PES Chronicles

PES2010 and I have come to the end of our long and fruitful relationship—or at least this stage of it. I’ve completed season 18, and it’s time for me to move on. I need to spend time with other football games. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

The season ended with me winning the title with 6 matches to spare. PES2010 now feels easier than it did. Perhaps not quite to the point where I feel confident of 4-0 wins in every match, but not far off it. I need to set the game aside for a while now.

Here’s the final league table for season 18:

Without pre-empting my end-of-year review in September, I’ll say now that I have loved PES2010. With BaL and possibly a new ML career to come in the future, I can’t count the game as anything but a success. I can appreciate that to many PES fans, lapsed or otherwise, this is a contentious view—possibly even a ridiculous view. How can I love what is, by common consensus, at best just a fairly decent, 7/10 football game?

But what constitutes a good football game? One that you play and play and play, day in day out, month after month, for more than 300 hours? Is that a good football game? And if it’s not, then what is?

I’m shyly backing into the question like this because I know, deep in my heart (or quite near the surface, actually) that PES2010 is not a great game of football. The robotic movement. The mysterious stutters at key moments that seem to serve a higher purpose. (SCRIPTING!!!)  Utterly atrocious collision detection. Clunky controls. Random AI interference in what you’re trying to do on the pitch. Passes that go 45 degrees away from where you’re aiming. Goalkeepers that seem unable to make the easiest catches.  Defenders that go missing. Player selection that fails at crucial times.

I could go on. Some of the issues might be fanwanked as having retro charm, or even as being contributory factors to the game’s (or even the series’) overall appeal, but I’d always put them firmly on the debit side of the balance sheet. PES as a whole, and PES2010 in particular, has been great despite its problems, not because of them. In a very real sense, for PES it’s always the year 2001. Which is precisely the problem.

PES2010 wasn’t and isn’t anything like the PES game that could and should have appeared on the next-gen consoles by now. For the most part its appeal is old-school. But, for me, all of its problems are eclipsed by the greatness of Master League. That is the magic formula, the Faculty X that still drives PES on and keeps me coming back for more. I know that I’m in a small minority of fans for whom PES2010 is wholly defined by Master League. I’ll save my final score out of 10 for PES2010 until September. But I’ll say that my score for Master League is 10/10. Never in doubt, really.

And it is time for me to start seeing other football games. I’m really eager to see what else is on offer. I’ve already started playing FIFA10. Yesterday morning I even had a few matches in PES6(360). From Monday I’ll be covering what I’m up to with the other game(s) and how I’m enjoying them (or not). Will I be able to get back into FIFA10 at anywhere near the level of the ecstatic reception I gave it back in October? If not, could I pick up PES6(360) where I left off (a lot of unfinished business there)? How long before I go back to PES2010, if ever?

Zaki is gone. Oh, he’s still with my club in body, but in spirit he is no longer one of my players. His decline is now terminal, and he’s permanently purple-arrowed. He won’t play for me again. It’s a great shame. At Zaki’s peak he was my automatic first-choice striker, and one of the top 5 strikers I’ve ever played with in 10 years of ISS/PES.

Off the top of my head, that top 5 would look something like this:

1) Bergkamp (PES5)
2) Stoichkov (PES3)
3) Vieri (PES5)
4) Zaki (PES2010)
5) Giggs (PES2008(PS2/PSP))

I know I’m forgetting other strikers there. There have been so many. Owenn (sic) in one of the ISS Pro Evolution games was superb too, for just one example.

Zaki’s decline has brought him down to a rating of 72 OVR. That’s below mediocre. He’s refusing to sign a new contract. And he has the broken-hearted icon next to his name. We’re finished, me and Zaki.

It was tempting to release him mid-season, but I decided to keep him on in the hope of getting his Regen when the time comes. Unless that’s just one of the many old wives’ tales swirling around about the all-new Master League. We’ll see.

In the race for the league title, I’ve opened up a decisive lead at the top after 26 matches:

This lead—an unassailable 17 points with a third of the season remaining—is unprecedented in my career, and it’s a slight concern. Has PES2010 suddenly become easy for me, or is this season just an inevitable kind of one-off? I hope it’s the latter.

I’m through to the Quarter Final in the Champions League and the Semis in the D1 Cup. It’s been very easy—along the way I thumped Manchester United 5-0, away. If I don’t get this second successive Treble it’ll be because of carelessness.

Shock! Horror! My golden boy, Capuano, has started to decline… Well, he’s lost a point off his OVR rating. He was 98 OVR. He’s now 97 OVR. He’s obviously past it.

Castolo is still ticking over nicely—nothing spectacular to report. Palmieri is looking tired and probably needs putting out to pasture. I’ll take care of it at season’s end.

In the likely event that this is my last full season on PES2010 for a while, it’s certainly a memorable one. Against Manchester United in the league I was 0-1 down and equalised. Then I went 1-2 down, but equalised again. Then I scored three goals in the second half and won 5-2. Eh? That kind of thing just never happened before.

It was a similar story against Liverpool, one of the giants of the division. I thrashed them 3-0 without even having to try very hard.

It all adds up to something. I’ve already decided that after this season I will finally, in the scathing words of PES fandom, ’go play FIFA’, but I would like to return to PES2010 at some point. If I finish this season at a canter, as seems likely, would I be motivated to come back after a spell with FIFA10? Or would I come back only to play BaL? There’s no way of knowing until I get there. And there’s still a Treble to win in the meantime.

It’s much too early for me to be definite about any of this, but I feel as if I have passed a threshold in PES2010. The game certainly isn’t easy for me now. But it no longer feels as difficult as it used to.

I’ve opened up a five-point gap at the top of the table. By this stage, coming up on the mid-season transfer window, I’ve played most of the other top teams, and beaten them all. The game is still up to its old tricks, but having passed that threshold I feel that I’m a match for anything now.

I played Porto at their place and opened up a 0-2 lead inside 15 minutes, which is pretty good considering they’re a top 3 side this season. However, by half-time the score was 2-2, and they were two of the dodgiest goals I’ve ever conceded. The second one came about after a Porto attacker jinked and turned on the wing until he got his cross in. I’d been trying to ‘block-and-shepherd’ using secondary pressure and R2 shielding. The cross deflected off my blocking player’s shoulder, which flattened and slowed the path of the ball—and also triggered a bizarre glitch in the Matrix. I had three defenders in a line who failed to react to the ball rolling slowly by a few yards away. Meanwhile, I could see a lone Porto attacker sprinting like an Olympic champion from 30 yards away. And none of the defenders would respond to me…

I must have twatted every button on the controller, desperate to get control of a player. But the game wouldn’t move control from my cross-blocking midfielder. Obviously, some part of the game still thought I should have control of that player. The sprinting Porto striker dashed in between my static defence and smashed the ball past my keeper. 2-2...

I still can’t make up my mind. Was it a random glitch of the sort you’re bound to see if you play any computer game for nearly 300 hours? Or was it context-driven shenanigans, aka scripting, being unusually very blatant about it?

It didn’t matter. I scored a great winner partway through the second half with my created player, ‘not-Greg’. He’s nearing his mid-thirties now and currently having a Ryan Giggs-style Indian summer at the end of his career.

I’m through to the quarter finals of the D1 Cup after a tough two legs against Blackburn in the last 16. 0-0 at my place was a good result, I thought. But then it was 0-0 at theirs too. I faced extra time and possible penalties. This was a match where I had a strong suspicion the game wanted extra time. I had several clearcut chances that I know I didn’t do anything different from normal with, but they all went wide or high. One in particular was very dodgy: a free header from the six-yard line that somehow contrived to sail ten yards wide and nearly hit the corner flag. At that point I kind of knew I’d be playing extra time. I scored twice in extra time, though, to ease through eventually.

And in Europe I will qualify from the group with no difficulties. A second successive Treble, that would put the capstone on an unforgettable ML career, is within reach.

Here are some random goals from the season so far:

After finally clinching the elusive Treble at the end of season 17, I have immediately cracked on with season 18. Why am I going on with PES2010, and not jumping over to FIFA10—even if only for a short while—as I’ve often looked forward to doing (and still look forward to doing, eventually)? Briefly: I’m still enjoying Master League, I’ve still got stuff to do in it, and I don’t want to break the spell.

My Treble-winning season took a lot out of me, mentally and financially. After assembling a great squad over so many seasons, there was a cost—my combined wages bill for all players was £99,500,000. Ninety-nine million, five hundred thousand pounds. I first saw that demented figure at around the 30-game mark, near the end of the season. Expected Earnings predicted a £30,000,000 shortfall. I thought I’d have to sell a player or two to make the cut on Budget Day. I had Morientes earmarked for sale. Surely I’d get a good £20m for him at least?

But there was no need to sell anybody. I got a ridiculous amount of cash for winning the Treble. A load of sponsors paid out on bonus clauses. The fan club brought in a cool £20m on its own. No AI teams made bids for any of my players, which was unusual, but fortunately I didn’t need them to.

I brought in a few promising Youths, paid all the bills, and emerged £300,000 in credit on the other side of Budget Day. It was a lot closer than I’d like, and really I’m just deferring the tough choices until the end of the new season. The only way for me to sustain this squad on these wages would be to win a Treble every season.

Last season’s big star was arguably my loan signing, Gilardino. His mid-season arrival was very timely. His goals were a decisive factor in winning the Treble. I tried twice to sign him in the transfer window, and twice I was rejected. What more do I need? I’m the number 1 club, the domestic and European champions, the inter-continental champions, and he still won’t come. But perhaps there’s more to it than that. Maybe the game automatically rejects transfer bids when you manifestly cannot afford the transfer fee. And I definitely could never afford the likely transfer fee of £30m+. But I’ll get Gilardino eventually.

I’ve changed both my kits for the new season. When my 60GB PS3 died last week (I’m still hurting), the only data I lost was my Edit file that contained the new kits I’d created just before the end. This new new home kit looks a lot like that lost kit, but I’ve put aside superstition and just gone with it. My new away kit is a little bland, but I was hankering for an alternative to the Galatasaray-style away kits I’ve had for a few seasons now.

My main ambition for the new season is to win another Treble. My secondary aim is to continue to develop my young players, particularly Castolo and Capuano. I’m still mulling over whether to move my star left-back, Capuano, up to AMF for good. He can play at AMF—I spent the money on positional training a while ago now—but has a lower rating there at present. At left-back, he’s now an astonishing 97 OVR. Would it be a waste of that talent to make him play in a new position? I’m torn in both directions.

Early games have been very good. I have won 9 and drawn 1 in the league, scoring lots of goals in the process.

Zaki, despite being past it, is still in my team. And he’s scored a few goals as well, even netting a traditional PES cracker from 35 yards into the postage stamp corner of the net. I’ll save up all the special goals for a mini-compilation later in the season.

In the D1 Cup my 1st round opponents were Manchester United. I lost the first leg at my ground 0-1, but turned it around at Old Trafford, beating them 1-3 there. In Europe my opening group matches have yielded 4 points (a draw, a loss, a win) and I’m joint-top of the group table.

So far, this season is shaping up exactly like last season. If it ends the same way too, I’ll be happy.