Tag Archives: goal replay

Look carefully at the picture above. See anything… unusual? Look again. It’s pretty obvious.

Yes—that’s a woman referee. I dropped my cigar and almost choked on my morning brandy when I saw that. I knew it was a mistake to let them have the vote. Just look what’s happening now…

This is, of course, a side-effect of the PESJP patch. At least, I assume it must be, having never seen a woman official of any kind in the vanilla versions.

Which means that the makers of a patch for a computer football game are demonstrating progressive, forward-thinking. Jenkey & co. make their stand for women’s equality! What a bizarre world we live in.

It’s not completely outlandish, of course. It’s only a matter of time before Coventry’s very own Sian Massey refs a top-flight game. (But is she as good at reffing as she is at running the line?)

PESJP2013—as it’ll be known on the blog from now on—is still going strong. There’s no telling what the future holds, but I’ve played quite a few games with a lot of enjoyment. Next week, I’m going to give Master League a good go.

Which displeases me, frankly. I’m not impressed with the ‘bittiness’ of this year on the blog so far. Very unlike me. Even back in the year of PES2008(PS3), things were more stable than this. FIFA08 rode to the rescue back then. And then PES2008(PS2).

PESJP is a special piece of work. I’ve never been down on vanilla PES2013 for its gameplay, as such—just for its hideously misconceived Master League. Easily the worst ML ever in the history of the game. It wasn’t even down to the boots and items and stuff. It was the core developmental model that was broken.

Anyway, anyway. Old wounds do not heal fast in the world of PES. It’s going to take a long time to forget the damage done there.

Luckily there exists something like Jenkey’s gameplay tool, which enables a raft of changes that should—should—make the core game interesting once more (not a great stretch—it already was decent), and hopefully the baseline developmental model of Master League tough to grapple with again.

I’m still playing my warm-up phase. This is where I just fool around trying out the mechanics of the game and getting used to things. Exhibitions and a couple of Tournaments.

I’m currently playing a great International Tournament with Ireland. Here are three goals from my opening matches, each of which showcases the heavier ball:

Sorry for the murky-jerky quality there—I reduced the original file sizes a bit too much.

The Damien Duff long-ranger is pretty special. In the next phase of play, I went sliding in with Duff, trying to stop the AI’s straight-from-kickoff comeback, and got him a red card. It wouldn’t even have been a yellow before. I have ref strictness turned up by 10%. This isn’t an extreme setting—this is the right setting.

I like the McGeady free kick as well, but I do worry that the heavier ball enables that kind of goal to be scored too easily. There’s a reason why Konami spend a long time (presumably) balancing the game to reflect their wishes.

Let’s say that the ball weight in the vanilla game would likely produce 1 goal per 15 free kicks for a player of mdoerate skill. What if my adjusted ball weight (missus) changes that figure to 1 goal every 5 free kicks? And what knock-on effect will that have on the game as a whole, moving forward?

These are the kinds of questions that worry a lot of people when it comes to modding anything, least of all a football game in which the balance of various forces is in a delicate, uh, balance.

But it’s better to modify than not, for so many reasons. The freshness of the game now easily trumps any lingering concerns about unbalancing the game. I will find my own balance. That, ultimately, is what modding is for.

Onward and upward. I have got to reinstall everything from scratch to sidestep a few permissions problems that I seem to have run into (ah, the joys of PC gaming).

After another day or two of testing, I plan to start a Master League. There’s ample time in what remains of the alleged ‘summer’ to get more than a few seasons under my belt.