PES Chronicles

I’ve now played until the mid-season transfer window in season 14. I’ve only just gone top of the table. It’s the first time I’ve been top all season. For a change I’ll post the full mid-season Division 1 table:

Burnley have faded after being a strong force last season. Chelsea have rallied well after being poor last season and at the start of this season. But look who’s in the bottom 3: Liverpool. It’s shocking to see them there, even if it’s only in the cartoony make-believe football world of ML.

In the Champions League things were not straightforward. I drew and lost my opening two matches of the qualifying group. Then I won three on the bounce to secure the second qualifying spot with a game to spare. I simmed the meaningless final fixture against Rosenborg, which the game determined was a 3-3 draw.

The draw for the next round has been made. For the 4th season in a row, my first opponents in the knockout stage are French. This time it’s Olympique Lyonnais. Over the past three seasons at this stage of the competition, I’ve faced FC Sochaux, RC Lens, and Stade Rennais. What are the odds of this kind of draw happening 4 seasons in a row?

I’m still in the Division 1 Cup. (I have a feeling about this season. I hope I’m not tempting fate—I probably am—but I can smell a Treble. It all feels right.)

My second round opponents in the D1 Cup were Spurs. They’re currently not the D1 superpower they were a few seasons ago, but they’re still tricky to play against. However I beat them very easily in both legs, 3-0 both times. I even failed to notice that the second leg was a Cup match until it was over.

Just before the mid-season transfer window, I suffered a terrible blow. Zaki, my main striker, picked up an injury that’ll effectively keep him out for the rest of the season. Zaki has been an integral part of my team over the past few seasons. He’s actually lost a point or two of OVR rating, and he’s 31 now, but he’s still a great striker. I came within a whisker of winning the Golden Boot with him last season.

So I mourned Zaki for a few minutes (he’s unlikely to be the same player after the injury, and will probably be sold). Then I went and slapped in panic transfer bids for five top young strikers (pictured left). I doubt I’ll be successful in getting any of them. I could be left to make do with what I’ve got – which would not be too bad actually. Bamen Roberk, your time may be at hand.

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I was looking through some old stuff the other day and came across my PES5 videos. Among the goals I recorded at the time (using MaxDrive to transfer from PS2 to PC!) was one in particular that I always think of first in the general category of ‘your most favourite-ever PES goal, ever’. It came in Master League (of course). The scorer was Bergkamp:

Link:

What makes a great goal? It’s at least partly subjective, perhaps mostly so. Some people salivate over the Argentina ‘team goal’ from Germany 2006. I failed to see, and still fail to see, why so much fuss was made about it. Tellingly, few people today would instantly think of it when asked to recall great World Cup goals. Oh, I know that it was a technical marvel, and I love to score goals like it in computer games myself. But Maxi Rodriguez’s showbiz volley later in the same tournament was a genuinely great goal, IMO.

I love my PES5 Bergkamp goal. I’ve scored plenty of memorable goals before and since, but none  have yet occupied the special place in my memory that this one does.

Over the years there’s a kind of goal I’ve valued more than any other. Volleys. I love me some sweet, sweet volleys. It’s a predilection that’s carried over from real-world football into the virtual football world. One of the reasons I still view PES5 as the best football game ever made is for the variety and richness of its volleys. My first PES5 movie showcases many.

PES is still the game to play for those exquisite first-time rockets. You know the feeling. The ball is falling through the air towards your player. You squeeze the shoot button just so… All being well, it’s almost a sensual pleasure to watch the subsequent volley fly into the back of the net.

Volleys aren’t something that FIFA09 does very well. Actually, that’s not accurate. What I should say is that volleys in FIFA09 aren’t something that I do very well. It has to be admitted that in many areas (too many areas) PES is still my paradigm, my yardstick, my instinctive measure of what’s right and normal and ‘proper’. This is wearing off as the years pass and the balance of power between the two games continues to shift. But at the moment, PES volleys are still the way I want to volley. And FIFA09 won’t let me.

I do get it right sometimes. Before we get into looking at the replays, I would like to reiterate that I’m still using almost all semi-assisted/manual controls in FIFA09. Through-balls are the only control still on the default fully assisted setting. Both of the volleys below were scored using semi-assisted shooting. And I’m playing on World Class difficulty.

First up was with Bojan against Manchester United:

Link: Okay, not exactly a show-stopper. Bojan was right on top of the goal. But it was a start. Consider it an aperitif for the next volley.

The player supplying the cross is my created player, who’s got alarmingly good very quickly. This goal kick-started what turned out to be probably my most satisfying single session on FIFA09 since October last year. Somehow, everything just worked. I didn’t win every match out of the 6-or-so that I played. I lost one, drew one, and won the others. But they were all enoyable matches. Especially some of the goals…

Here’s Pavlyuchenko doing the business against Newcastle. Again, ‘I’ am the player supplying the dainty aerial through-ball that sets up the showbiz volley (and no, this time I didn’t have the patience to upload to EA Sportsworld, hence the digital camera coming into play):

Link:

I can’t begin to say how happy I was with this goal. It was a morale-booster for me in the context of FIFA09. It’s rare enough for me to get a goal from outside the box. Getting a volley, and one that looked so good to boot… I was delighted.

Volleys in FIFA09 are all about timing. One of the most astonishing things that new-style FIFA has done is to show us retrospectively just how arcadey PES is and always has been. You can get away with murder in PES, particularly in the old-school ones, and particularly in my beloved PES5. In truth, you hardly had to bother timing volleys at all. The game would sort it all out for you. Animations could be interrupted in order to execute volleys at any time—resulting in those (in)famous PES ’shin volleys’.

In FIFA09, timing is absolutely critical. Shoot too early or too late, and you will not be forgiven. The game won’t help you.

The lesson I take from this session is that there is still much for me to discover and enjoy in FIFA09. As I type these words late on Sunday night I am itching to get back on FIFA09. It’s worth noting that this is the first time I have felt like this for many months. Will it last?

This is a special post for Christmas Day about my current (I have to stress CURRENT) opinions on the best Pro Evolution Soccer games since 2001. I’ve been posting about my Master League and my day-to-day experiences with PES for a long time now. A variation from my usual kinds of posts (“so yeah, I kicked it and it went in the net, and I was well happy, like”) is long overdue.

Below, in traditional ‘chart countdown’ reverse order, is my personal and idiosyncratic selection of the best PES games from the dawn of the PlayStation2 era until today:

8: PES1

This is my least-favourite PES for several reasons, but the main reason is that it’s my least-played. I didn’t get a PS2 until the year after it came out, by which time PES2 was on the shelves. That was the game I bought and played incessantly.

I only got a copy of PES1 much later in the year, out of curiosity, and I only played it for about 20 hours in total. I know that many PES purists really rate this game highly, but many also dislike it as crude and unrepresentative of the heights that the series would later get to. That was my opinion, overall: it was relatively stiff and uninvolving compared to the delights I was then experiencing in PES2.

Another big reason why I disliked PES1 was that it came on one of those dreaded blue discs! Those were the discs that made the PS2 sound like a vacuum cleaner… or an Xbox360. The noise always unnerved me and a play-session never lasted as long as it might otherwise have done.I remember the PS2 versions of Age of Empires II and Quake III also coming on blue discs, and they suffered a similar fate.

Most vivid memory: That damn blue disc! I used to grimace at the screen and lose all focus as I heard my PS2 doing a convincing impression of a lawnmower.

7: PES4

Okay, I have to say one thing immediately: PES4 was a great PES game and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

It’s only down here in 7th place because there are 6 other PES games that I think are even greater. Even the lowliest PES game is still pretty special. And PES4 is no different.

On the Wednesday of the week this came out (it was due to be released on the Friday), I remember reading rumours on PESfan that most stores had broken the release date. That was enough for me. I immediately went into town on the off-chance. I had no other reason for going into town. PES was the only reason.

And I found that everywhere had indeed started selling it early. A HMV staff member was writing the news on a whiteboard outside the store as I walked past. I have a clear visual memory of standing in a queue at GAME, holding the shiny PES4 box and hardly daring to believe it. There was incredible excitement among the community as word spread on the internet. Those were the days when PES’s lofty status was unquestionable. They were great times. Will we ever see their like again?

Most vivid memory: Heskey! Playing my traditional warm-up International Tournaments with England, I was astonished to find how good Heskey was in PEs4. Big and strong and skilful, with a powerful shot. I went on to purchase him for my ML team and he was just as immense.

6: PES2008 (PS2/PSP)

What a relief this game was for me back in February and March of 2008. PES was in the absolute doldrums. I had just given up on the long-awaited next-gen PES2008, which I think was so bad that I’m not even giving it the recognition of occupying  bottom place in this list.

The last-gen version arrived like a cool drink of water on a hot day. The perfect tonic. Playing this game restored and sustained my belief that PES could still count for something.

Most vivid memory: Komol, a journeyman striker, half-volleying a screamer over the keeper’s head from 30 yards early on in my ML career.

Hang on. Let’s see that again:

5: PES6

PES6 is still the #1 PES game for a lot of PES fans. I think the main reason PES6 still rides so high in the fans’ affections is down to the calamitous non-game that was next-gen PES2008 [*hawks and spits*]. When the fans turned their backs on the catastrophe that was Konami’s first next-gen game, what were they left with? PES6, of course.

PES6 was—and is—a great game. But it’s never been right up there among the great PES greats, for me. My criteria for a great PES almost solely revolve around Master League. I found PES6’s Master League to be relatively easy. I won the Treble after 5 seasons—my quickest-ever achievement of a Treble until next-gen PES2008 came along.

Most vivid memory: One of my earliest Master League purchases was a nippy right back called Zoro. Struggling with the Default players (had they just changed from Castello & co.?), I’d hardly scored any goals from within the penalty area, never mind from outside it. Then with Zoro I went on a forward run, cut inside the CPU defender, and unleashed a soaring, dipping, curving thunderbolt from a wide position, 35 yards out. It nestled beautifully in the far top corner.

4: PES2009 (PS3/360/PC)

Ah yes, the flavour of the month. I suppose this will end up being downgraded. At the time of writing, the first cracks may just be starting to appear (more on this in January), but for now I’m sticking by my controversial assessment of PES2009 as a perfectly decent, perfectly acceptable PES game.

No, it’s not quite enough in the post-FIFA08 era. No, we will never forget PES2008 and the betrayal of the finest gaming legacy in the history of gaming (IMO). But I like PES2009 and I like playing it. At the moment it ticks all the right PES boxes for me. Having said all that, I know why some fans dislike it, and I join them in resenting Konami and Seabass for all they (haven’t) done over the past two PES releases.

Most vivid memory: It’s too soon for there to be one, really. PES2009 is ‘live’. It’s now. The standout moment for me so far has to be a certain goal from Kim Cyun Hi. Even after 100 hours’ play I still haven’t come anywhere near scoring another one like this:

3: PES2

Having this one at #3 in my personal list is partly down to sentimental reasons. The game itself was pretty solid, as I recall, but it was also my first ever ‘proper’ PES. And you never forget your first.

PES2 was also my first-ever PlayStation2 game. I got it bundled with the console in November 2002. I remember getting home and unpacking everything in a frenzy. I set up my new PS2 and put in the PES2 disc… and entered a new gaming world.

I loved everything about PES2. I was amazed by the PS2-quality graphics, and blown away by the gameplay, which was a whole order of being greater than anything I’d come across even on the PS1’s late-era ISS games.

Most vivid memory: That first day. I took a taxi home from town with my new PS2 and PES2, I was so excited. It was a Sunday. I remember eating Sunday dinner in a complete daze, hardly tasting it. I played PES2 all day, and then had to go out that night on a prearranged drink with some friends. I was so reluctant to go out, but I had to. I couldn’t stop thinking about PES2. I’d brought the instruction manual out with me, and I kept taking it out to look at it. My friends were gamers, but not PES gamers, so they took the piss a little.

2: PES3

For many purists, PES3 is the best-ever PES. It’s my #2. After a year of playing PES2 into the ground, I really struggled to adapt to PES3, but I cracked it in the end. It was a great game with a fabulous shooting mechanic. You could really ping them in in PES3, I recall. PES2 had a floaty shooting mechanic by comparison.

Most vivid memory: Stoichkov. Still the best left-sided forward I have ever played with in PES. I had him as a Regen in my ML team and he was brilliant. For some reason, the only goal of his that stays with me after all these years is an ‘eyebrows’ header from a cross at the near post. Remember the way the real-life Stoichkov used to attack the near post as a cross came over? It was exactly like that. I remember going into work the next day and loudly telling everyone about it. There was a silence afterwards.

1: PES5

My #1 choice isn’t really controversial—it’s lots of other PES fans’ favourite version of the game too. It’s no accident that when the pre-publicity for PES2009 started to appear, it sought to position the imminent game as an updated version of PES5. Because PES5 is a genuine classic, the Konami marketing men knew they’d be on safe ground. Trusted ground.

Why was PES5 so great? Lots of reasons, really, but the shooting was a big reason for me. PES5 was noted for its spectacular long-range goals—something I later made two movies out of, thanks be to MaxDrive (remember that!).

PES5’s Master League was another delight. This was the first time in Master League where, even after I had a team of Galacticos, I was never sure that I would win anything. In 40+ seasons, I only won two or three Trebles. That career was the source of my most enduring Master League myth: the open-ended career that simply goes on and on and on… I have spent four years trying to recapture that magic.

There were minuses. There was a hugely irritating ‘auto-stepover’ that your players often did when receiving the ball near the touchline. The ball would run out of play, conceding a throw-in. Most annoying. And the stadia were all empty. And when making one or two substitutions, the game would take an age to load up a cutscene. You could be staring at a black screen for half a minute or more while your PS2 chugged away. After a while I twigged that there was no cutscene for three substitutions, and got into the habit of making all 3 subs at once—a habit that has persisted to this day.

But compared to the perfect balance of PES5’s gameplay and the immersiveness of its Master League, those are all nitpicks.

Most vivid memory: Dennis Bergkamp. The best striker I’ve ever played with in Master League. I don’t know what it was, whether it was just a quirk of my individual ML or what, but nearly everything he touched turned to gold. I got him twice, both times as a Regen (that was one long career). If he wasn’t scoring spectacular goals for fun, he was putting in sterling performances for the team. See both of my PES5 movies for examples in living motion.

Special Mention:

The PSP versions of PES5 and PES6 don’t appear on the list, not because I think they’re bad games but because they weren’t ‘proper’ PES games. PES5 had no Wide camera view, and no Master League at all. PES6 had the Wide view, and it had Master League—but there was no player development, which kind of missed the point of ML completely. They were both fairly decent games of football on a handheld device, but they don’t belong in the list above. It wasn’t until PES2008 that we finally got a worthy PES on PSP.

Bah Humbug

I’m having a mini-break for the festive period. I’m going to try to have a break from PES as well, although experience tells me that probably won’t happen. It’s far too much a part of my daily routine—especially when I’m into an ML career, as I am now—for me to abandon it for even one day.

Regardless, my next Master League post will appear on 2nd January 2009, and it’ll be business as usual with daily updates (except on Sundays) from then on.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

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.