PES Chronicles

I had an excellent start to season 13, but then suffered a peculiar run of league matches. I kept losing 1-0, two in a row at one point. Then I drew 0-0, then lost 1-0 again. I didn’t score at all for about five matches. This was all in one particular session of play, I might add. PES has always had this session-to-session change in character. It’s nothing new. Talk of gameplay patches—lacking official confirmation of such—is and always has been misplaced, IMO. Speaking of myths…

I stormed to the top spot in my Champions League group, qualified easily, and I had the luxury of playing Castolo from the start in both of the last two matches. That’s invaluable experience for a youngster, but every time I play with Castolo I wonder why I’m bothering. Of course, I’m bothering because of the myth of Castolo.

How goes Project Castolo? Not too well. Nursing him through his brief appearances is a mini-game in its own right. It’s as if the burger van man has been given a kit and told to go out and play. He’s gained a few points of OVR rating. His turning speed and first touch and general movement are all terrible. He plays like a twat, really.

I was never under pressure in either of Castolo’s full matches and so I never needed him to be more than he was, which I suppose was adequate. He got an assist for a goal in the second match. I’ve also brought him on as sub a lot in the league. He actually appears on the pitch a lot more than some of my  mature squad members. As I’ve said before, I want to see some tangible results sooner rather than later. I won’t keep Castolo for longer than 5 seasons. One thing I might do after the end of this season is splurge some money on skill cards for him. That could help. But I’ll only do this if I’ve got money to burn after taking care of regular business, i.e., my staff and player salaries and any transfers I can pull off.

In the league, I went on the customary winning run. It was only punctuated by a frustrating Man Utd tie that I seemed fated to lose 0-1 (again), and did.

I’ve played several more matches than is shown here. I’m comfortably ahead in the table, 6 or 7 points clear. It’s my title to lose.

Here are a couple of goals from the current phase of league games. The first is a waspish finish from my created player, not-Greg, that clatters in off the post and bar—it was a late winner and it meant a lot. The second is a sweet volley from Nakamura that I tried to post on Twitter the other night, but somehow it vanished into the ether on the way:

Link:

The mid-season transfer window has been and gone. I picked up two players, first an experienced DMF called Clement (85OVR) who’s a bit like Mathieu, albeit without the shooting prowess. Second was a Youth teamster called Jaromton. He’s a CF, currently rated 64OVR, and he’s already everything that Castolo is not, i.e., good. He handles well and has already got a few goals in a couple of appearances, unlike Castolo, who struggles to stand upright a lot of the time.

In the Champions League, the draw for the Second Round has been made. That confused me for a start. I thought the Champions League goes from a group stage straight into the Quarter Finals? There’s no last 16 stage in reality, is there? Is this more Japanese eccentricity, or is it me failing to notice?

Anyway, the draw paired me with… Stade Rennais. I’m terrified. This is not a joke. Last season I was dumped out by RC Lens. The season before, by FC Sochaux. These minor French teams are my Champions League Kryptonite. Friday’s post will have the whole story.

Season 13 of my Master League career. And, hey, look at that: it’s March 1st, 2010. It’s nearly springtime. I’m playing a PES game with a fervour unmatched since the halcyon days of PES5. I still can’t believe it. I consider myself fortunate indeed.

It’s a great football game year, especially with FIFA10 waiting on the sidelines for if/when PES2010 fades. Even if PES2010 doesn’t fade, I might soon take a few days off to play the ‘other game’. This is something I’ve thought about doing a lot recently, as the ML seasons pass. FIFA10 is too good a game, IMO, to allow it to sit for long.

But I probably won’t play FIFA10, even for just a day. Not yet. The time’s not right. I’ve got too much to lose. I don’t want to break Master League’s magic spell. I’m loving PES2010 right now, but how would I feel after experiencing FIFA10’s smooth animations and passing once again?

I will see how I feel at the end of this Master League season. A Treble would provide the perfect opportunity for a natural break. Maybe this season 13 will be the season?

NO. It’s not the season. Once again, I am out of the Division 1 Cup at the first time of asking. I have been defeated in the first round for the second season in a  row. How can I have been so careless?

My opponents were Man Utd. In the first leg at my place I went 0-1 down early on, but fought my way back to a 2-1 win. I felt relieved to have the aggregate lead going into the second leg. I fancied my chances, to be honest. Complacent? Possibly.

That second leg (box score on the right) was an unbelievably tough game. It was also a very fishy game. What I feared more than anything was conceding an early goal, because I knew that was the AI’s perfect scenario: it’d be ahead on the away goal and I’d have to batter at their goal to get anything. They did score early on, and I did batter their goal. But I got nothing. 1-0 it ended, 2-2 on aggregate, and I was out. 62% possession. 18 shots on goal. Out.

Maybe next season, hey? Yes. Maybe next season I’ll win the Treble…

In general news: guess which Regen Default player turned up in my Youth team? None other than The Myth of Castolo. His first Regen appearance was just a few seasons ago. I ignored him back then (I really don’t like Castolo) and he vanished, and that, I understood, was that: goodbye to Castolo, forever. I even wrote at the time, a touch gleefully:

“I won’t see Castolo again until PES2011. That’s fine by me. In fact I almost wish he would reappear, so I could once again have the pleasure of ignoring him.”

Is the game jogging my elbow, saying, “Oh, go on. Please…”?

Okay. I’ll bite. This time, I feel I’ve got time and space for Castolo. I have signed him up and he is part of my squad and part of my plans. I would like to nurse him up to true greatness, or at the very least to being a decent player.

So let Project Castolo commence! He’s particularly rubbish at the moment. I’ll be bringing him on as a sub in safe games, and maybe playing him from the start in any meaningless games that happen along. If he’s not at least a 70 OVR by the time he’s 22, I’ll sell him, and then that really will be the final curtain for me and Castolo.

Here’s my new squad. As well as Castolo I’ve signed Jamie Carragher, aged 18. He cost me £2.5m from his current club. I forget who that was now. Valencia? Dortmund? Isn’t Master League wonderful?

I didn’t buy anyone else. I tried my best for about 5 or 6 players rated above 90. Regen Scholes again—I’m a big Paul Scholes fan in PES as well as the real world. In my ML he’s now 22 and if he doesn’t come to me soon, I’ll stop trying.

I also tried for Pirlo, currently a talented 19-year-old at Inter, and also for Forlan, currently a similarly talented youngster elsewhere. No luck. What will it take to bring truly great players to my team? I really, really need to start winning some cups to go with my leagues…

New home and away kits. Away (right), it’s my first flirtation with a green kit in PES2010, after bad experiences in past PESes where I’ve been unable to see my players properly.

For the home kit (left) I altered the stripes’ colouring to a traditional sky blue and white, and went for white shorts instead of black. I love playing Barbie at the start of every season. Love it. Next season, I fancy going for something a bit different for both kits.

I’m doing well in the league. There’s been a traditional unexpected defeat that I felt helpless to prevent (but probably just defended badly and failed to concentrate properly, in truth). There’s also been a few puzzling, frustrating, 0-0 draws. All intermingled with satisfying, fully rounded matches. This game still does not feel easy to me.

There’s a familiar look to my qualifying group in the Champions League: Juventus, Aberdeen, and Rosenborg. I’ve played Juve and Rosenborg so far and beaten them both 1-0. I’m not going to have any trouble qualifying. But then it’s never the group stages that trouble me in this competition…

A special short post just to announce that PES Chronicles is now on Twitter. The widget is currently in 3rd place on the sidebar over there>>>>

(I’ll move it to a more prominent place in due course.)

(NB: some browsers might have ‘lost’ the sidebar with the Twitter widget on. IE6 seems to be the main culprit. I’ll look for a fix later.)

You can view all Tweets directly, and/or become a ‘follower’ of the Tweets, here: http://twitter.com/PESChronicles

What’s thebig idea? The truth is, I don’t quite know. I have a notion that Tweeting about my daily PES sessions may form a parallel micro-blog to the main one. Hopefully it’ll complement the regular thrice-weekly posts. As many regular readers will be aware, I operate a ‘lead time’ on the blog of a few days at a time. What you’re reading about on Monday, for example, often took place on Friday or Saturday, sometimes even earlier. That’s the way it has to be.

I definitely don’t want to get into a situation where I’m tweeting big story elements that should emerge in a proper blog posting a day or two later. I do not want to start spoiling the main blog in any sense. I’ll be keeping a close eye on that.

But I think I can use Twitter to address certain PES-related things I never seem to get the time or space to do in the posts. Things like player stats, random replays,curious screenshots, and just the whole lore of PES. For example: in the final third I often deliberately slide-tackle the air when near a CPU player in order to induce  a panicked clearance and win a throw. That’s been coded into PES for years, and I’ve been taking advantage of it for years! But I’ve not referenced it even once on the blog, in 2 and a half years. Twitter will enable me to talk about things like that as they occur to me, albeit 140 characters at a a time.

Anyway, I’m going to try it out. Please feel free to ‘follow me’ on Twitter. I’ll be Tweeting about all PES and other game-related stuff, but not incessantly. And unless there’s a specific PES-related relevance, I will never Tweet about what I’m having for breakfast. That is a promise.

Whew. First of all: the AI has scored yet another amazing flicked goal against me (see the end of this post). Second of all: I have won the Division 1 title again.

That’s now three Division 1 titles in succession. Does this have any implications for the future of PES2010 and me? Is the notorious difficulty curve starting to flatten out? It’s too early to tell. For me, the main criterion that makes a PES too easy is how quickly I can win a Treble, and then whether I can win the Treble every season without much effort. That stage hasn’t materialised in PES2010—not yet anyway—and I hope it never will. In theory, I could win the title every season from now until the end of time and I still wouldn’t necessarily think things were getting a bit easy. The Treble is still a long way out of sight.

PES2010 made it tight until the end of the season. This is a venerable Master League tradition. A ‘rubberband AI’ setup in the league table will ensure that things remain close until the end. If you’re trailing behind, the teams above you will lose and draw just enough times to keep you interested; if you’re the one who’s up on top of the league, you’ll lose and draw just enough to keep the AI teams in the hunt. This effect varies with your own native ability, of course, but it’s been a definite part of Master League since it came into being. I don’t really like it, but anyway. Whatever. I could always ‘go play FIFA’ (which has much the same ‘feature’ in its career mode’s leagues)…

Here’s the final table:

The shenanigans all started with a fixture against the second-placed team, Manchester United. They’d been my closest challengers for the top spot. I was 5 points ahead with about 6 matches to go. As an ML veteran, I knew that I was foredoomed to lose this game. Yes, it could be argued that this perception—this fixed belief—contributed more than anything else to me losing the match—and I did lose it.

I lost it 1-4, at home, an unheard-of result for me this season. I was fortunate to get a goal back when Man Utd were only 0-1 up. The remainder of the game was a catalogue of stumbles, misplaced passes, and shots that skewed crazily wide. I hit the post and crossbar three times. Meanwhile Man Utd were making hay up front, and had streaked into a three-goal lead by the time the final whistle blew.

That left me 2 points ahead with 5 matches remaining, and from that point it was nip and tuck all the way to the finishing line. I had to stay ahead on points. My goal difference was good—I’ve had my best-ever goalscoring season—but Man Utd’s was better.

I lost and drew just enough of the remaining matches to ensure that the final match would be appropriately tension-filled. I won the final match, and as it happened Man Utd lost theirs.

All in all season 12 has been a bumpy ride on the League front, but I still got there and took the crown. Three in a row now. What a shame I can’t seem to get myself together yet in either of the Cup compeititons. There is a hidden higher difficulty level once you hit the Champions League knockout stages! I’m sure of it. Incidentally, the Best XI for the Champions League this season year shows how time is really starting to pass in my ML world. Regen Giggs and one or two others are familiar names, but the rest are alien to me.

I was disappointed not to take the top scorer title with Munitis. Here’s how the race for the Golden Boot turned out:

After a promising start, Munitis faded slightly from mid-season on. It was a definite slump that suspiciously coincided with me purchasing two skill cards for him. I don’t like ‘em, you know, these skill cards… But the jury is still out.

I am insanely wealthy in the game now. The screenshot on the left was taken immediately after I was awarded £15m for winning the title. With sponsorship money I’ve actually got over £82,000,000 now.

I could buy so many great players, but none of them will come to me. I will keep trying, but I suspect I’ll need to win a Cup or two before the biggest big names will sign up.

Season 13 is next, and I’m not even slightly jaded with PES2010 yet. I still want to go on and play more.

Finally today, another stylish flicked goal from the AI. The first one I posted was something special—this one is incredible:

Link: