It’s time now on this blog for me officially to say goodbye to a great game. Well, not so much ‘goodbye’ as ’see you later, probably’. I’m talking about the PS2/PSP version of PES2008, which I have been playing, more or less continuously, since March of this year. For the benefit of any new readers (randomly Googling ‘PES2009′ as the nights draw in), a few paragraphs of back-story are in order.

Gary Neville>Pele? What the - ?

It’s been almost a year since I started playing the much-anticipated ‘next-gen’ PES2008 on my then brand-new, sparkling PlayStation3. I think every PES fan knows how that one turned out. I have to admit that for a month or so I thought the game was absolutely fine. Really I did. Yes, it was lacking in so many areas but it’d do, I thought. Then I discovered the notorious ‘wonder dribble’, as I came to call it—the ability to dribble the full length of the pitch, with almost any player, on the hardest difficulty level, and score goals at will.

I had never played PES like that before. I had always been a pass-and-move player. It was a rare day that I dribbled for more than a few yards or went past more than one player. I wasn’t used to dribbling entire pitches and beating entire teams. I completely despised the PS3 version of PES2008 for letting me do that without even trying, and I still do.

There were lots of other reasons to despise it, of course. The slowdown for one. The lack of pre-game kit selection for two. The horrific nature of online multiplayer for three. (I wasn’t much of an online player. Thanks to PES2008, that’s how I’ve stayed.) The goalkeepers for four… The list is long and shameful.

What is to be done?

So, around the turn of the year, I abandoned the game. I’d tried playing with custom rules designed to limit the regular 6-3 scorelines, but my mounting disgust just got too much. Whatever else that game was, it wasn’t a PES game. It left me in a quandary: for the first time in a decade, I didn’t have an ISS/PES game to play all year. Oh, and I’d only gone and chosen this year, of all years, to start a blog about my daily PES-playing habit… Whoops.

It was nearly Subbuteo

I dallied with various other games. Football Manager. Sensible Soccer. FIFA08 looked as if it would become my main game, and that I would spend the remainder of the year on it. That would have been no bad thing. Ah, but then I decided I might as well try out the last-gen version of PES2008 before finally moving on.

And I was glad I did. My posts from that time record my delight with the game, my happiness with the classic gameplay, my relief at finding a PES to play for the rest of the 2008 season. Yes, granted, as time went on I experienced the usual frustrations with in-game scripting (it exists and no one and nothing will ever persuade me otherwise). But at its core it was the gameplay I had come to know and love and regard as being part of my daily life.

My first post about the PSP version of PES2008 was gushing, but cautious. I’d been burned so badly by the next-gen version that I was paranoid and suspicious. As if I expected the game to turn back into a pumpkin at midnight. I didn’t want to get hurt again.

Time passed, and I decided to pick up the PS2 version. I hated the idea of giving Konami and Seabass another penny after their uber-cynical, premature release of an unfinished, broken game, so I picked it up cheap from a bargain bucket. I loved having a ‘proper’ PES playing on my TV screen again.

I started a new Master League career and struggled for several seasons. I didn’t win a single game in my first season. I only won a handful of games in the seasons immediately after. Then the old routine kicked in. After acquiring a certain amount of decent and good players, I started winning. Promotion soon followed. Up in the big division, it took me a few seasons to find my form. Then league titles and cups rolled in. Then the Treble. Over time I had a squad of galacticos, one of the best squads I think I’ve ever had in any PES. The game was still diverting, but no longer really challenging. And so we come to today.

Footballers’ apostrophes

Right now in my Master League, it’s season 2022. I picked up a young Kaka’ in the pre-season negotiations, to add to my already staggering squad. I didn’t need him. I just wanted him, is all. It’s Kaka’! Incidentally, is the apostrophe in his name the most peculiar footballer’s apostrophe since that of Stephane Guivarc’h? I think that it is.

The End of Days

It’s the end of the 2008 season as far as football games go. In less than a week from today, next-gen gamers will have their hands on the demo version of FIFA09—and PES2009 (I heard this evening, after typing up most of this post. I love rewriting, me!). Thursday September 11th 2008 is one of the most keenly-awaited days of the gaming year so far—for football gamers, at least. And so I’ve decided that, as of now, it’s time to move on. At least as far as the blog is concerned I’ll be dealing exclusively with the next-gen 2009 set of games from now on.

As for the PS2/PSP version of PES2008… What’s my final verdict? Not that it really matters what I think of it. I’m under no illusions there. But I’ve played it as intensively as any other version of the game, albeit over a shorter timescale. After several months’ continuous play, where does it stand in my personal list of favourite PES instalments?

Psssst

(I should add here that although I’m treating them as the same game, there are enough differences between the PS2 and PSP versions for them possibly to warrant separate treatment. The PSP has major control issues—lacks the second shoulder buttons, and it has a cramped face buttons setup, etc. The PS2 version, played on a big screen with the full-sized controller, is a qualitatively different experience. But I talk too much as it is and don’t want to type the extra 500 words that treating them separately would require.)

The all-important, world-shattering final verdict

Here’s where PES2008, on the PlayStation2 and PSP, stands for me. I don’t like it as much as I remember liking PES5. So I have to be strict and leave PES5 where I have consistently claimed it is—at the top of my list of favourites.

After PES5 would come PES3. I always meant to get around to replaying PES3 this year, but never had time. (Maybe—no, definitely—next year. At some point.)

And after PES3 comes PES2008. Just ahead of PES6, which I know is many people’s pick for Best PES Game Ever.

After PES6 comes PES2, then PES4, then poor old PES1 trails in last. (I won’t offer next-gen PES2008 any kind of place on this personal ranking. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t even deserve to be considered a PES game.)

Now. Most reviews—and my blogging about the game constitutes a year-long review, of sorts—end with a score. A rating out of 10 or 100, or a percentage. That kind of thing.

I won’t beat around any more bushes. I’m giving the PS2 and PSP version of PES2008, jointly, a strong 9/10 score. For me, an 8/10 would be too low, and 10/10 ridiculously too high. The game just became too easy, in the long run, to warrant a fat 10. But in terms of its more-ish playability, it’s right up there with any of my other favourite versions.

I’ll be back, Osasuna…

None of this means that I am saying a final goodbye to PES2008. My bringing-down-the-curtain finality of tone is misleading. PES2008 will almost certainly remain my sole portable football game for the next year. I doubt very much that I will get the PSP version of PES2009. I will certainly return to my ML career and take my team on towards 2030 and beyond.

And I’ll mention it on the blog from time to time.

For the past week I’ve been playing my Master League career almost exclusively on the PSP. I hardly ever get much quality PlayStation3 time lately, what with work and various other things taking up so much time.

Since last week the Metal Gear Solid 4 disc has basically lived in my PS3. All of my sit-down, big console time has been spent sneaking around gorgeously-rendered locales, and being awestruck by the exquisite gameplay and immersive storyline of the PS3’s first real showstopper of a game. Konami, let’s have some more, please…

Playing PES2008 solely on the PSP is just fine by me. I love the PSP (am I the only one?), and I love PES2008 on the PSP. It’s a proper game of PES on a handheld console. I think it’s a great achievement that Konami and Team Seabass haven’t received the proper recognition for, for many reasons.

The main reason is that this viable, playable, fully-featured PES for the PSP came along shockingly LATE…. It was at least a year overdue—arguably two years. Also, the backlash against the next-gen consoles’ version of the game has shifted the focus away from the still-good ‘classic’ PES that’s available on PSP and PS2. I think it’ll take a pretty good PES2009 for Konami and Seabass to recover the ground they’ve lost with the fanbase.

————-

As I move into the last third of season 2018 it’s important to stay focused. I’m top of the league by nine points. My main league rivals, Valencia, are lurking in second place, waiting for a slip-up.

I played Sevilla and absolutely thrashed them. It’s quite rare for me to absolutely thrash any team. I was 5-0 up at half time, and wondered if I might be able to reach the fabled ten-goal margin of victory. (I never have on any PES—a 9-1 was my best, on the ghastly PS3 version of PES2008. *Shudder*)

The second half was slightly annoying because the AI turned to its old friend, God Mode, and I couldn’t keep hold of the ball for longer than a few seconds at a time. Yes, after a first half that I had completely dominated with excessive amounts of attacking and oodles of skilful play (if I may say so myself), suddenly those same players could neither pass nor kick nor head the ball a few yards to each other. Right. The AI naturally kept the funny business going until it got itself a goal, then relaxed long enough for me to grab another. The final score was 6-1 to me.

In the European Cup quarter final I met a stubborn old rival—Galatasaray. They held me 3-3 at home in the first leg, a torrid game in which I was 1-3 down by half time. I was just terrible. No excuses. Still, on the bright side it was only half time, and I had plenty of time to come back, and I did. I took the draw gratefully, worried about their three away goals but knowing that I could and should win the return leg easily. I’ve done it loads of time before. My game plan will be to score as early as possible and concede nothing at the back. We’ll see how that goes…

I played several more league games, winning some, drawing some. I’m still unbeaten all season—and I really want to hold onto that record until the end. I’m almost more motivated to accomplish an unbeaten season (it’d be my first since PES5) than I would have been about completing a Treble. Funny old game…

A noteworthy goal from these league games came from a cleared corner. I’ve done more than my fair share of moaning on this blog about PES2008’s many apparently scripted elements. One of those elements is the way that an AI clearance from your corner never seems to fall outside the box to one of your players (the kind of ball that always fall to the AI at the other end when you clear their corners).

Every rule has its exceptions, and here is one. This corner was knocked out to Bradley, who ran onto it and unleashed a cannonball of a shot that blasted through the penalty area and high into the net. I was proud of this one because instead of simply blasting in any old direction, I used the PSP’s little analogue nubbin to direct the ball high and to the left:

Until quite recently on this blog, I had a trainspotter-ish tradition of maintaining detailed records of the progress of my seasons. I stopped doing it because taking notes during and after every game session was interfering with my PES play, and I couldn’t have that.

As a season passed I used to post the amount of yellow and red cards I’d received. It was always noticeable that until I got some really good players, my disciplinary record was absolutely shocking. If a CPU team was beating me I often hacked them down just for the fun of it. With the result that I usually had two or three times as many yellow cards as games played, and almost as many reds.

Now that my Master League team is a mature one, packed with stars from back to front and side to side, there’s rarely any cause for me to get frustrated and foolhardy. I can more than handle myself, and if I can’t, there’s no point losing my discipline when I’m only a good passing move away from getting a goal back or snatching an equaliser, right?

Well. Yesterday I mentioned that I have returned to playing the PS2 version of PES2008 after several continuous days on the PSP. I had a strange first few games back on the bigger console—a string of 0-0 draws followed by a paltry 1-0 win in Europe. That happens in PES—and long may it continue to happen. Goal droughts are a feature of real football. Personally speaking, the more PES is like real football the better I like it.

Following those first strange games, I have continued with my season. Barely more than a third of the way through, I was fifth in the league table, just seven points behind the leaders. I was still in both Cups. My target for season 2017 is a Treble, so I was still on course.

But I have been on a shocking little run. I’ve been taking bad defeats,and have once again reverted to my old bad habit of scything down CPU players left, right, and centre. Some matches have seen me end with 7 men on the pitch.

PES2008 feels as if it has changed utterly since the last time I played it on the big console. Truth be told, the game has felt a little different all season. The CPU players seem a lot more aggressive, and they seem to stay that way for longer. It seems harder to score goals. I’m certain that these impressions are false. It’s always possible that there is a hidden extra difficulty level in Master League that you unlock by winning a Treble, as I did last season.

But it’s unlikely. They’d never include an extra difficulty level and not tell anybody about it. Would they? No, they wouldn’t. So it’s not the game that has been different over these past few days; I am the one who is different… Plainly I’m still suffering from PES fatigue. I’m obviously not giving the game the full concentration it needs. I think a break is in order—a FIFA08-shaped break, once I get to the mid-season. That’ll be in a day or two.

For now, I’d better re-focus my energies and start trying to turn around these terrible results. I lost a shocking game in my European group: Sochauz beat me 4-1. They were 4-0 up and cruising—for a change it was I, the human player, who bagged a cheeky late consolation. Hah. The result was bad, but I’ll still qualify from the group. More serious was the result in the first leg—at home—in the Division 1 Cup. My opponents, Real Madrid, beat me 0-2. Ouch. Two away goals to them means it’s going to be a challenging away leg at their place. The Treble could be gone before the mid-season.

I lost or drew my other league games. My indiscriminate, dirty fouling conceded free kicks and penalties, and got my players sent off. I was my own worst enemy. All the CPU teams had to do was turn up.

All of which leaves me in 3rd place in the table. I’m 10 points behind the leaders, Valencia. As I found last season, that doesn’t mean a thing. This is a computer game, not reality. If/when I start getting the results again I’ll soon be back up there, challenging for the title.