PES Chronicles

My final four games of the season (and possibly my final four games of next-gen PES2008, period):

Parma 1 – 3 Singers FC (Elcherino 3)
Sunderland 2 – 5 Singers FC (Elcherino 4)
AEK Athens 2 – 1 Singers FC (Caracciollo)
Newcastle 3 – 3 Singers FC (Espimas 2(!), Altintop 1)

(Can you spot the games where Elcherino didn’t play?)

Newcastle put in a suspiciously energetic performance in the last game. I was actually 3-0 down at one point. Then Espimas sprang into action with his underrated Middle Shooting ability. He banged in two long ‘uns for me and could have had a hat-trick by the end. Altintop had his first (and possibly last) immense game for me, dominating the forward line and netting a classic centre-forward’s header from a cross in the process.

Here’s the end-of-season promotion/relegation information from the two Superleague divisions. I was really looking forward to seeing who would go up and down:

(Apologies for the blurriness of these snapshots. The 20th-placed team in Division 1 was Villarreal; the 3rd-placed team in Division 2 was Sevilla.)

Elcherino finished as top scorer in Division 2 with a staggering 40 goals in 18 games. Even Schwarz in my old ML team of superstars only managed 29 goals in my last Treble-winning season.

Would Elcherino have scored 80 goals in a full season next time around?Or even 100? I think he would have.

I finished 6th in the table after being rock-bottom at the halfway stage. If the season was just a couple of games longer I’d have sneaked into a promotion spot. I don’t think I’m being too presumptuous when I say that promotion next season would be guaranteed. At least 100 league goals in a title-winning campaign would be easily achievable.

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However, there isn’t going to be a next season for Singers FC or for next-gen PES2008. Over the past few weeks I’ve spoken a lot about the many reasons for this decision. I won’t repeat myself here (much).

I’ll keep the saved game, of course. Some sunny day in April, or in June, or in September, I might well find myself slipping the PES2008 disc into the PS3 once again.

Because it’s not all bad. It’s easily the worst-ever PES (in my opinion), but it’s still a pretty fine game for a short time. My stats (above) show that I’ve played for more than 130 hours in total. I’ve had my forty quid’s-worth out of this game, oh yes.

If they ever manage to fix the online play I will definitely be back – sooner rather than later. What little I have seen of the online game suggests to me that perhaps PES2008 was designed with multiplayer in mind. Sadly, PES2008 online is an appalling example of the near-criminal shoddiness that seems to have gone into PES2008’s production. There is no resolution in sight. Technically, it has the worst online quality of any game I have ever come across, ever.

I’m very surprised that the PES community (if PESfan is anything to go by) seems to be letting Konami off the hook on this one. The citizens of the internet are not usually noted for their patience and forbearance. You would think that the PS3 Online section of the PESfan forum would be permanently full of threads along the lines of OMFG sort out the online already! But no, there’s almost nothing.

I think it means one of two things. Either the PES community is oddly passive in the face of an ongoing travesty; or too many dissatisfied customers have simply drifted away from PES2008 and moved onto other things (as I am doing) for anybody to put up much of a fight.

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And thus that really is the end of the road for me and PES2008 at the moment. We are finished. We are over. It’s a shame, and it’s worthy of much wailing and gnashing of teeth – at least on a personal level.

It’s a mark of how great PES has been that its fans almost seem to regard it as part of their personal identity. Hence the resistance felt by so many (including me) to the notion that next-gen FIFA08 – of all things! – might, just possibly, be the superior football sim this year (and it is).

I know there are people out there still playing and enjoying next-gen PES2008 offline. Good luck to them. Like some old-gen FIFA games of the past, next-gen PES2008 is a decent enough video game that happens to be based on the sport of football (talk about damning with faint praise…. )

It’s good for a week or two, or even for a month or two, but it lacks the year-round longevity of its predecessors. Sadly for me it’s just too much of a departure from the ultra-high standards I have come to expect.

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Next on peschronicles, we go back to the future. It’s PES5 all the way.

One agreeable side-effect of giving your ML team a stupid name: the opportunity for lots of cheesy puns. Expect that to be the first of many.

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When choosing a formation for Singers FC, have I learned the lessons of my previous Master League career?

All those weeks ago, I started with a 4-3-3 for the Default squad and got my arse royally kicked for a couple of seasons. Ziggy Bashmore’s ML guide recommends playing a 4-4-2 or even a 4-5-1 with the Defaults, as the players just can’t cope with anything more attacking that leaves them exposed in midfield.

Have I learned my lesson? Have I hell.

It’s a 4-3-3 all the way, and I’ll take the consequences. I cannot play with any other formation on PES. I am sticking with my strategy button alt formations, though, so I’ll always have the emergency 5-4-1 to fall back on. I think I’ll be falling back on it a lot.

Here’s the formation and First XI that I’m going with this time around - for what it’s worth…

I’m playing this ML on Very Hard difficulty. The players’ stamina is even worse from game to game than it was last time – and it was shockingly bad last time. Thus the team selection in this First XI is ridiculously provisional. Indeed, there’s little point in having a First XI when the team selection is not all about “who do I want to play?” but “who can I play?”

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Here’s how my first five games went:

Singers FC 0-0 Real Zaragoza

A game that I could and should have won. I created good chances and had 65% of possession. I found the Default players to be a lot better than the first time around. They’re still rubbish, but my added experience with PES2008 now enables me to make the most of what ability they do have.

Torino 1-0 Singers FC

Ouch. Another game where I dominated possession but conceded a soft goal and never got a look-in afterwards. Again, the Default players handled pretty well. I was worried that I’d try to play with them as if they were Schwarz et al, but for the moment I’m being very patient and disciplined.We’ll see how long that lasts.

Singers FC 3-1 Spartak Moscow

A great game, where I went 0-1 down but stormed back in the second half, scoring three without reply. Here’s my first two goals scored with Singers FC in this Master League:

Hardly classics. In fact, typical bread and butter goals – and typical PES2008 goals, also, with the Spartak keeper at glaring fault on both occasions. Hmmm. Where’s my copy of PES5 again? Oh, okay. There it is, safe and sound.

Singers FC 1-1 Espanyol

A hard game with an exhausted team against one of the league’s early pace-setters. I was happy with the draw.

Singers FC 0-2 Celtic

It had to happen. Celtic thrashed me at home. I say thrashed because a thrashing is what it was. It could have ended 0-5, easily. This was despite me again having the lion’s share of possession: 63%.

All of which leaves me in a respectable 15th position. I say respectable only because I was fully expecting to be rock bottom about now. If I can hold my discipline and grind out results, and if I’m in or around the mid-table area when mid-season negotiations arrive, and if I can pick up a couple of good players – then, who knows, a promotion challenge in my first season might be on the cards.

Plenty of other PES gamers have claimed they got promoted in their first ML seasons on Top Player with the Default squad, but I always assumed they were lying. We’ll see.

At last, it was time.

Time to start a new Master League career, with a new team, in a new league – and, eventually, with some strict House Rules.

Those House Rules will come in at the end of the first season. They’re needed to extend PES2008’s longevity. (Curse you Seabass!, etc.) I found that my first PES2008 Master League career was just so, so easy in the end. In my fifth and final season I was only seriously challenged on one or two occasions. I scored 136 goals in the League and won the Treble with ease. Usually I start a Master League career and just play that for the whole of the PES year. That is not an option this time around.

After spending most of the past week playing FIFA, I needed a warm-up match on PES2008. So I loaded up my first ML team, Coventry City, and had a few games.

After several days spent with the formidable simulation that is FIFA08 (nb: on the two next-gen consoles only), it was strange at first. PES2008 really deserves its faintly insulting description of arcadey.

I was soon back in the groove. After thumping Manchester United 5-0 with Schwarz and Shimizu et al, I decided that was enough warming up. On with the main event.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

I thought long and hard about playing another career with a team called Coventry City, using the same Sky Blue home kit and all-white away kit.

Those kits had a lot going for them. In five full seasons I never suffered a single instance of PES2008’s infamous kit-clashes.

I decided to go with a different team name and a different set of kits. Better to start completely afresh with another team and another set of kits.

When it came to the name, I decided to call my team after the original name of the real Coventry City Football Club. Thus my team is called – wait for it – SINGERS FC.

Yes, Singers FC.

The short version of the story is that Singers was the name of the football club that eventually became Coventry City. I kind of wish I’d gone with The Bantams now – that was CCFC’s nickname for three-quarters of a century until Jimmy Hill came along. But Singers FC it is and will remain. It still makes me wince slightly, but I am slowly getting used to it.

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After choosing my new team’s name, a new home and away kit was needed.

The home kit on the left was not intended to be a day-glo version of the Man Utd strip. I just sort of randomly played around with the buttons until I got a result that I liked (a bit like PES2008 itself, eh?)

The away kit on the right dazzled my mobile phone camera. It’s a kind of livid puke-green. It was intended to be as opposite from the home kit as possible.

I hate the kits. Both of them. I was too impatient to get started. I intend to change these kits at the first opportunity. I’ve already tried to change them in the top menu’s Edit mode, but the changes don’t appear in Master League. I’ll have to wait until after this first season is over. Feast your eyes on the abominations above, because they’re on show for one season only.

Let this be a lesson to all Master League aspirants: Set up in haste, repent at leisure.

THE SUPERLEAGUE

I did take a good deal of time and thought over the composition of the two Superleague divisions. Here they are:

Division 1 is self-explanatory: every top club in the game.

Choosing the teams for Division 2 was more problematic. I had to make it challenging, but not so tough that by the time I won promotion I would by default be good enough immediately to challenge for honours in Division 1. Have I got it right? With all of those ‘lesser’ Italian teams in there, I might have made it too demanding, and eventually I’ll go up to Division 1 more than ready for the big boys. Time will tell.

If nothing else it’ll be intriguing to see how the CPU teams fare against each other in these two divisions. Who will be promoted and relegated as the seasons start to pass?

I’ve already played the first 5 games of the season. I’ll post about them tomorrow.