Another busy weekend of work plus other stuff limited my footy gaming to 4 matches. Just 4 matches of PES2012. FOUR.
That’s how it is for me now. Maybe that’s how it is for most of us. It’s a common experience for most gamers, this slow erosion of gaming time.
Long gone are the all-night sessions, lasting into the very wee small hours, when 5am would often see me sipping another iced vodka and coke whilst sparking up a B&H and thinking in a leisurely fashion about who I wanted at DMF for the big Cup game.
When I finally get that big Lotto win, there’ll be no luxury yachts full of dancing girls to start off with. First there’ll be an uninterrupted year or two of PES and Dwarf Fortress and Civilization and Dark Souls and Europa Universalis III and the rest of them. Sorry, girls, you’ll have to wait.
My paltry 4 matches consisted of three in the League, one in the FA Cup.
I won all three of the League matches, but they weren’t easy. Tottenham did a number on me with the straight-from-kickoff bullshit at their place. I came back to win 2-1 with a late and deserved winner from that man, Sibon: a powerful running header from a corner, his most common type of goal.
I also won my other two league matches, but remain ‘only’ 6 points clear of Arsenal in second, who have won all their matches too. Their goal-scoring is phenomenal, so I have to maintain that cushion of points.
I’m going for the Treble this season. I am choosing to believe that I can win it and that I am going to win it. There’s no doubt it would be my greatest achievement this year, perhaps ever.
Chelsea, away, were my FA Cup Quarter Final opponents. I was ready for the straight-from-kickoff bullshit, but there are other kinds to watch out for, as we all know.
I took the lead, twice, but some crazy CPU one-touch fast passing, and magical evasions of leg-breaking tackles, led to Chelsea equalising twice. It was the kind of thing I rarely see in the League anymore. What a surprise to find myself playing extra time. Extra time in cup games often seems predestined to me.
Desperate for the winning goal, I totally dominated extra time, creating chances galore, several of them gilt-edged. Nothing went in. It was very strange. I sensed the Hand of PES guiding it to an inevitable penalty shootout.
In the final minute of extra time, 2-2 and staring at penalties, I won a corner. Totally fed-up with this stupid game, I didn’t do any right-stick stuff. I just floated it over with the circle button, old school-style, and somebody nodded the ball into the net…
Imagine my shock and delight when the camera zoomed in on my goalkeeper, Shovkovskyi, doing the scoring celebration. My new Away kit is mostly red, as is my keeper’s kit. I’d had no idea he was even up there.
It was the old PES2012 glitch of the keeper coming up for corners when you don’t want him or need him to come up (i.e., I wasn’t losing).
I cannot remember ever scoring a goal with my goalkeeper until now in all my years of PES. I know that everyone else probably scores with their keepers for fun, but for me this was a true moment of history.
And the Treble is still on.
After my first win on Superstar I haven’t lost a game. 4 wins and a draw in the league and 2 wins in Europe. Also won FA Cup game in injury time with a Sibon header. It’s definitely more rewarding to win on Superstar, really feel as if you have earned the points. Arsenal up next in League, bring em on!!
Lloyd—Superstar has nearly had me in tears several times. The work it takes to see a game to its end is so draining. But as you say, the sense of reward and accomplishment is in keeping with the effort put in. I only wish sometimes that it wasn’t so transparent in how it went about things. Misdirecting my simplest passes to give the CPU the ball isn’t the way to do it, Konami…
NG – Im hoping on Superstar the cheating and scripting isnt as blatant and apparent, thats my sole purpose for stepping up from professional, in the hope of a more balanced game.
Professional difficulty really does take the scripting to the limit and then some. im lucky im not now bald.
I too have a few youngsters im moulding, Gerrard is now a regular and coming into his own, Alonso has slipped out of favour at the moment as i didnt play him for a few games and now hes on a constant purple arrow.
Lucas is struggling to develop as there are a few good players in the DMF position, same with De Rossi, So I have put Lucas and De Rossi up for loan, but when I saw Iniesta 79OVR @ 16yrs old I couldnt resist.
And Bale is providing good utility cover for Gemiti at left Back and can also slip into LMF as alternate choice/cover for Navarro/Ribery.
I have actually listed Ribery for Loan.
Great player but shot accuracy and power is shit!
I got Ribery in youths but after landing riquelme and del Piero last season I am NOT getting any more 16 year old. Oh, it looks like Pele is retiring at the end of the season, maybe just one more..
Great work on the blog, as a die hard ML player this blog is a real breath of fresh air.
I play SS difficulty, 15 minute matches -2 speed. Still haven’t won a trophy on SS never had a challenge like this since pes 3 and 5. It has taken me nearly 4 months to be able to compete effectively with the AI on superstar, almost more draining than playing for real!
Easily the best pes of all time, 2011 came close but the challenge and depth of pes 2012 is wonderful. Have to say the pes rage this game has given me(the scripting and balancing acts in this game insult your intelligence at times)have almost brought me to tears which at 23 is not healthy I suspect, at least I haven’t gone back to biting of the analog sticks like the old days.
Still await my first trophy, determined to get it. The concentration and thought needed to win on superstar is at another level to any other football game. It seems strange that with all the talk of pes 2013 I fee like I am only just discovering pes 2012, amazingly it still feels like a new game warts and all.
One last point, I feel pes 2012 is the most underrated football game ever made.
Paul—scripting/cheating—or, to satisfy the scripting sceptics (who still, incredibly, exist), what might be called momentum-influencing micro-events—are nowhere near as frequent on Superstar difficulty, but when they happen I’m afraid they’re just as maddening. If not more so, as the stakes are usually higher and the effort being put in even greater.
I’ve decided I don’t like my Ribery and have transfer listed him. Nothing against him really. Some great real-life players don’t really have counterparts in a PES edition, and Ribery doesn’t fit into PES2012 for me.
Lloyd—nope, no matter who pops up as a youth Regen, up to and including Jesus himself, I’m not getting them.
UTD-Pearson—thanks for your comment, and I pretty much agree with your last remark about PES2012 being the most underrated football game ever. I understand much of the indifference and hostility to the game because I’ve felt it myself at various times, sometimes strongly enough to nearly quit the game—as so, so many have done.
I’m in the midst of an exciting push for a traditional completion point for me in every PES I’ve ever played all year round: the ML Treble. I really want it before PES2013 hits, and a few weeks ago I thought it was an impossible dream, given how tough the game is on Superstar. But I’ve got a great chance this season. I might not get another, so I have to make it count. No pressure…
I’m still seeing and feeling new things in almost every session of play, here in July—in many ways this is exactly like the good old days. So many PES veterans have missed out on a great game—the learning curve, though, is so formidable that I don’t really blame them.
@NG
I also thought a trophy would be a step too far until a about 2 months ago when the game clicked with me. Just started a master league with Everton with their real line up. Hoping for Euro qualification and then eventually a side capable of taking on the likes of United, City, Chelsea etc.
Signed LoriK Cana, Park Chu Young and Matias silvestre. So far so good 4 wins out of five with strong displays against two of my bogey teams(villa and spurs).
Hoping to challenge for the FA Cup and maybe sneak into the CL this season but that may be a stretch to far. Good thing is Everton suit my style, ie a strong organised tough to beat team who are also capable of possession football. Soaking up pressure and using two bars attack level seems to be working well, but as so often happens on superstar your season can go tits up if you drop a level and get the slightest bit complacent.
Will you guys be downloading the PES13 demo which is rumoured to release around 25th of July?
Being so heavily invested in PES12 at the moment im not sure if its a good idea!
It may be hard to go back to PES12 after sampling the new and different gameplay of the demo.
The lure of temptation may prove to hard to resist though.
After finishing 3rd in the Prem last season and winning the Europa league, my club ranking has only gone up 5 places from 28th to 23rd.
UTD-Pearson—I’ve always thought ML rolls you a new set of bogey teams each time you start ‘er up, so you might find Villa and Spurs are bogeys no longer. Having said that, Fulham seem to be a generally horrible team for most to play against.
On Superstar, one bad patch and you’re looking at playing to the rest of the season before another chance at the title or other silverware. It’s tense and amazing. The game clicked back in February for me, and I’m just now starting to feel I’m getting on top of things, but this is more than likely a measure of my average skillz at the game.
Paul—oh yes, I’ll be there day 1, minute 1 for that demo. I remember getting the PES6 demo at the tail-end of my Year of PES5 (*crosses self*), playing a few matches to test its quality, and going back to PES5 until the full game came out. I’m far too invested in PES2012, with too much unfinished business, to let a few Exhibition games of Barca vs Bayern or whatever turn my head. Famous last words? Possibly, but I’d be amazed if a taster of PES2013 packed enough punch to sour my current immersion in PES2012, really amazed.
Fair points, I’ll definitely download it too.
Just to gauge the changes.
Played 3 pre-season friendlies on Superstar last night, Havent lost yet so all good, and the matches whilst very tough and require alot of focus and concentration, have played out alot more free and open, ive created opportunities that just werent possible on Professional due to the CPU having 10 men in the box.
So looking forward to the forthcoming season.
not-Greg Funny you should mention Fulham, as two nights ago I had an outlandish game and beat them 8-2. Everything worked, their keeper had a ‘mare, and Dzyuba my big new Russian got 4, including a headed hat-trick (2 from corners). I’ve never had a PES 2012 game like it. Everyones’ advice on losing the marker from a corner has helped tremendously, although I still can’t smear them on the post too well.
BTW next game I got knocked out of the Europa League. Ah well, swings and roundabouts…
Chris99 – The Europa league is a very difficult competition to win, teams really do up their game, or at least get a scripted stats boost, especially in the knockout stages.
I won it last season, after 4 seasons of trying.
Paul—the most critical thing for me with PES2013 will be seeing which new goals-preventing trick they’ve introduced to offset the new shooting system. Guaranteed there will be something. It’ll probably be superkeepers, which I could just accept within reason, but if it’s anything like across-the-board CPU bus-parking, I’ll be unhappy. Of course what we really need is for somebody, somewhere, to play single-player against the AI for a long period and report back. I won’t hold my breath.
Chris99—oh yes, those games will come along. Once every 1.5 seasons for me, I’ll get a game where everything just works. Good to hear that you’re getting joy out of big-man corner routine. Performing the snot-wipe on the post is so tricky that I rarely even try it anymore. When I used to try it, it’d take so long that I’d panic about time expiring and the game taking the corner for me, and just take the kick myself any old way.
Ng- i Have scored quite a few with my GK he is always unmarked
when you have a keeper that’s 205cm tall he could give Ribero a run for his money! There is a glitch though, if you try and select the keeper with R3 the corner is taken automatically and go’s over every1 to the far side of the box.
I’ll be picking up a new ps3 today or tomorrow fingers crossed my ML loads ok
Have you seen the PES13 Game Modes Trailer?
Individual Training back in for ML mode so it looks!
Max—when I’m desperate my usual way of getting the GK involved at corners is to get him to take the corner. This goal was a total fluke, I think. I didn’t even know he was up there.
Good luck with the new PS3. It’ll be fine, I’ve been through it as has nearly everybody else. Remember, you have to update PES2012 to the latest version of the patch (or the same as the one you created the savegames on). Otherwise you’ll get the ‘this is a different version’ error message.
Paul—I watched the new trailer and was unimpressed at what I thought was an entirely Multiplayer-oriented presentation. Where did you see the part about ML? And individual training in ML?! I saw a bit about training—but wasn’t that the top-menu challenge training mode, as already seen in PES2012? What did I miss?
The Video showed that you can use GP to buy training aids which increased the effectiveness of certain training regimes, ie: buy dribbling poles and it will increase dribbling training effectiveness, on a player by player basis.
If this is the case, then what would be the point in ONLY applying that in free training mode?? you wouldnt develop any players that way, so it MUST be applicable within a ML squad, and the video showed it under the ‘Football Life’ heading.
Unless of course, its solely a BaP training feature, which wouldnt surprise me with Konami.
Superstar finally bared its teeth last night 3 defeats on the spin. 2 in the league and 1 to put me out of the Europa League. W8 D2 L4. GF23. GA19. Sitting 8th the League but only 2 points off 3rd place, would be ironic to qualify for Champions League for first time on Superstar. Sibon is my top scorer with 14 goals in all competitions, Giggs is up to 91ovr and has cemented 1st team place this season.
So i just bought my new PS3 a 80gig FAT version for 139euros, do you think i got a good deal? Money is a little tight at the moment so this was the cheapest new ps3 i could find, the slim 160g is 229euros.
Well its “semi-new” as in left over from a promotion a bank had and the shop bought the left overs when the promotion ended. Obviously i will be taking precuations against another YLOD and it does comes with a 1 year guarantee.
Time to set it up, i wonder how long all the updates ect is going to take…
Just watched that trailer too paul and seems like it would be part of master league. Fingers crossed! A revamped shooting system, twenty spanish stadiums and the inclusion of south american leagues would be fantastic this year. Loving pes2012 at the minute, anything that improves on it is an instant purchase for me
As far as the PES demo goes might leave it for a bit, so immersed in pes 2012 it would be strange trying the new pes game so early.
6 wins out of 7 with me (as Everton) joint top with City, hoping to build on this and cement a place in top six by january. Matias Silvestre has been a beast of a signing stepping up at the right time and his positioning is excellent.
Managing to score the first goal more often which is so crucial on pes, the AI is having trouble breaking me down. Using a pressing value off 12 against possession based teams is working well, allowing me to hunt the ball but not lose position. Tactics and formation working a treat but that can change so quickly. Lorik Cana and Jack Rodwell have formed a great deep lying midfield partnership with fellaini playing higher up the field.
One more thing, the manual pass with left trigger is one of the most sublime elements of this game.
Paul—I’ll have to rewatch that vid later when I can. If it is a clue to a new training model in ML (fingers crossed), I wonder if we’ll have to use the training cones etc in realtime in the training ground, or if it’ll be abstracted behind the scenes? Remember the old-school PES where you had to initiate a full training session and then play it for a certain time in order to do the weekly conditioning? That would be a pain in PES2013. Assuming the training stuff in the vid does relate to ML, of course…
Lloyd—a couple of my youngsters have suddenly shot up a long way—Schweinsteiger up to 82OVR from 76OVR. Even Hagi is starting to move the right way.
Max—I can’t judge whether you did get a good deal or not in Euros. Even the conversion to GBP means little given the price differences across ‘territories’, as the evil soulless marketing men put it. Best just to say if you’ve got a working PS3 and a good ML going in a decent version of PES, it’s pretty near priceless.
Out of interest, what are the precautions you plan to take against YLOD? I can only think of buying a third-party extra cooling fan and/or limiting your play-sessions to a few hours at a time. Are there any other methods?
leroy getz—we desperately need to hear from somebody with hands-on experience of ML. I won’t be leaping to any conclusions about content until we either hear for sure or—just as likely—find out for ourselves…
UTD-Pearson—the only times a PES demo has ever turned my head have been in those years when I’ve not been playing the current PES by the time the new demo comes out. I’ll be amazed if the PES2013 demo has enough substance to turn me off my PES2012 ML. 16 seasons and still going strong, with much to do.
Scoring the first goal in a PES2012 ML match on Superstar pretty much equates to taking the win 80% of the time, rising to 95% or so against lesser opposition, in my experience.
Can’t wait to try the manual shooting in PES2013 with that left trigger.
NG- I have only looked into it briefly so far but the YLOD is when the PS3 over heats and over time it wears out the soldering that connects the graphics chip and CPU. Basicaly i plan to turn the PS3 off for 15mins every few hours to cool down and carry out the programmed cleaning mode weekly. I have never had a FAT ps3 before so looked into a few things and standing it on its side is also cooler , some people used infer-red cameras to prove it! Also I will probably cover it when not in use to stop any extra dust getting in but i wont bother putting any extra fans or anything.
It took a while but i have my PS3 up and running and my edit data/ML saves worked. Unfortunately i copied the wrong files while saving and will have to replay about 15 games in my default challenge and i have lost my SS league champions save. Also i have zero PES points so i can’t play on SS until i unlock it!
Max. for a second hand FAT PS3 at 139 Euros, which is pretty much 1 for 1 with the British Pound, Id say thats an average deal.
I had my original 60GB FAT launch PS3 YLOD last year and bought a brand new 320GB Slim PS3 for £229. that was a year ago, they’re probably breaking the sub £200 mark now.
NG – ive taken the plunge, I have a brand new 24″ iMac being delivered tomorrow…. bundled with Apples Final Cut Pro X and about a grands worth of professional video editing software, cant wait….learning curve my be akin to Superstar on PES though.
Max—yes, I know someone who does the rest-break thing every few hours too and their phat PS3 has been going strong for 4 years now. Good luck with it all, and remember: backup to USB/external HDD (and upload copies online somewhere) at least once a week! Unlucky with the saves—what happened?
Paul—congratulations, and the imminent new arrival sounds mouth-watering. My 20″ 2009 iMac is still going strong, even if it chugs through big video editing jobs nowadays, as I found a while ago with that full PES2012 match vid. But it’s still my Millennium Falcon.
Three years after making the switch myself, the only negative has been the way Mac OS deals with deleting files from USB sticks. It just bloody doesn’t! Not properly anyway.
But everything else is roses. I switched partly because I just love pissing about with things on computers, and a new Operating System is a biggie, so I relished the whole settling-in process and the frequent questions for Google. This time tomorrow you’ll most likely feel confused and bewildered and slightly insecure. A few weeks from now you’ll wonder how you ever put up with Windows Update and having Antivirus software always grinding away in the background.
NG – Im a massive Apple fan, love the sleek minimalistic design and the way everything just ‘works’.
Windows Update is the bane of my life, constantly updating and ruining things on my PC, removing indexing etc, and the Anti Virus chugging away and grinding the OPC to a halt is a pain in the arse!!
Im relishing settling into Mac OSX and having watched youtube tutorials of imovie 11 – I cant wait to get stuck in.
Only thing im not relishing is the task of getting my photos, itunes libs, contacts etc all across from PC to Mac.
Had a break from PES last night whilst i backed up PC stuff, and had a little go on LA Noire before bed, felt good to play something different for a change and with it being pre-season in PES, a few days rest before tackling superstar is prob for the best.
Come the weekend I’ll be raring to go.
Paul—all your stuff will transfer across OK. OSX will recognise the HD or whatever you’re using. The iMac will be a touch slow while it indexes everything, so maybe don’t transfer all the files in one go. I don’t know how iTunes libraries sync across, not being an iTunes user (music ended for me the day The Smiths split up), but there is a way.
For a week or two now I’ve played only short sessions of a few PES2012 matches at a time while I do other things—and play other games. It does feel good to play other games and thus make PES more of a special thing rather than a routine thing. It takes longer to get through the seasons, but so be it.
Does Mac OSX read the PC Formatted Ext HD’s Ok then? I thought PC was NTFC and Mac FAT32 ?
If i can just plug in and read, brill.
Ive sorted a way to transfer iTunes lib’s i think.
Sorry for the non-PES related discussion, i know this is a footy gaming blog but appreciate the experienced mac users input.
Paul—oh yes, Mac OSX most certainly does read all PC-formatted HDD content with no trouble at all, to the extent that I don’t bother formatting new HDDs & USB sticks to FAT32 at all—just stick with the default. This is just the first of hundreds of little things that you’ll come across. Anything Google can’t help you with (somebody, somewhere, will have already asked and answered 99% of stuff), feel free to drop me an email.
Max – my fat PS3 (stood on its side) still runs perfectly after over 5 years, so maybe there is something in that theory! I was meaning to ask you and Turf what you’d recommend to get the most out of Ribeiro when playing with the defaults/youths – is he best alongside another CF, or with a LWF & RWF? I’ve got him up front on his own (albeit with an AMF almost in the SS position) but he doesn’t get on the end of many crosses and often drifts off into unhelpful positions
Pearson – fully agree about the sublime L2+manual pass, really love using it to put long balls into space, and also the occasional manual short pass when I suspect the scripting is about to mess things up for me. The L2 pass and the right stick player run trigger have really opened the game up this year
abbeyhill- thats good to hear, my slim getting a YLOD was deffenatly of my own doing i wont be making that mistake again.
To be honest Ribiero is not the kind of player i like in PES 2012 and i only signed him as i had no other choice in the defualt challenge. He was good for the first few seasons but like you i couldn’t find a formation that suited him and as my other players improved he played less and less, in season 5 he has played about 2 games all season.
Have you started a new ML? I realy like Zarate CF from the youths, he is up to 80ovr in my ML and hes the kind of player i would consider buying even if i was playing with only defualts.
abbeyhill—my old phat 60GB PS3 (much missed) lived its whole life stood on its end but lasted not too long at all, so I don’t think that’s a factor—or not the only factor, at least. I rarely dusted it or vacced its vents the way you’re supposed to.
Max—I’m a convert to the big man up front, if only because it’s a great tool to have in the box if nothing else is working. The trouble comes when that doesn’t work either. It’s hard to get back into a pass-and-move groove.
not-greg – I’ve probably just been lucky then with my PS3, as I’ve done no cleaning or other life-prolonging activities at all. Maybe not playing many violent games like FPSs helps. Hopefully it’ll now last me until next-gen, or at least the WiiU!
Max – yes, I’ve started my 3rd ML campaign, the second with the defaults, after two sackings. Not-greg is convinced that my attempt to go straight into superstar is doomed, but he underestimates my resolve (and latent PES skillz!). I’ll give Zarate a try at the January window if nothing better comes up, as goalscoring is a problem and I’m not getting much out of Ribeiro
abbeyhill—it’s not so much that I think your quest is doomed, as that I know you came ‘cold’ to PES2012 and went straight into Superstar Default ML career, which is madness. I cannot believe you’re actually experiencing good games of football anywhere near regularly enough for PES2012 to be an enjoyable experience for you. It’s a bit like deliberately choosing to watch a colour film in black and white and through the wrong end of a telescope. Or wear a pair of shoes several sizes too small or large for your feet. Or read a book with random pages torn out. Why do any of those things?!
Even if you gain traction and get some kind of career going before FIFA13 and PES2013 arrive (and I hope you do), will you really look back on PES2012 with good memories? All those gruelling, thankless games, grinding away season after season, career after career? To what end?
The PES forums are littered with the corpses of the straight-to-Top-Player merchants who gave up on the game in October, because it was so horrible. I remember little good from my own time with the Defaults on Regular!
abbeyhill- well i wish you all the best, third times a charm!
NG- If Ribiero had shot power 90+ like Sibon i would probably be in love him as much as uncle turf is
When i backed up my ML save for the default challenge i just didn’t pay enough attention to the date’s on the files, also i lost a lot of games becuase my ps3 died while playing and i only save game at the end of the session. With my SS super team save it was on a different user profile on my PS3 and i just plain forgot and saved a different file with the same team name.
I still haven’t played my defualt save as i haven’t unlocked SS yet but looking forward to getting going again. I spent most of this afternoon in training trying out some new things i have seen on youtube if i can pull them off in a game on SS it will be epic!
Shame about the loss in the league, an unbeaten season on SS would be incredible but i think the treble is still the pinnacle of success in ML.
not-greg, to give your question a serious answer (for once!), I guess I realised after a few games on PES2012 that this is a ‘proper’ PES, the first time for 5-6 years. A really deep challenge, where the rewards are proportionate to the amount of effort invested. Therefore, to get the most out of it I want to start at the very bottom, and have the privilege of appreciating the gameplay incrementally over time. In fact the only games that feel comparable in the series are my all time favourites PES3, WE GBA and PES6 PSP
Max—a shame the PS3 update didn’t arrive before your YLOD—you could have selected all and saved all at once. Do it right now anyway on your new one if you haven’t already. Don’t get caught again—I’m sure you won’t. Long life to your phat PS3, they’re great machines because of the PS2 back-compatibilty. If Sony started producing them again I’d buy a new one.
abbeyhill—I worry you’ll run out of time, though, although I seem to remember you’re not the type of footy gamer who must have the new game(s) when they come out, so you might be playing PES2012 into the new year. I suspect though that the matches must be such slogs that you’ll be looking for relief come September-October time (which is incredibly just weeks away).