PES Chronicles

After becoming disillusioned with PES2008 over recent weeks, I have returned to PES5.

In my opinion PES5 was and is the best-ever PES game. As with any game (or anything at all) it is not perfect. Other opinions are equally valid. This is a blog, after all – i.e., just a new-fangled version of a scribbled diary. These are not tablets engraved in stone.

The last time I played this game seriously was one night in October 2006. PES6 was released the next day (whenever that was). Naturally, despite still being perfectly satisfied with PES5, I bought PES6 like the obediently robotic consumer that I was, and played it for most of the next year. ‘Twas ever thus, eh?

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After starting up the game, first on the agenda was re-familiarising myself with pressing Triangle to cancel in the menus. Next-gen developers have universally ditched the previously familiar Triangle-to-cancel in favour of Circle-to-cancel. Now I’m used to pressing Circle, and keep forgetting that I’m playing a PS2 game.

First up: an Exhibition game, England vs. Scotland.

Why Scotland? Nostalgia, mainly. When I was growing up, the annual England-Scotland fixture was one of the biggest games – and occasions – of the season. For various reasons, we’re unlikely to see the fixture resurrected for anything more than a token showpiece friendly at some point. Thank God for computer games.

I chose to play on the game’s default three-star difficulty. That’s another thing that feels weird about PES5. Difficulty stars. Of course, when I accumulate enough PES points I can purchase the 6-star difficulty in the PES Shop. This is another reason why it makes sense to play a load of games in other modes before starting a new Master League. I also have to unlock the alternate balls. The default one is just too wishy-washy. I want to use the famous PES5 half-black/half-white ball – or its yellow counterpart. I used to like both of them equally.

I rearranged the default England formation into my beloved 4-3-3. I played Gerrard as the DMF and Joe Cole as a right-sided striker. Both players are generally superb in both positions, with Gerrard having lots of opportunities to use his viciously effective Middle Shooting, and Joe Cole is a speedy, skilful, dangerous presence out wide.

First impressions of PES5 this time around?

Wow, I really didn’t remember it as being so fast.

It’s faster than PES2008. If PES2008 is 100mph, PES5 is 150mph. The ball pings around between players racing at ludicrous speeds all over the pitch.

I’m genuinely taken aback by this. Was PES5 really this fast back in 2005? Or is the extra processing power of the PS3 somehow speeding up the gameplay? Or – and I think this is the answer – has next-gen FIFA08 and the (it turns out) slower-paced next-gen PES2008 affected my perceptions?

I was under the impression that PES5 was a stately-paced, ultra-simulation. It’s not. Dare I say it, but it feels… arcadey. There, I’ve said it.

The graphics don’t look too bad, upscaled of course on my PS3.

There is one thing that PES5 has got that none of the next-gen football games has got (and how we feel the lack of it). Camera panning – oh, how I have missed you. The next-gen games’ cameras slide up and down the sideline, making your view of the goalmouth unnaturally narrow. It just doesn’t feel right after so many years of playing and viewing from a point anchored up near the halfway line. FIFA09 and PES2009 had better have full camera panning. If not, I’ll be disgruntled.

Just for the sake of it, I played this game with the full pan – setting 9 in the Camera options menu. (Usually I’m a 6 or 7 man.)

Passing in PES5 is ultra-fast. Tap X and aim for a player who’s fifty or so ‘yards’ away, and the ball positively zooms over the virtual turf. It takes some getting used to. Dare I say it (again) but I prefer the passing in PES2008.

Dribbling: I tried to dribble automatically, effortlessly taking on and beating defenders for fun – just like I have been doing in PES2008. No. It doesn’t work. The ball is lost almost straightaway, even on the default difficulty. I said that I was never a dribbler before PES2008. I wasn’t lying.

Just after halftime, I got my first goal. Rooney broke from the left wing and blasted one in:

A typical PES5 goal. It felt very satisfying.

Scotland scored their goal late in the second half. Extra time passed without much happening. Before the match, I had chosen not to have a penalty shootout. I didn’t need to have one to see what they were like in PES5 (i.e. the same as they have always been in every PES).

1-1 the final score, then, and a fair result.

Frankly, I was shocked by just how fast and – yes, I have to say it again – arcadey PES5 now seems. This (rather negative) impression was enhanced by the way I kept stupidly losing the ball due to forgetting about PES5’s R1 knock-on effect. It’s going to take time to settle back into the ebb and flow of PES5’s unique gameplay.

I’ll be scrupulously honest here (as ever – honest!) and admit that there’s a small voice at the back of my mind whispering about giving up on PES2008 too soon.

You could have dumped Elcherino and played on with severe House Rules, the voice says. And there’s a slightly louder voice asking me why I’m not playing FIFA08. You seem to be one of those PES fans with the right genetic makeup to think next-gen FIFA08 is a pretty damn good game, it says. So why are you messing around here on an upscaled PS2 game that feels as if it’s running at ten times the speed?

I’m ignoring the voices for now. I’m determined to give PES5 a really good go.

I’m done with my International Cups for now. I got to the final of one last night and lost to a deflected goal in extra time. Perhaps 90% of gamers would just reload their last autosave and play the match again, and again, until they won it. My house rules don’t permit me to do that. I have to go all the way back to the start of a whole new tournament.

Below are the two random goals promised by the post title. I recorded them over the past few days, using my mobile phone. The poor video quality is regrettable but unavoidable. (And you have to take into account the really shockingly poor quality of the PS3 game’s replays to begin with.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kvkOqcp_Pg&rel=1]

Both goals were scored at various times during my ten-or-so stabs at the International Cup since Thursday 25th October.

I won’t be playing any more International Cups for a while. I’ve reached the point now where I think I’m familiar enough with PES2008 to get down to the real business. Master League. It’s finally time. At the time of writing I have already started. I am, of course, playing as Coventry City (i.e. an edited PES United). The real Greg Downs would be so proud.

From tomorrow I will post almost every day – circumstances permitting – about my ML team selections, matches, league positions, transfers, everything. The whole kit and caboodle. PES is deep, deeper than man can comprehend…

I usually play the same career for the entire PES year. For example, during the PES5 year I was unemployed in real life for 6 months, and I managed to get to the game-year 2048 in that time. After finding a job just in time for PES6, I ‘only’ got to 2026. What season will I get to this year? We shall see.

Occasionally I will also post assorted pictures, goals, and miscellaneous video clips from my Master League. Unfortunately I am stuck with a mobile phone camera at the moment. I recorded, converted, and uploaded the goals above as a test. Hopefully a straightforward method will become available to transfer replay save files from the PS3 to the PC, and then create high-quality movie files with them (without having to buy the PC version of the game – my PC simply wouldn’t be able to cope with it).

Let the year-long game begin.

The first group match of my next attempt saw me lose 0-1 to Switzerland. They got a breakaway goal in the middle of the second half. It was the only goal of the game. I had 65% of the possession. I had 15 shots on goal, 11 of them on target. Switzerland had 1 shot and 1 goal. That’s the way the PES cookie crumbles sometimes.

The second group game was against Wales. You can never underestimate any team on Top Player difficulty, but I was guilty of underestimating Wales. (I’m not the first Englishman, in a PES context or otherwise, to make that mistake.)

I believed a victory was a certainty, and so my concentration was nowhere to be seen. I was listening to the radio and planning a trip into town. Only my hands were playing the game – and my hands on their own are not good enough. I squandered chance after chance. I moved Gerrard to DMF and pushed his position up past the halfway line in the formation screen. It’s been a while since I scored a genuine long-range screamer of a goal. Sure enough, Gerrard had about half a dozen chances from knockdowns and clearances. One hit the bar. One was well-saved by the Welsh keeper. The others flew over. Wales scored from a cheap header at a corner, the kind I can usually defend against in my sleep. 0-1. Sloppy.

Not to worry. It was only half an hour in. Just as I thought that, Wales scored with another header from another corner. This is when I sat up and began to pay serious attention. 0-2 down on Top Player difficulty at halftime in a 10-minute game that you really need to win spells serious trouble, whoever the opposition is.

I came out after the break all guns blazing… But it was one of those games where the paranoid PES player thinks that he is simply not allowed to score. While I was peppering the Welsh goal with shot after shot and getting no reward, time was ebbing away. Then Wales went off on their one attack of the half and put the ball in the back of my net again. 0-3, and the final whistle went soon after. I examined the group table. Played 2, lost 2. Goals for: 0. Goals against: 4. Even if I won my final group game by a hatful of goals, progression was impossible.

I quit the tournament and, as ever, created a whole new one. My first opponent in this all-new International Cup? Germany…

I overcame Brazil quite comfortably in the end. 2-0 to me. It was the first knockout game of the International Cup.

The first half was a stalemate. I played my usual 4-3-3 formation seen in the diagram. Hargreaves is monstrously great as a DMF in PES6. Konami always take note of the year’s football events, and Hargreaves was one of the most notable performers at the World Cup in Germany last year. His value in PEs6 is a reflection of that. I anticipate him being just as good in PES2008, albeit perhaps with a reduction in fitness levels to reflect his recent injury layoffs.

After halftime I managed to work the ball out to Gerrard on the left in a bit of space. I took it on a bit until the Brazilian fullback was drawn in, then abruptly turned a 180, then cut in toward goal while the CPU was confused. As ever, the entire Brazilian team moved to block off the shot, so I had to unleash it before being strictly ready to do so. The ball flew in like a rocket, from 40 yards. 1-0

Brazil restarted, I immediately won the ball with Hargreaves, and chipped a through-ball over the defence for Rooney to run onto. Again I had to get a shot away early before those pesky PES super-defenders pinched the ball from me. Dida saved the shot – easily enough, as it was straight at him – but the ball rebounded to Joe Cole wide on the right… Hit it first-time from an acute angle. Back of the net. 2-0 to England…

The rest of the game saw me defending, and trying to score another on the breakaway – and failing. It really doesn’t seem fair just how penalised the human player is when leading against the CPU on high difficulty levels. I had a one-on-one with Owen – still one of the paciest players around – and he was at least 5 yards clear of the nearest defender. I thought I had plenty of time to go closer and place my shot into the net. But the defenders sprinted back to smother the ball away.

Eventually the whistle went and I was through to the quarter finals. I would face Argentina. It doesn’t get any easier…

I took an early lead. Joe Cole dribbled the ball down the wing to the corner flag, and I sent over a double-tap cross. The ball sort of scuffed off a defender’s head and fell to Owen, who was standing near the penalty spot. I jabbed the shoot button, wanting to get a first-time shot away, but there was no response. Somehow Owen still had the ball at his feet. I took him a step sideways, shot again – and he side-footed it over the keeper’s dive. 1-0.

I hung on under intense pressure for the remainder of the half. Whether its fans believe in the existence of scripting or not, it is undeniable that the CPU teams are programmed to exert tremendous pressure when behind. The answer seems to be nothing more than putting up with it, defending well, and keeping the ball as much as possible.

After half time it was the same pattern: Argentina streaming forward, intercepting all my passes, snuffing out my counterattacks. I seemed to be weathering the storm.

In the 75th minute I got through with Joe Cole on the right. Running in on goal from an angle – 45 degrees or so – with clear space in front of me and the goal at my mercy is one of my favourite scenarios in the game. Time after time I simply pound the ball high past the keeper into the top corner of the net. I ddn’t do so this time. The ball missed, wide, by several yards. I thought it shouldn’t have missed. PES fans can be a paranoid lot. The computer really is out to get us.

In the 79th minute Argentina won a throw-in in my half. Their winger received the ball and lofted in a cross to my far post. Crespo was there to head it in, sending it back across Robinson into the opposite side of the net. A good goal really. 1-1.

In the 84th minute Argentina played another cross in from the opposite wing. Crespo was there again, in almost the exact same spot on the other side of my goal. This time his header went through Robinson – through his hands, in fact – and into the net. 1-2. I’m behind, and it’s nearly all over.

I had one more attack. Wright-Phillips (on for Beckham) screwed a shot wide from outside the box. Argentina kept possession well, and then the final whistle blew.

My tournament is over. By my own house rules, I am not allowed to reload from the end of the group phase. I must now go back and play again from the start, as England, in a whole new International Tournament.