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 played all remaining games in my current Master League season on PES2009. There are no ’single-year’ seasons this year. In older PES games you started a Master League in season 2005, say, then the next season was season 2006, followed by season 2007, and so on. In PES2009, the first season is called 2008-2009. And I’ve now finished my second season, 2009-2010.

It’s been a pretty bad season, one of my worst-ever in Master League. First, the positive. Just before the end of the season I enjoyed my one and only victory, a hugely enjoyable 1-3 result at Gothenburg.

As much as I enjoyed the win (and after an otherwise winless season, believe me I enjoyed it), it gave me a certain sinking feeling for a brief moment or two. I’m very suspicious of PES2009 in the post-PES2008 world. I’m permanently on my guard. I’m forever watchful, waiting for the overhwelmingly positive experience that I’ve had over the past couple of weeks to change into a nightmare.

Any sign whatsoever of me playing well or scoring a few goals in PES2009 immediately makes me suspect that this could be the beginning of the end. That I’ll soon be literally running circles around entire CPU teams and scoring hat-tricks for fun, just as in PES2008. I’ve already seen enough of PES2009 to know that this probably won’t happen. But what if PES2009 has its own monsters lurking in the basement? Its own versions of the things that made PES2008 into A Game That Will Live In Infamy?

It does preoccupy me. I think I’ve mentioned the worry, in some form, every day on the blog since I started playing PES2009 again. I won’t be able to shake it off until I’ve grown very familiar with the ins and outs of PES2009. Which means winning Trebles in Master League, of course. How easy or hard that proves to be will ultimately determine how good or bad PES2009 is—for me, of course. This ‘Treble Test’ of a PES game’s worth is an entirely personal thing. Other evaluatory procedures are available…

Okay, enough hand-wringing and fretting about the future for PES2009. How did my current season end?

Badly, as I said. Here’s the final lower end of the table—who’s that at the bottom?

Ouch. Finishing bottom of the league with a W1-D9-L12 record is possibly my worst-ever finish in the second season in any Master League. I did fail to win a single game in my first season on last-gen PES2008. That was the worst worst-ever.

A win percentage of 4.55 is laughable. Even in my first season on Top Player I did better than that.

That final win didn’t do much to improve my transfer funds, really. I’m left with 6000 points in the bank and a 7500 salary bill. Negotiations are next. I’m thinking that pre-season friendlies might come to my rescue here.

Season 2009-2010 in my PES2009 Master League career has brought little else except defeat, defeat, defeat. The odd draw. Then defeat, defeat, defeat… Some of my ‘favourite’ old bugbears about PES are starting to show themselves again. Corners, for one thing. There are times in PES2009 when, if the CPU gets a corner, it’s as good as scored a goal already. I’d almost rather concede a penalty than a corner.

The CPU is making mincemeat out of me. I’m not conceding many goals but I’m not creating much myself. It’s grim out there and I’m struggling to understand why. I have got a pretty good team already. Granted, the players I’ve signed are only above-average at best, but I should still be picking up results and building some kind of momentum by now.

PES2009 seems a pretty hard game to me at the moment. That might make more seasoned players smile and shake their heads, but I’ve made no secret of my average abilities. I suppose that I’ve just got to wait slightly longer before I pick up this PES’s signature moves and little tricks. I’m sure I’ll get to the ‘tipping point’ soon enough. I just hope things don’t turn into another PES2008-style disaster when I do get there.

I’m firmly bottom of the table heading into the mid-season negotiations. I still haven’t won a single game. I was 1-0 up until the 88th minute of my last game. I was defending pretty well and thought I’d bagged a result a last. Then I conceded a corner… and 1-1 was the final score. I was genuinely upset about it.

General PES2009 gameplay is starting to open up to me. I’m still finding it very more-ish, but the negatives are more apparent now.

Passing is sometimes very poor, especially in comparison to FIFA09. There are frequent comedy moments when you point up-and-left with the analogue stick—and you know you’re pointing up-and-left, and there is no doubt whatsoever that you’re pointing up-and-left—but the pass goes up-and-right to a CPU player instead.

Shooting sometimes has a similar bizarre interventionist approach when one-on-one with the keepers. Clean through with just the keeper to beat, I’ll often aim to the left only for the game to execute a side-foot animation (it loves that side-foot animation) and slot the ball to the right. I hate it when it does that. Thankfully, I’ve only seen it about three or four times in what must be 50 matches now. But that’s three or four times too often.

In terms of translating what the human player wants to do into the action taking place on-screen, FIFA09 is so far ahead of PES2009 that it’s not even funny any more. Get your finger out, Seabass.

After a few weeks of playing FIFA09, I’d learned its special controls to the extent that I’m still trying to use them in PES2009. Occasionally I still try to use the right-stick to perform a first touch/knock-on in PES2009, for example—with amusing results. The right stick is a manual pass in PES2009, which turns out to have a surprising level of actual usefulness. I’ll get to that later in the week.

And I also keep tapping L1 while I have possession, farcically trying—and failing—to make my players go on runs. They don’t, of course, and I just feel idiotic. This is something I really, really miss from FIFA09. It could do with being borrowed/stolen. If PES is to have a meaningful future in this generation, it will surely need to blatantly steal the new FIFA’s best ideas. New FIFA has ‘borrowed’ enough of PES’s clothes. Time to return the compliment.