Every Sunday on PES Chronicles is Other Football Game Sunday—a special day when I take time out from my hectic PES2008 schedule to report on my experiences with any other football games that I’ve played during the past week.

Today’s OFG news is… not much news, really. I’ve gone back to my usual behaviour of playing PES2008 pretty much 95% of the time.

I’m still plugging away with the PSP version of PES6 during bus journeys to work and lunchtimes etc.

The first goal in the clip is from my very occasional PSP Master League career with Barcelona. I just wanted to see what it was like to play with Barcelona. I’m anti-Barcelona. But 90% of PES players aren’t, and I wanted to see how the other half 90% live.

It’s okay really, but not very challenging. I seem to score a wonder goal with Ronaldinho in every other game.

The second goal is one that I found lurking on the memory stick. It’s been a very long time indeed since I played with International teams in PES6 on the PSP . So the goal must be from the first few days after I got the game—November 2006. It’s a long-range screamer from… Wayne Bridge.

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I did play a game-week in Football Manager 2008 as Coventry City (naturally).

I signed Malcolm Christie and David Thompson, both good additions to a mediocre squad. I played a pre-season friendly against Falkirk that I won 2-0, using a narrow 4-1-2-1-2 formation that has always worked excellently well for me in past versions.

During the 2D match highlights my PC started making the kind of asthmatic noises that signal an imminent shutdown. I got through the rest of the game, but I know my PC of old and I quit the game to avoid a reboot. It looks as if I won’t be playing FM2008 in full until I get a new PC sometime later this year when I can afford it. A few weeks ago I bought an Xbox360 and it more or less depleted my emergency fund (that’s the spare cash I keep lying around in case I have to go on the run from the authorities at a moment’s notice. Everybody has one of those funds. Right?).

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Speaking of the Xbox360… I haven’t had the chance to play Sensible Soccer at all this week. It’s a shame, as I was just getting into it—I was just starting to see what all the fuss was about—when I started playing Bioshock.

After that, well, the console might just as well be renamed the Bioshock360. All my Xbox time this week and most of last has been devoted to completing that sublime game. And having completed it, I’m itching to play it again on Hard, and in a different way (evilly), collecting all of the plasmids and seeing all the stuff I was too enraptured to see the first time around.

I will play Sensible Soccer for an extended period—for a couple of days, or a week—very soon. Before I start a league career I want to get good at the game, then play with the mid-1990s Coventry City squad. It should be interesting. Hopefully I’ll have something to report next Sunday.

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I only played a grand total of three matches on next-gen FIFA08 this week. This year’s FIFA on the PS3 and Xbox360 really is an oddity—a slow, almost stiff hyper-simulation of football. We have never seen its like on a games console before, to my knowledge.

One of the games was in my fledgling Manager Mode career with the lowly Dagenham & Redbridge in the Coca Cola League 2.

One of the major criticisms that PES players have of FIFA08 is that there is too little difference between all of the players. It’s a valid criticism. In PES2008, my dashing young AMF, Camacho, is a palpably different player at the age of 20 than he was at the age of 18. In FIFA08, all the players feel much the same, all the time. Of course, after a long time with the game, you start to notice that there are differences, but Michael Owen might just as well be Micah Richards, and vice versa, a lot of the time.

It’s only when you play with seriously inferior players in the lower leagues that you can feel a great difference. My Dagenham & Redbridge players are awful. They can’t run, they can’t pass, they can’t shoot. In the August transfer window I did get a few good players—Darren Huckerby, Bianchi, and a couple of midfield journeymen from the Free Agents list—but the bulk of my players are still FIFA08’s equivalents of the PES Default donkeys.

I played that one game and then scurried back to my ongoing Coventry City career, with my team of galacticos. For the first time in a few months FIFA08 annoyed me.

It seemed awkward and relatively dull compared to the fireworks and drama of my current PES2008 ML career. It’s only to be expected. You can’t swap between two radically different football games, as these two are, and expect to be able to translate your style of gameplay from one to the other—as a few too many PES players expect (or even demand) to do when they try out next-gen FIFA08.

Here’s a couple of goals from those three games on next-gen FIFA08 this week. The first is from the Dagenham & Redbridge game. The second goal is a super-duper-long-range strike from Van Persie (in my CCFC team):

I was going to say a few words today about the parlous state of FIFA’s online ‘community’ but I haven’t had time. Maybe that’ll be another one for next Sunday.

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.

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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.

“A man who is tired of PES is tired of life,” Samuel Johnson once nearly said.

I don’t think I’m tired of PES. I’m just confused and disappointed. I’m still more than a little angry.

For the first time in a decade PES was not playable out of the box. PS3 players (arguably the most disappointed of all of this year’s disappointed PES fans) had to endure a PC-style wait for a patch to make the game run properly in single player. Online multiplayer will probably never be fixed - that much is now clear. How Konami can just let this slide is beyond my comprehension.

I don’t think I’m the only one who’s determined not to buy MGS4 or PES2009, or any other Konami game, without first seeing what other gamers have to report about its technical quality and gameplay. I’ll never trust reviews again.

I could talk from now until October about how and why PES2008 just wasn’t and isn’t and never will be up to scratch. About how betrayed I feel. About how taken for granted I feel. About how Konami’s apparent unprofessionalism and arrogance leaves me literally open-mouthed in disbelief (January 7th and still no acceptable online multiplayer).

And then there’s the strange case of the magazine and online reviewers who lavished a broken game with praise (with a few honourable exceptions).

But I haven’t got the time or the inclination for that. To hell with them. A pox on all their houses.

I’m a gamer, not a pseudo-journalist. I’m a gamer who has got into the habit of playing a football game every day over the past decade. That’s all. I still need my football game for this year. It’s time for action.

Will it be PES5?

I’ve completed another tournament on PES5. I was eliminated from this one in the first match of the second round.

I have always found it peculiar that the PES franchise treats the group stage and the second knockout stage of International Tournaments (and European Cups in Master League) as if they’re separate competitions. Upon finishing the group and starting the knockout phase, you get a whole new introductory animation and announcement. They’re not separate tournaments in real life. You don’t see another opening ceremony before the second round of the World Cup.

Playing on 5* difficulty on PES5 is a very intense, mostly enjoyable experience. The pace of the game continues to trouble me. Not in the gameplay sense - I can cope with its flow. It just doesn’t look right. Maybe it’s the graphics, maybe it’s the resulting quality of gameplay. I’m not going to play PES5 for the rest of the year, no.

Next-gen FIFA08 and PES2008 (to a lesser extent) have shaped my expectations of what a football game should be like in 2008. More than anything, I now know that I want something different from the past. I want next-gen football. PES5 was the past. No, you can never go home again. It was of its time and there it should stay.

So the search goes on. I’m determined to get myself one football game and play it almost exclusively until September/October. The list of candidates is now made up of:

FIFA08 (next-gen - I really do have to keep stressing this; it’s a wholly different game from the old-style FIFA): A good game that suits my temperament and playing style, but it has several ‘issues’, possibly major ones. And it does have scripting, whatever anyone says.

PES6: A last-gen game, but it might have to do. It’s tried and tested, but could I hack the pace?

PES2008: Stringent House Rules would be required. Would I spend more time trying not to dribble and score ‘wonder goals’ than actually playing? Would disgust with the goalkeepers overwhelm me no matter what I did?

Tomorrow, I’ll be giving PES6 another shot. Wednesday, I’ll run the rule over FIFA08. Thursday, I’ll be giving PES2008 one more chance…