PES Chronicles

I claimed my first win of season 2012 against a team called Heracles Almero. I’m playing in the PES2008 equivalent of La Liga, so I thought I’d have heard of most or all of the teams—but I’d never heard of Heracles Almero.

A quick Google of the name indicates that I’ve never heard of them because they’re really a quite obscure Dutch team. Their real name also seems to be Heracles Almelo. Hmmm all round, really.

The game looked like it was going to be yet another 0-0. After four of the blighters on the bounce I wasn’t too happy. When would I score another goal? When? There is something almost tragic about a 0-0 in football. Nil-nil just isn’t the point of what any game should be about, if that makes sense. I think the Americans had the right idea in the 1970s when they effectively banned 0-0 results from their ill-fated ’soccer’ league at the time.

Bradley was sitting out this game on the bench due to tiredness. I brought him on in the 79th minute. I had a throw-in deep in my own half, and worked the ball across the pitch to him. I ran him a little way forward, crossed the halfway line, shot speculatively… and the ball flew into the net through the CPU keeper.

Not literally through the keeper: on closer inspection the ball passed between his outstretched hands. He should have still saved it, but I was happy enough. Bradley’s sheer power had scored the winning goal. It was his first goal for my Coventry City with his first touch of the game. I’ve had plenty of players in PES with the Middle Shooting ability, but Bradley seems to have the most exquisite long-range power and placement of them all.

This boy is going to be something special. He already is something special. He’s only 21 years old. What will he be like in five seasons? The mind boggles. I might not even bother with Mathieu in this career—and that’s saying something for me. Bradley is Mathieu turned up to 11.

In the long-term, could Bradley become a ‘cheat player’ for me—almost an Elcherino?

I’ll have to watch this situation carefully, but it’s not an issue at the moment and I don’t think it will be. I have always been average at ‘proper’ PES, as this PSP/PS2 version is; I have always managed to play it for the whole PES year without boredom.

The story so far: after becoming extremely disenchanted with this year’s PES offering (on the PlayStation3, c’est naturellement), and trying and failing to rekindle the spark with PES5, I have spent the past several days searching for some way to play one or more other football games for the rest of the year.

Next-gen FIFA08 has been the leading candidate. I’ll be posting some time next week about the culmination of my FIFA08 Quadruple attempt with Coventry City in the English Premier League. There’s PES2008 business to deal with first. It’s very early days, but the signs are looking good for both games. At the moment it’s my plan to alternate between the two for the rest of the football game year. I’m looking at a two-state solution, people.

When I abandoned my second PES2008 Master League career and stormed off in a huff, I had just finished the first season with my team, Singers FC. The negotiation period was ahead of me.

I resumed that career today exactly where I had left off.

First on the list of priorities: get rid of Elcherino. He was sensational for me in the latter half of the first season. A bit too sensational. He scored at least a hat trick – at least a hat trick! – in almost every game he played. He represented everything that is wrong about the gameplay of next-gen PES2008 (an utterly different game from the PS2 version).

Most of Elcherino’s goals were akin to the sort you could score on previous PES games on the lowest difficulty level. It just wasn’t PES. I’m sure the kids love this aspect of PES2008. 7-2 scorelines are delightful if you just want to fill up some time between sessions of Halo3. Sorry, kids.

Elcherino is a classic player in PES2008. In years past I packed my ML teams with the likes of Michel Platini, George Best, Eric Cantona, Van Basten, Pele, Maradona, Zico, Gordon Banks… the list goes on. PES is its own world, and I’ve always been happy to use the old players alongside the current ones. It was never the case before (for me, an average player) that the Classics were absurdly overpowered, as they are in this year’s game.

Oh well. No more classic players in PES2008. I just have to get on with it. Curse you Seabass!

I’ll get rid of Elcherino as soon as I start negotiations proper – I should be able to trade him in for someone pretty good. An AMF with Middle Shooting is on the shopping list.

Before getting to negotiations, I have to finalise my House Rules. These are the special rules that I need to put in place to stop myself running away with the Master League after a certain tipping point is passed. In theory.

Here are the House Rules:

1. Squad size of no more than 25 players.

2. I’m not allowed to have any of the players I had in my last ML career. With just three exceptions: Maldini, Beerens, and Andy Cole. For various reasons I don’t think I saw the best of them. Maldini in particular was only with me for half a season as a Youth player. If any of the three become overpowered, my other House Rules would make me have to get rid of them.

3. At least 5 of the original Default squad must remain in the squad at all times.

4. When original Default squad members retire, they must be replaced from the pool of old-style Default players on the transfer market (Barota and Vornander et al) .

5. At least one original Default squad member must start every match and play at least a full half.

6. No Elcherino-style players are allowed in the squad. Primarily this means: no classic players. But it also means that I am not allowed to buy any players from the non-classic pool who already are, or might turn into, Elcherino-style wonder dribblers. Additionally, should any of my existing players show signs of developing into such a player, I am not allowed to play with that player, and I have to sell, trade, or release him at the first opportunity.

Only 6 House Rules for now – but in combination, they add up to something quite challenging, I think.

I considered including a ’skill cap’, i.e. preventing myself from using any player whose Overall rating was above 90, or even 85. But that may be premature.

It’s perfectly possible for a player to have high stats in many areas without being overpowered on the dribbling front.

A skill cap would also remove lots of the immersion of Master League for me: taking a young player from nothing and turning him into a legend. I’ll play this one by ear. If it becomes a problem, I’ll introduce a skill cap and have done with it.

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.

———————-

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.

——————-
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.

——————

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

My most recent four games have gone like this:

Marseille 2 – 5 Singers FC (Elcherino scored 4)
Singers FC 5 – 0 Feyenoord (Elcherino scored 3)
Atalanta 3 – 5 Singers FC (Elcherino scored 4)

and I was particularly unimpressed with this one:

Singers FC 7 – 1 Tottenham – (Elcherino scored 5)

Here’s a clip showing what happens almost every time it’s my turn to kick off, whether at the start of a game or after the CPU team has scored:

I’m up to 7th in the table with just four games to go. I won’t be able to haul myself into a promotion spot. The resurgence came just a bit too late. The third place is mathematically out of reach.

Elcherino is the top scorer in the Division by a long way. Despite only starting to play after the mid-season negotiations, he’s on something like 33 goals (<<< that’s one blurry picture). The next-highest scorer, Viduka, is on 14 goals.

I’ll at least finish this season, but then… I’ll see how I feel.

Knowing what I now know about PES2008, I cannot take it seriously as a PES game. Among the many reasons why PES came to be such a phenomenal force in the football gaming world was that it possessed an undoubted quality of realism. It was the discerning football fan’s football simulation. Until now.

In what kind of football is it possible for one player to score 16 goals in four games, with at least – at least - a hat-trick in each? It might be possible in Sunday morning football or in school football, but even then it’s still extremely unlikely. In professional football it simply doesn’t happen.

I know, I know. Yes, I did watch and enjoy the Spurs 6, Reading 4 game on Match of the Day on Saturday night. I know that Reading were also involved in a 7-4 result earlier this season. And that there was a 4-4 game at Stamford Bridge on Boxing Day.

But those are exceptional matches in real football. They account for considerably less than 1% of all games. Not more than 90%, as in PES2008

I suppose I could follow some sound advice and immediately place Elcherino on the bench, keep him there, sell or trade him at the end of the season, and limit myself to getting players of more modest ability thereafter.

I could do that. It might even be interesting, and fun, to try it out. But I don’t know if I really want to. I never had to resort to that kind of desperate measure before.

Severe disillusionment with PES2008 has set in. It has taken root in my soul and it won’t let go. FIFA08, for all its shortcomings, is a better football game than PES2008. I acknowledged this to myself a long time ago. Only now am I facing up to the fact. (Once again I have to stress that I am talking about the next-gen console versions of both games, which are utterly different from the last-gen versions.)

I no longer play PES2008 – I just sit there and work the controls. And I think of something else whilst doing so.

How did it ever come to this?

PES2008 is not a ‘proper’ PES game. That’s the awful truth. It’s not PES at all.

I’ve just about come to terms with it, but what terrifies me (frankly) is the possibility that PES2008 – with its arcade handling, its 100mph pace, its jet-heeled players, and of course its butter-fingered goalkeepers – is not an aberration due to the developer’s lack of time and playtesting (as most PES-followers assume), but instead represents a deliberately planned new direction for the entire PES franchise.

If that is the case, then we can probably forget about PES for the rest of this generation, in the same way that we used to automatically disregard FIFA. It’d actually be FIFA that would carry the football game torch forward. The torch that PES used to bear so proudly.

Don’t have nightmares.