PES Chronicles

Things are slowing down, but in a good way. I’ve just taken a few days off PES2010 to attend to some real-life business. That business is ongoing—I’ve got a big assignment to put together for a course I’m doing. All told, I think I’ll be playing fewer matches over a longer period of time for the near future. I’m not stopping or anything. Just taking a bit longer. Where I usually get through a whole season in three or four posts, I think it’ll now take five or six posts, on average.

Not only have I got life stuff to attend to, but there’s a World Cup looming. And I want to play other games as well. I’m 21 hours into Final Fantasy XIII and still liking it. Uncharted 2 is still waiting for attention. And I’ve more or less made my mind up to give FIFA10 some belated attention at the end of my current season in PES2010, whatever happens.

In that season—season 18 of my most epic Master League career since 2005—I’m looking good for a second successive Treble at the moment. I’m still in the D1 Cup. I’ve qualified from my Champions League group stage with ease. At the halfway stage in the title race, I’m 9 points clear at the top of the table. I’ve never had a cushion like this at this stage before. I’m suspicious before every match that the game will be out to get me. And indeed, in one game it was out to get me: Liverpool thumped me 3-1, but in truth I played badly.

One of the most interesting aspects of my long career is the progress of Castolo. I’ve got him as a Regen at the moment. I detest the toxic Myth that surrounds his piss-poor Default original, and was accordingly biased against his Regen for a long time… Until he started getting good.

Now he’s rated a 73 OVR, and seems to gain a couple of points every season. I play him every chance I get. It’s addictive, seeing how good he can become. He’s no longer a passenger in matches—no longer the player you grudgingly bring on for a while just to give him some experience. He’s a talented player in his own right.

Castolo is getting goals. Most are poacher’s efforts, but this next one is a bit special. It came about after a ball over the top, a diagonal aerial through-ball from my full-back. This was a favourite move of mine in PESes past, but it’s been nerfed so much in recent PESes (and probably rightly so) that I rarely try it now. But sometimes I do, almost for old time’s sake, and when it comes off…

Link:

The close-up portion of the replay is awkward viewing for all PES fans. Look carefully and you’ll see that the ball drops through Castolo’s upper torso and neck before he hits the volley. I winced to see it. But it didn’t really spoil my overall enjoyment of the goal, and that’s got to be a worry in itself. Something like the above is so common in PES that it’s become an accepted part of the package. Which is not a good situation for the game to be in.

I happened to be listening to WENB’s current podcast while playing this match. Just before the goal I’d got to the part where the guest speaker was saying it’d actually be okay if Konami completely dismantled the archaeological layers of code that PES is built upon, and started again from scratch. When you look at collision non-detection like the above, it’s hard to disagree.

Munitis, currently my best striker, won Player of the Year. It’s the second season in a row that one of my players has won this award. Last season Zaki seemed to turn abruptly rubbish as soon as he won it. And the same strange loss of form afflicted my only previous winner, Itzhaki, many seasons ago now. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Munitis in the rest of this season. There are quite a few very strange bugs in PES2010. If Munitis continues to have a great season, great; but if he suddenly turns bad, I’ll declare it a post-PotY award bug and start ranting accordingly.

Maybe he’ll be protected from decline by the sheer margin of his victory. Zaki and Itzhaki both won their awards narrowly, by a handful of votes. Munitis romped home by more than 150 votes:

After the drama of my 60GB PS3  dying on me, it was back to the routine business of Master League. For what it’s worth, I’m very happy with the performance of my new Slim PS3. It is quieter and it makes less fuss about a lot of things. I don’t have to sign out of PSN in order to avoid the game freezing occasionally, for one thing. In hindsight my old PS3 must have been on the way out for a long time.

For the second season running I took Champions League qualifying right to the wire. I needed to beat Porto to qualify, and I did beat them, 3-0. It was a tighter match than the scoreline would suggest. When I opened the scoring early with a sublime instant half-volley from Pires, I kind of knew it was going to be all right. It stayed 1-0 until close to the end, when I hit Porto on the break twice to make the scoreline slightly flattering.

I’m going through a phase of scoring lots of half-volleys, and this was one of the best. The replay showed that it was, alas, a typical PES-style ‘shinner’ rather than the more satisfactory, orthodox kind of hit—but they do all count:

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The draw for the first knockout round has been made. Every season that I’ve been in the Champions League’s knockout stage—6 or 7 seasons running—I have drawn French opposition, without fail. Every season in the Round of 16, it’s Coventry City vs. A French Team. This season, it has happened again. It’s Nancy Lorraine this time. I’m going to stop remarking on this phenomenon now. It’s definitely a bug, and a totally stupid one at that.

In the league I have finally asserted a bit of human authority, and gone top with a few points to spare:

All in all, with mid-season approaching, I’m very hopeful of finally clinching the elusive Treble. It’s certainly the best-placed I’ve been in a number of seasons.

The imminent mid-season transfer window will bring me some new players. I’ve already got one lined up: a loan deal for a young Gilardino, rated 81 OVR. I tried to sign Saviola, but was turned down.

And, whisper it very quietly, but my Regen version of Castolo is now a 70 OVR rated player, and he’s starting to prove actually useful. He’s no longer a passenger, as he has been for most of his time in my squad. He really contributes to the overall team performances. Sometimes he even stands out as an individual player. He scored and laid on an assist in a recent 2-0 league win that was very important indeed. So I’m actually warming to the old Legend/Myth of Castolo.

His stats at the moment are pretty decent and there is a lot of promise for the future. Remember that a few seasons ago I spent £4,000,000 on his skills: one positional retraining (for AMF), and two skill cards (first touch and quick turn). I’m overdue to repeat my experiment of filming a full match and posting it. When I do, I’ll make sure Castolo is playing from the start.

So, here we are in April. The seventh month of the football game season. And I’m still playing PES2010. If I’m still playing it by the end of this month, FIFA10 has been cruelly snubbed by me this year.

It does almost feel cruel not to have played FIFA10 for so long. I haven’t played more than a game or two of it here and there ever since my Master League took off. For those weeks in October 2009 that I played FIFA10 intensely, I really rated it, rated it very highly, and I still do. At some point this summer I will take up FIFA10 again (even if I’m still going strong in PES2010) and I’m looking forward to it.

In my ongoing Master League career there has been a development that had me genuinely beaming with joy. My heroic, evergreen striker, Zaki, has won the European Footballer of the Year award. The last time one of my players won this thing (Itzhaki back in February, a long time ago now), it was a total surprise. I never felt he’d really earned it.

With Zaki it’s not a surprise and it’s fully deserved. I’m almost as proud as if this was a real-life player with me as the real-life manager/mentor figure. I know exactly how great Zaki has been, and still is. Top scorer in the Cups last season, third-top scorer in the league, and consistently just a great performer. Strength. Power. A shooting technique that always causes problems… He’s the ideal PES striker—or maybe it’s better to say he’s the ideal PES2010 striker for me.

Maybe he lacks a bit of pace, but that’s his only drawback. I hope I’m still playing in ten seasons’ time, when Zaki will have Regenned (hopefully straight into my Youth team), and I can set about rebuilding him all over again.

Zaki isn’t the only player getting some love from me today. The Myth of Castolo has chipped in with a few goals that have made me take my figurative knife away from the poor overblown myth’s scrawny neck. Or at least ease the pressure slightly…

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That second goal really was a big goal too. I’d lost and drawn a few matches in a row and had slipped down to 5th in the table. Castolo’s goal was a late winner in a tight match that had seemed destined for another frustrating 0-0. It turned my mini-slump around and brought me back up to 2nd as the mid-season point approaches. I cannot afford to slip too far off the pace again as I did last season.

If I could just get Castolo up to 70 OVR—with supporting stats to match—he could be a useful squad player for the future. I’m not spending any more money than I already have done on extra skill cards or training for him.

In the Cups, I squeaked through qualifying for the Champions League knockout stage:

Scraping through on goal difference was not ideal, but I took it. A win is a win is a win. I’m through and that’s all that matters.

The draw for the first knockout stage was made. In all 6 of my previous Champions League last-16 stages, I have been drawn against French opposition.

And this time my opponents are… Olympique Lyonnais. French opponents again. This is beyond coincidence now, and at the point where it has to be identified as a bug. It’s a totally stupid bug and I hate it. I really hate it. ‘Little’ things like this annoy me almost as much as the big things.

I have also played in my first Konami Cup match. My Latin American rivals were SC International and I beat them 2-0, winning £3m in prize money. Not a bad day’s work. The match was very tough and I scored my goals late on against the run of play.

Winning the Konami Cup means that a regular Treble would complete a Quadruple of sorts. Even more incentive to keep my focus together this season. All’s well so far, but as I have found so often it can easily fall apart.

I could do this. Here in season 15, after a very bad start, I could win an unlikely Treble. Just a few sessions ago I was nowhere in the league, but a run of wins has—predictably—seen me catch up with the leaders. I’m now just 5 points off the top with 7 matches left. Everybody who’s played Master League knows that it loves to keep the human player in the hunt (or hunted) until the end. Like most of us I don’t really like this ‘feature’, but we can only play with the Master League we’re given. The current table:

I’ve brought myself back into contention by playing with a ferocious concentration for the whole of every match. I won 7 in a row, drew 2, and lost 1. I’ve snatched 1-0 wins in the 93rd minute. I’ve trounced big-name opposition 3-0, 4-0, 5-1. I will face Manchester United during the course of the last 7 matches. I have a feeling it’ll be the title decider.

Before I get to that stage, though, I will meet Man Utd in the D1 Cup Final. And then I’ll play Inter Milan in the Champions League final. Yes, after 14 seasons of wandering in the desert, winning no Cups at all, I am through to BOTH FINALS. Man Utd will be tough, as they have been for most of this career. I played Inter twice in the CL group stages and they were pretty weak, frankly—which probably means they’ll be nightmarishly tough in the final.

I played Barcelona in the Champions League semi and beat them easily in both legs. 2-0 at home, 1-3 away. I was braced for a stern test that never came.

Perhaps their odd-looking squad had something to do with it. But they were in the CL semi, so they must have been decent at some point. Wilshere has been a major figure in my ML world, winning several player of the year awards, but he’s in his late 30s now and surely about to retire.

In general news, I have suffered what some predicted: a terrible injury to Morientes. He’s out for several months, which probably means for the rest of the season. In truth, he was not so great before the injury that I’m missing him now. He will be a great striker, I’m sure, but he’s too young and green now.

In the meantime Zaki continues to impress me. Despite being 32 now and dropping a few points of OVR rating (down to 79 now), he still pops up with big goals at the right times. He’s lost a bit of his strength and power, and he never had much pace to begin with. This season I’ve found I’m using him more as a fox-in-the-box than the powerful Schwarz-like figure that he was at times for me in recent seasons. But it doesn’t seem to matter. He leads the line as a veteran striker should, a sound testament to the much-vaunted realism of PES.

I scored a super-duper-long-ranger with him at the end of the Barcelona second leg. It’s in this clip, after a diving header from Munitis (from a cross by Capuano, who’s a looping cross specialist):

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A short update on Project Castolo. I continue to give my Regen Castolo extended run-outs as a sub, and he plays from the start every once in a while too. Last season I bought two expensive skill cards for him, first touch and 1-on-1, at £1m each. I also spent £2m to retrain him to play AMF, in order to maximise his opportunities in the team. No other Regen has ever had nurturing like this from me.

The result of all this love and attention? Nothing. One goal. Nothing else. He has painfully limped up to a 65 OVR rating, and he has got some decent stats under the hood, but it’s just not happening. He’s terrible. What do PES fans the world over see in this overrated prima donna? He’s a terrible player and has been so for years now. The days of Castello—and probably the very first iteration of Castolo—are long gone. No amount of sentimental dreaming will bring them, or him, back.

Is there a greater delusion in the whole of the PESverse than the Castolo delusion? Granted, the delusion that there will, at some point, be a definitive next-gen PES (in the way that there has been a next-gen FIFA, etc.), must take the #1 spot on the delusion chart.

But The Myth of Castolo is the #2 delusion. The sooner Konami retire this stuffed shirt and keep him retired, the better. He’s got one more season to give me a reason why he should stay, to show me that the myth is actually a reality. Failing that, he’s out of here.