So, I’ve been toiling along in PES2008 over the past few days. I switched from the PSP version to the PS2 version, and something hasn’t clicked back into place. I don’t know what it is. I’ve got my theories about screen sizes and controller button placements etc., but it’s more probable that I’m just suffering from PES fatigue and I need a short break to recharge my enthusiasm. A day or two on FIFA08 (I still instinctively shudder to say it) should sort me out. That’ll happen on Monday now.

Here in PES2008, I’ve lost key games in every competition. This was not good in a season where I’m going for another Treble. But every now and then when you’re toiling along in PES, a chink of sunshine breaks through. You get a good game—in this case, it was a very good game. It was the last game before the mid-season break.

Espanyol are not a bad team. They’re not up with the best teams either, but they’re by no means one of the Division’s basement clubs. as ever on PES, these are the kinds of teams that it’s often hardest to play against. I worry about playing teams like Espanyol, Villarreal, Osasuna et al far more than I worry about playing Barcelona, Real Madrid, Deportivo la Coruna et al (Valencia being the sole exception).

The game went my way on this occasion: 7-0. It’s a high-scoring PES year across all the consoles. Things are not so bad (or good, depending on your perspective) on the last-gen PES2008 as they are on the next-gen game, but even so, 4-1 and 3-2 and similar scorelines are sadly a bit more common in ‘classic’ PES than they were in the past (come on Seabass, sort it out for PES2009). But a 7-0 win is still rare enough for it to remain noteworthy.

I was only 2-0 up at half-time. Usually when I inflict a hammering on the CPU, I get most of my goals in the first half and then have to get through a much tighter second half as the CPU exerts itself to get goals back, as if it’s only 1-0 or 2-0 down. In this case, the CPU was only 2-0 down. There was no hint of the goals deluge to come as I defended desperately to avoid conceding. On a random kind of breakaway somewhere around the 60th minute mark, this happened:

Good old Giggs. In real life, for my money, Giggs is one of the very few players who realised most of their wunderkind potential. Who can forget that goal back in 1999? In PES2008 I think Giggs is the best he’s ever been in PES, full stop. I got him as a 17-year-old and he’s 22 now. This goal was an example of my favourite type of PES goal: taken on the half-volley at an angle from outside the box. It’s the kind of goal that a 4-3-3 formation like mine is particularly suited for, with its wide frontmen just waiting for those aerial through balls to come bouncing through.

Giggs went on to claim a hat trick. Kim Cyun Hi got two goals. Andy Cole got one, Bradley the other. A 7-0 win is special in any kind of football, real or virtual.

In all my years on PES I’ve only ever scored one full volley (not a half-volley) from an aerial through-ball. It came over two years ago in PES5, and it can be seen toward the end of my first PES5 compilation video. Maldini floats the cross-field aerial through-ball over to Bergkamp, who deliciously thumps the ball into the net without letting it bounce first. That PES5 incarnation of Bergkamp (he was a Regen) remains the single best striker I have ever played with in 10 years of ISS/PES. The rest of that video (and its follow-up) shows why.

It’s Valenciennes. My latest bogey team is Valenciennes.

I can’t beat them. Even if I’m 1-0 up and it looks as if I will beat them, they’ll score two or three goals with seeming effortlessness, and beat me. Being in a small league I seem to be playing them every few minutes.

They’re also my current Cup opponents. I’m pretty sore about the first leg. I was 1-0 up, at home, until almost the end of the game. Then somehow ended up losing it 1-2. How the—? I don’t know how I let that happen, but it’ll make the second leg—which I’ll play sometime later today—very interesting. I’ll need to score at least two goals, against my bogey team, in a game that I’m still learning.

Last-gen PES2008 plays a sublime game of football. I have to mention the speed of the game. When I tried to get back into PES5 a few months ago, one of the factors that ultimately turned me off it was what that it seemed just too fast for me. I’m happy to report that I don’t find this to be the case at all with the PSP/PS2 version of PES2008. I think a lot of this satisfaction has to do with me not playing the ultra-slow-paced FIFA08 so much nowadays. (It’s been two or three weeks since I last played FIFA08.)

Slowly I’m picking up what can and cannot be done in PES2008. (Pretty soon I’m going to drop the last-gen/next-gen thing and just call it PES2008.) At the moment, defending cannot be done. The CPU attacks me with pace and deadly passing and I’m all over the place at the back.

For me, this PES2008 is effectively an all-new PES game—and I’m delighted with it. It might be March, but in PES terms it feels like October. My PES year has been saved.

But I should have done with it what I usually do with a new PES game every October: just play Exhibitions and Tournaments for several days until I feel I’ve got the measure of things.

When the PSP version landed on my doormat a couple of weeks ago I skipped the preamble and jumped straight into a Master League. On Top Player. It was a mistake to do that, but having done it I don’t want to undo it. I’m having a great time in PES again.

In the league I’ve played a couple more games: won 1, lost 1. The one I lost? Yes, it was against Valenciennes…

At least that solitary victory—a 1-0 win with an explosive centre-forward’s header from Podolski from the edge of the box—has lifted me off the foot of Division 2.

In this sickeningly disappointing year for PES gamers, I am flailing around in search of a football game to play for the rest of it. I’ve narrowed things down to three potential choices: PES6, PES2008, and FIFA08. Today it was the turn of PES6 to be given the once-over.

I have already flirted with going back to PES5 (my most-favourite PES). But after all this time, I found it wanting. The gameplay was too fast for me. FIFA08 can probably be blamed for that. And I found myself repelled by, of all things, the graphics.

What do graphics mean, really? When I say graphics I mean good graphics. Great graphics. The summit of what modern technology can achieve.

I never thought that graphics meant anything to me. But I’ve discovered over the past few weeks that they do mean something to me.

I don’t like to think of myself in that way. I don’t like to think of myself as the kind of gamer for whom graphics mean something. (Thus I will probably contrive to continue to believe that they don’t mean anything to me.)

But they do mean something.

——————

I enjoyed my session on PES6 this morning. It wasn’t as big a shock to the system as PES5 was. As I have mentioned previously, I am playing a sneaky Master League career on the PSP version of PES6. It’s just something I dabble with on bus jorneys and lunch breaks, occasionally.

The crucial thing here is that I didn’t need to relearn the game’s quirks during today’s several games on the PS3. I already knew them.The pace is almost as fast as PES5, but not quite as fast. And the graphics are better. You still know you’re playing a PS2 game, though, and that is a problem.

I never thought I was a graphics snob until I got a PS3. In five years’ time, when the next next generation of consoles comes along, I’ll probably still think that graphics don’t matter. But they do.

I loved Lords of Midnight on the ZX Spectrum back in the day - 1985 was it? So long ago. As a strategy game fan I would acknowledge it to be one of the genre’s greatest. But a few months ago I played an emulated PC version and… it is bad now. Lords of Midnight is bad now. After so many years - after all the Civilization games, the Total War games, the Command and Conquer games, and so, so many more - it looks and plays like a musueum piece. It is a museum piece.

Match Day 2 is another ZX Spectrum game from more than two decades ago. I don’t specifically remember much about this game, but I remember playing it to death. As with all football games of its era, there was a virtually guaranteed scoring method. The graphics were cutting edge for the time (honestly).

Graphics dictate much more than how aesthetically pleasing a game is. They dictate what games can do in terms of animations, and this in turn dictates the depth of the gameplay. Next-gen PES2008 would seem to be a case against the point I have just made (when playing with good players, it is as about as deep as a puddle). But the immersion factor should not be overlooked or downplayed.

On my HDTV, with my next-gen PS3 console, I’m used to playing games that look stupendously great. Games that shine out of my screen with a preternatural, shimmering grace unmatched by any kinds of graphics from the past. Call of Duty 4, anyone? Oblivion?

I played three games of PES6 on my PS3. I swear I wasn’t biased against it beforehand. If this game grabs me again, I thought, I really will toss PES2008 out of the window. I have no difficulty adapting my expectations to play it on my PSP. Why should things be any different here on my PS3?

But they are different. The gameplay seems shallow without the shining-bright next-gen graphics. I’ve behaviourally conditioned myself over the past few months to expect more when I have a joypad in hand whilst in front of a HDTV.

So my football game this year won’t be PES6. PES6 is another game that I have to consign to its place - the past. If there was nothing else available, I’d play PES6 and be happy to do so.

One thing that PES6 does have going in its favour is online play. The servers are still open and busy. Not surprising, that, with PES2008 continuing to be a disgrace online.

I’ve also been playing next-gen FIFA08 today. The Quadruple is still on. I’ve already won the League Cup. I’m in the semi-final of the European Cup. I scraped into the FA Cup Final on penalties. I’m top of the Premier League on goal difference with three games to go. If/when I win the Quadruple in FIFA08, will my interest in the game diminish?

Tomorrow sees the return of PES2008 on my PS3. I’m actually looking forward to it. For all of its impressive realism and formidably difficult shooting system, FIFA08 can be a bit tiresome some of the time.

It still angers me that none of this would be necessary if Seabass & co. hadn’t dropped the ball and pushed out a sub-standard arcade game ‘for the kids’ this year.