PES Chronicles

I claimed my first win of season 2012 against a team called Heracles Almero. I’m playing in the PES2008 equivalent of La Liga, so I thought I’d have heard of most or all of the teams—but I’d never heard of Heracles Almero.

A quick Google of the name indicates that I’ve never heard of them because they’re really a quite obscure Dutch team. Their real name also seems to be Heracles Almelo. Hmmm all round, really.

The game looked like it was going to be yet another 0-0. After four of the blighters on the bounce I wasn’t too happy. When would I score another goal? When? There is something almost tragic about a 0-0 in football. Nil-nil just isn’t the point of what any game should be about, if that makes sense. I think the Americans had the right idea in the 1970s when they effectively banned 0-0 results from their ill-fated ’soccer’ league at the time.

Bradley was sitting out this game on the bench due to tiredness. I brought him on in the 79th minute. I had a throw-in deep in my own half, and worked the ball across the pitch to him. I ran him a little way forward, crossed the halfway line, shot speculatively… and the ball flew into the net through the CPU keeper.

Not literally through the keeper: on closer inspection the ball passed between his outstretched hands. He should have still saved it, but I was happy enough. Bradley’s sheer power had scored the winning goal. It was his first goal for my Coventry City with his first touch of the game. I’ve had plenty of players in PES with the Middle Shooting ability, but Bradley seems to have the most exquisite long-range power and placement of them all.

This boy is going to be something special. He already is something special. He’s only 21 years old. What will he be like in five seasons? The mind boggles. I might not even bother with Mathieu in this career—and that’s saying something for me. Bradley is Mathieu turned up to 11.

In the long-term, could Bradley become a ‘cheat player’ for me—almost an Elcherino?

I’ll have to watch this situation carefully, but it’s not an issue at the moment and I don’t think it will be. I have always been average at ‘proper’ PES, as this PSP/PS2 version is; I have always managed to play it for the whole PES year without boredom.

I had 30 players in my squad going into pre-season negotiations. Before doing anything else I had to get rid of 5 players. My House Rules dictate that my squad cannot be larger than 25 players.

The easiest and least expensive way to do this was simply not to renew some contracts. Around 10 of my Default players were up for renewal. It was against every instinct of my ML life. I have always renewed every player contract, pending future trade-in/transfer activity.

I allowed these players to vanish into the void:

Iouga
Ximelez
Fouque
Hamsun
Dodo

At a stroke my squad was down to 25 players.

I still had to make room for new players who would be coming straight to me from the Unbelonging list or the Youth list. So I also failed to renew these players’ contracts:

Stremer
Dodo
Ceciu

Ouch. I don’t rate any of the Default players, not even the best of them, but it still hurt. It just seemed so wasteful.

I also received an offer of 3000-odd points for Castolo. I decided to sell him. I haven’t rated Castolo for the past three instalments of PES. He’s had his purple patches for me this time around. But 3000-odd points was a fair price for a decidedly below-average player.

All of which meant that, along with all the PES points that Elcherino raked in for me last season, I was rich indeed. I had something like 21,000 points in the bank. My salary bill would be about 10,000 points.

I could afford to go a bit wild on the transfer market. Yes, it did occur to me that I was taking advantage of an imbalance in the game. Elcherino, as a monstrously overpowered Classic Player, was responsible for most of my excess bank balance. He scored 40+ goals for me last season, single-handedly winning most of the games he played in. Surely, after ditching Elcherino, I should also ditch – somehow – the riches he had brought? I gave it long and careful thought…

Nah, I thought. Let’s go shopping.

KMOLO (CF, 25)
LAGUTZ (CF, 26)
AKINFEEV (GK, 21)
GATTI (DMF, 25)
BALE (SB, 18)
MATUZALEM (CMF, 27)
MORFEO (SS, 27)
RECOBA (SS, 31)

These players came from a mixture of the Unbelonging list, the Youth (Rookie) list, and trade-ins with other clubs. I didn’t make a note of each one as I went along. I also had to release a couple more players to keep the total squad size at a nice round 25.

Getting Recoba was a surprise. He isn’t a top-drawer player, but he’s still a good player to have. In my last ML I couldn’t tempt any established players to Coventry City for at least a couple of seasons. Perhaps my strong second half of the season last year helped (although my team ranking is still only D).

Recoba is hardly the transfer scoop of all time. He’s one of the slowest forwards in the game. If he’s anything like his PES5 forebear, he’ll hardly ever be fit – and he won’t last more than 60 minutes even when he is fit.

As for Elcherino, I traded him in for Matuzalem. Cheekily, Matuzalem’s club refused to accept my initial bid of Elcherino alone. I’d figured that Elcherino alone was worth four times what their guy was worth. But no, they wouldn’t have it. I had to bump a second offer up to Elcherino+1000 points before I got Matuzalem. I hope he’s worth it.

—————–

There was one more piece of business to do in the pre-season. I hated the kits I chose for Singers FC’s first season – the dayglo-red home kit, and the fluorescent yellow away kit. What was I thinking back then? I think I wanted to make a clean break from the Coventry City career with an all-new team and all-new kits, but I just never got used to the new ones. These were those new kits:

Ugh. I hated playing with them. I made sure to go into the Edit Team option during this close season and change the kits to something more appealing:

Now that’s more like it.

After all this activity, the next thing to do is to choose a First XI and then actually play some games.

The story so far: after becoming extremely disenchanted with this year’s PES offering (on the PlayStation3, c’est naturellement), and trying and failing to rekindle the spark with PES5, I have spent the past several days searching for some way to play one or more other football games for the rest of the year.

Next-gen FIFA08 has been the leading candidate. I’ll be posting some time next week about the culmination of my FIFA08 Quadruple attempt with Coventry City in the English Premier League. There’s PES2008 business to deal with first. It’s very early days, but the signs are looking good for both games. At the moment it’s my plan to alternate between the two for the rest of the football game year. I’m looking at a two-state solution, people.

When I abandoned my second PES2008 Master League career and stormed off in a huff, I had just finished the first season with my team, Singers FC. The negotiation period was ahead of me.

I resumed that career today exactly where I had left off.

First on the list of priorities: get rid of Elcherino. He was sensational for me in the latter half of the first season. A bit too sensational. He scored at least a hat trick – at least a hat trick! – in almost every game he played. He represented everything that is wrong about the gameplay of next-gen PES2008 (an utterly different game from the PS2 version).

Most of Elcherino’s goals were akin to the sort you could score on previous PES games on the lowest difficulty level. It just wasn’t PES. I’m sure the kids love this aspect of PES2008. 7-2 scorelines are delightful if you just want to fill up some time between sessions of Halo3. Sorry, kids.

Elcherino is a classic player in PES2008. In years past I packed my ML teams with the likes of Michel Platini, George Best, Eric Cantona, Van Basten, Pele, Maradona, Zico, Gordon Banks… the list goes on. PES is its own world, and I’ve always been happy to use the old players alongside the current ones. It was never the case before (for me, an average player) that the Classics were absurdly overpowered, as they are in this year’s game.

Oh well. No more classic players in PES2008. I just have to get on with it. Curse you Seabass!

I’ll get rid of Elcherino as soon as I start negotiations proper – I should be able to trade him in for someone pretty good. An AMF with Middle Shooting is on the shopping list.

Before getting to negotiations, I have to finalise my House Rules. These are the special rules that I need to put in place to stop myself running away with the Master League after a certain tipping point is passed. In theory.

Here are the House Rules:

1. Squad size of no more than 25 players.

2. I’m not allowed to have any of the players I had in my last ML career. With just three exceptions: Maldini, Beerens, and Andy Cole. For various reasons I don’t think I saw the best of them. Maldini in particular was only with me for half a season as a Youth player. If any of the three become overpowered, my other House Rules would make me have to get rid of them.

3. At least 5 of the original Default squad must remain in the squad at all times.

4. When original Default squad members retire, they must be replaced from the pool of old-style Default players on the transfer market (Barota and Vornander et al) .

5. At least one original Default squad member must start every match and play at least a full half.

6. No Elcherino-style players are allowed in the squad. Primarily this means: no classic players. But it also means that I am not allowed to buy any players from the non-classic pool who already are, or might turn into, Elcherino-style wonder dribblers. Additionally, should any of my existing players show signs of developing into such a player, I am not allowed to play with that player, and I have to sell, trade, or release him at the first opportunity.

Only 6 House Rules for now – but in combination, they add up to something quite challenging, I think.

I considered including a ’skill cap’, i.e. preventing myself from using any player whose Overall rating was above 90, or even 85. But that may be premature.

It’s perfectly possible for a player to have high stats in many areas without being overpowered on the dribbling front.

A skill cap would also remove lots of the immersion of Master League for me: taking a young player from nothing and turning him into a legend. I’ll play this one by ear. If it becomes a problem, I’ll introduce a skill cap and have done with it.

My final four games of the season (and possibly my final four games of next-gen PES2008, period):

Parma 1 – 3 Singers FC (Elcherino 3)
Sunderland 2 – 5 Singers FC (Elcherino 4)
AEK Athens 2 – 1 Singers FC (Caracciollo)
Newcastle 3 – 3 Singers FC (Espimas 2(!), Altintop 1)

(Can you spot the games where Elcherino didn’t play?)

Newcastle put in a suspiciously energetic performance in the last game. I was actually 3-0 down at one point. Then Espimas sprang into action with his underrated Middle Shooting ability. He banged in two long ‘uns for me and could have had a hat-trick by the end. Altintop had his first (and possibly last) immense game for me, dominating the forward line and netting a classic centre-forward’s header from a cross in the process.

Here’s the end-of-season promotion/relegation information from the two Superleague divisions. I was really looking forward to seeing who would go up and down:

(Apologies for the blurriness of these snapshots. The 20th-placed team in Division 1 was Villarreal; the 3rd-placed team in Division 2 was Sevilla.)

Elcherino finished as top scorer in Division 2 with a staggering 40 goals in 18 games. Even Schwarz in my old ML team of superstars only managed 29 goals in my last Treble-winning season.

Would Elcherino have scored 80 goals in a full season next time around?Or even 100? I think he would have.

I finished 6th in the table after being rock-bottom at the halfway stage. If the season was just a couple of games longer I’d have sneaked into a promotion spot. I don’t think I’m being too presumptuous when I say that promotion next season would be guaranteed. At least 100 league goals in a title-winning campaign would be easily achievable.

———————-

However, there isn’t going to be a next season for Singers FC or for next-gen PES2008. Over the past few weeks I’ve spoken a lot about the many reasons for this decision. I won’t repeat myself here (much).

I’ll keep the saved game, of course. Some sunny day in April, or in June, or in September, I might well find myself slipping the PES2008 disc into the PS3 once again.

Because it’s not all bad. It’s easily the worst-ever PES (in my opinion), but it’s still a pretty fine game for a short time. My stats (above) show that I’ve played for more than 130 hours in total. I’ve had my forty quid’s-worth out of this game, oh yes.

If they ever manage to fix the online play I will definitely be back – sooner rather than later. What little I have seen of the online game suggests to me that perhaps PES2008 was designed with multiplayer in mind. Sadly, PES2008 online is an appalling example of the near-criminal shoddiness that seems to have gone into PES2008’s production. There is no resolution in sight. Technically, it has the worst online quality of any game I have ever come across, ever.

I’m very surprised that the PES community (if PESfan is anything to go by) seems to be letting Konami off the hook on this one. The citizens of the internet are not usually noted for their patience and forbearance. You would think that the PS3 Online section of the PESfan forum would be permanently full of threads along the lines of OMFG sort out the online already! But no, there’s almost nothing.

I think it means one of two things. Either the PES community is oddly passive in the face of an ongoing travesty; or too many dissatisfied customers have simply drifted away from PES2008 and moved onto other things (as I am doing) for anybody to put up much of a fight.

——————-
And thus that really is the end of the road for me and PES2008 at the moment. We are finished. We are over. It’s a shame, and it’s worthy of much wailing and gnashing of teeth – at least on a personal level.

It’s a mark of how great PES has been that its fans almost seem to regard it as part of their personal identity. Hence the resistance felt by so many (including me) to the notion that next-gen FIFA08 – of all things! – might, just possibly, be the superior football sim this year (and it is).

I know there are people out there still playing and enjoying next-gen PES2008 offline. Good luck to them. Like some old-gen FIFA games of the past, next-gen PES2008 is a decent enough video game that happens to be based on the sport of football (talk about damning with faint praise…. )

It’s good for a week or two, or even for a month or two, but it lacks the year-round longevity of its predecessors. Sadly for me it’s just too much of a departure from the ultra-high standards I have come to expect.

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Next on peschronicles, we go back to the future. It’s PES5 all the way.