few areas he has got better stats than the rest of the Defaults, true, but as an overall package he is very, very ordinary. It all goes back to old-school Castello and I think the very first Castolo(PES3?), who were both great players, really first-rate. That’s infected people’s minds, so even when they’ve got our rubbish modern-day Castolo in their teams and he’s spending match after match doing nothing and being a liability, all he’s got to do is score a goal or two and suddenly it’s ‘Castolo the king!’ etc. You watch, I’ll do it too…