Last night I had a few games on FIFA09. They were my first games on FIFA09 for about ten days. And I had a great time. It was on the Xbox360 (I’m still waiting for the PS3 patch). I only meant to have one quick game, just to see, but ended up playing two Exhibition games and two games in my Atletico Madrid MM career. I was amazed and enraptured all over again by just how good a football game FIFA09 is. But I was most surprised by being able to slip back into the FIFA09 style of gameplay so easily after all this time playing PES2009.

Several weeks ago when I first tried to switch from one game to the other, I was worried about ‘contamination’ in both directions. Trying to play PES2009 as if it’s FIFA09 and FIFA09 as if it’s PES2009 does both games a great disservice. But last night I barely tried to ‘PES it up’ at all. Later on I did, but that was when I was behind late on in a match, and getting frustrated. I think all of us who ‘grew up’ on ISS/PES will never be able to stop ‘PESing about’ to some degree for the rest of our natural lives, in any football game. (We’ll probably still try to play Space Soccer 2023, or whatever, with our fingers firmly gripping R1…)

FIFA09 is a sublime game. I’m really looking forward to playing it regularly again on my PS3 when the patch comes. And it looks now as if I will be able to play FIFA and PES, together, this year. That initial period of strangeness when it felt impossible for me to play both games might be over.

In a very peculiar and unexpected way, this year might be one of the best possible years to be a football gamer. How strange is that? The win-win thing, finally. It’s still early days yet (I’m thinking about January again) but how strange, and how great, would that be?

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Season 2010-2011 in my PES2009 Master League has come to an inglorious end. After picking up those few extra players in the mid-season negotations, I won a couple of games and things looked rosy. But I haven’t won a game since. The season dribbled to a close with a couple of feeble draws and a final shattering run of six consecutive defeats.

And so I’ll spend another season at least in Division 2. Maybe in the dim and distant ML past I’ve had worse starts to a career, but if I did I don’t remember them. I think this is the worst I’ve ever done. For that reason alone, PES2009 is already a remarkable game.

The one crumb of comfort I can take from this new failure of a season is that my youngsters are starting to blossom. Jackson is turning into a reliable player at CB. His current development isn’t that great, but it’s still coming along nicely. Another season or two and he’ll be a proper defensive giant.

And then there’s Dietrich. A young superstar-in-waiting DMF, he’s just about to start bossing midfields in the manner of great PES DMFs of the past (Mathieu & Bradley & Prieto & co.). I’m expecting great things from him in the future (a few goals would be particularly nice). Here’s a fairly gratuitous picture of Dietrich, appropriately bathed in a celestial glow:

And now here’s this season’s final league table. Yes, it was another bad season, but who’s that team in bottom place?

It’s not COVENTRY CITY in 12th place, that’s for sure. At least I’m off the bottom and things are moving in the right direction. The only way is up…

I’ve been on a strange journey with PES2009, and it’s not over yet by a long way. FIFA09 coloured my first impressions. In that first week, I thought PES2009 was hopelessly arcadey and primitive. It seemed ludicrous that PES had ever been regarded as ‘the football simulation’. The new generation of consoles—Xbox360 and PlayStation3 (they still feel new to me)—had apparently left PES behind. How could Konami do this to us…?

I think we were entitled to assume that next-gen PES would be an unimaginably great game. The leap from PS1 to PS2 set a precedent. It was reasonable to assume that PS2 to PS3 would bring a leap of equivalent proportions.

Next-gen PES2008 came along and, frankly, it would have been a better thing for PES if it had never come at all. The damage done by that game to the PES franchise already seems huge. It’s changed my perceptions of PES at a fundamental level, possibly forever. I think it did something similar to most other PES fans’ perceptions. The online PES communities aren’t what they used to be. The old confidence and certainty—the swagger we used to have—is gone. The full extent of the damage wrought by PES2008 probably won’t be fully appreciated for another few years. It really was our 9/11…

Technically and gameplay-wise, PES2009 is much better than last year’s effort. Not that that’s very hard. PES2009 appears in 2008’s shadow, and has suffered some of the backlash. But maybe it’s time to stop blaming a perfectly decent football game for the sins of its predecessor.

PES2009 is actually all right. I still can’t believe I’ve come round to this opinion (for now) after the way the past month has gone. I don’t play it online (which is probably for the best, really). I don’t play any game mode other than Master League.

I’m absolutely loving my Master League career at the moment, despite taking beatings from the CPU. I dropped the difficulty down for this second season from Top Player to Professional. The effect has been most peculiar. There’s a strain of opinion on the forums that Professional difficulty—and possibly Regular too—can be tougher that Top Player. The CPU sits deeper, is harder to break down, and consequently it enjoys more possession.

I’d go along with that view at the moment. Here’s the league table after 5 games of the new season:

I’ll admit to a feeling of relief (light relief) after the rigours of FIFA09. FIFA offers PS3/360 console gamers the football simulation, while PES offers a lighter, fluffier, more pick-up-and-play-oriented alternative. But there’s actually a bit more to it than that. I’ve seen some things in PES2009 that show a lot of depth and promise for the longevity of this game. Not least how difficult I’m finding it, as the screenshot indicates. 2 goals in five games? I’ve got some pretty good players by now and should be doing better than this, surely?!

There are still some strongholds on the internet where PES is seen as the better football simulation. I think this is a confusion of terminology. I think they find PES to be simply a better game than FIFA09. It’s become a bit of a cliche in many places (along with the whole ‘PES is fun‘ thing), and it’s still a widely-held view. After the past several days I can see why they think that. There can be no real argument, IMO, that FIFA09 is the better simulation, and brings its own special brand of fun to the table. But time will tell which game I play the most in the longer term.

I’ve been sacked. I’ve been sacked in FIFA09 for the very first time. I feel strangely euphoric about it, as if I’ve been secretly waiting for it to happen. Wanting it to happen. Now I’m in the club.

I knew it was going to happen and I knew there was nothing I could do to avoid it. If you have ever played Burnout, there are times when you know that in a few moments you’ll clip off the side of a truck and crash into a wall and there’s nothing you can do about it. This career has been a little like that.

Over the past week I’ve detailed my struggles with various aspects of the game. As mid-October in my first season came around, I was bottom of the table with a record that said: WON 0, DRAWN 4, LOST 8. I got a final warning (as it turned out) then I played a Cup game, lost it, and that was that. El Sacko. After 12 league games. I think I was lucky to make it as far as mid-October.

When the crucial game finished and I’d lost it, I still believed I might survive another week. This was ‘only’ a League Cup game, after all. Surely I was worth one last game in the league? But no. Even so, the game took its sweet time in letting me know.

The first indication that anything was amiss was when FIFA09 started to simulate the rest of the season. When I saw this, I knew something was up:

Only after the season had been well and truly simulated did I get the confirmation. It’s another sign of the slapdash approach to Manager Mode that you’re told about the sacking after the game has spent several seconds simulating the season while you watch. Really, EA. You must try harder with Manager Mode in FIFA2010. (The scary thing is that the final feature set for FIFA2010 has probably already been decided, if not actually programmed.)

And just in case there was any doubt (note the generic stripey-shirted footballer in the graphic: nothing at all to do with me or my team):

After this, I was taken straight back to the Arena. As others have discovered, Manager Mode doesn’t let you carry on your career with another club in the same game world. Which is very odd. I’m sure it’s not meant to be that way. Could this comprehensive Game Over be yet another bug?

I didn’t reload my old save. I never reload. Game Over means game over.

All of which leaves me rather high and dry. I’ll start again, in due course, with Coventry City—but on Professional difficulty next time. World Class is a step too far for me. I need to learn the game better at a lower level. But that’s for the future—probably next week now.

In the meantime, I’ll be playing my PES2009 Master League. Yes, this blog is going back to its roots for a long weekend. Will I find anything there to tempt me back?