PES Chronicles

In Monday’s post, I’d completed my first full season back on PES6(360) in creditable form, after one year away from the game. But then I messed up the old-school negotiations. Somehow I left myself 5000 points in debt, and saw my first GAME OVER screen in Master League since November 2002. Thankfully, at the start of the period I’d suspected my poor addled brain wouldn’t be able to give me the right information. So I took the precaution of making a separate backup save. So I just rolled back to that. Sorted.

What undid me in the first attempt at negotiations was the bringing in of Maldini, Shaw, Camacho, and Komol. In version 2 of the negotiations, I got them all again except for Shaw. I traded a few players as part of the deals. In this way I finished the period 2000 points in credit, and sailed through to season 2014. Whoo-hoo, etc.

I’ve got to win the Treble in this Master League, this time. Last year, FIFA10 was upon me before I’d mounted a serious challenge in PES6(360). This year, there’s bags of time. Even I, with my less-than-middling skills, should be able to manage it.

I’ve got off to a flyer in season 2014. Finishing 4th last season means I’ve got to qualify for the European Championships. (How long ago and far away it seems, when PES didn’t have the Champions League license.)

Fixture congestion. I’ve got it. I’m playing 2 matches every week for the foreseeable future. That takes it out of any squad, even a pretty talented one like mine is now. As can be seen, I’ve got ample cover in every position. And I need it.

Komol and Camacho have started well. They’re two old friends of mine from PES2008(PS2/PSP). Camacho in particular achieved legendary status for me in that campaign. Komol was not far behind. I still play occasional matches in that career on my PSP from time to time. But it’s been a while. Alas, I’ve become one of those people who claims not to know where his PSP is at the moment. Have you noticed that, on the internet? It’s approaching meme levels, that one. “I don’t know where my PSP is!” – delivered with a chortle. Everybody’s saying it. I’m saying it.

Regen Maldini is going to be more problematic. I plucked him straight from the pool of unattached players. Look at his current stats. They’re the stats of a 23-year-old player who hasn’t played. I’m playing him as much as possible. The problem is that he’ll only start to flower in two or three seasons. By that stage I fully expect to have moved on to FIFA11, and be drooling at the imminence of PES2011. I probably shouldn’t have picked up Maldini this time around. It was purely out of habit.

I won all four opening matches of the season. Two in the league and two in Europe. I beat Benfica 7-0 in one of those European ties. Then I drew in the league against, er, North West London or whoever. I’m up near the top of the table.

The heat is on. I’ve got a few weeks—maybe two more seasons in game time. I think I have to get this PES6(360) Treble now, or maybe never.

For today’s post I was planning an edition of Loss Time that I think would have been pretty good. Not-David Rutter would have turned up to go on about ‘the forgotten game’, FIFA11. Hilarious! But, in the end, time ran out. Maybe I’ll make it for Wednesday’s post. 500 words about my progress in PES6(360) will have to do for today.

I’ve been playing PES6(360) for a few weeks, after a year’s break. I’ve found myself drawn back to this pretty neglected version of PES for several interlocking reasons. My attempts to play FIFA10′s Manager Mode and/or PES2010′s Become A Legend mode both went belly-up in different ways.

It’s taught me a valuable lesson. I’m not really a football gamer. I’m a Master League football gamer. Next-gen FIFA, however good it may be (and I think its core game is very, very good), will always be at arm’s length as long as it has nothing to match Master League.

I came back to PES6(360) in the middle of an ML campaign. I’ve now played the whole of season 2013. After flailing around at the start of this new spel with an old gamel, I managed to steer my team—PES United—to a 4th-place finish. Which isn’t bad at all, considering.

I’ve yet to win anything of note in this career. The Treble still awaits.

I dove straight into pre-season negotiations. Into old-school negotiations, where you risked a Game Over if you miscalculated. I had a surplus of 18,000 points. I thought I’d be fine. But I took the precaution of making a separate save file before starting to place bids.

I bought an unattached 23-year-old regen Maldini for 11,000. Then I did some player trading, some wheeling and dealing, that brought in Komol, Shaw, and Camacho.

Disaster struck. I just don’t know how it happened. I cocked it all up big-time. Suddenly I was 5000 points in debt, which I was confused about. I’d checked Expected Earnings and not seen this coming.

I tried to rescue myself. I placed a load of players on the transfer market. But of course, this being old-style ML, nobody came in to buy them. One of the great features of PES2010′s new-style ML is that you could always sell a player if you really needed to. PES6(360) is an older, harsher world.

I’ve been in such scrapes before. And what I always did was to offload a few high-earners, as many as it takes to survive. But I cocked up that manoeuvre as well.

I thought I had one week left, but I didn’t. And I saw my first Game Over screen in Master League for nine years. My only previous one was on PES2, back in November 2002, in my first ever ML campaign, when I didn’t have a clue what was going on. It felt almost nostalgic.

I rolled back the save to the start of the negotiations period. How could I not? Yes, I’m against the old save-and-reload strategy in gaming, but under these circumstances I felt justified in reverting. I wasn’t reloading to get a different match result. I was resetting a silly mistake. It’ll do me no harm at all to pick my way back through negotiations with a little more care.

Season 17 brings new kits for home and away, and my latest attempt to secure a Treble—League, Cup, European Cup—in PES2010′s Master League. It’d be my first in this career. It’s never taken me this long before. I don’t think it’s taking 99% of other PES2010 players very long. The impression I get is that most manage it within 4-8 seasons, with a large number doing it in 3-5. Seventeen seasons (and counting)? Shocking.

Some peculiarity in me has collided with some peculiarity in PES2010, and this epic Master League career is the result. I’m pretty happy about it, actually. Whatever happens from this juncture, it seems PES2010—warts and all—will be getting a fine end-of-year review score from me in September. (It’s positively chilling to think that’s just 5 months away.)

Last season I had four loan signings, all strikers. They’ve now gone back to their clubs. Chevanton, Ronaldinho, Saviola, and Mantorras. All four were Youths and they arrived at various stages of their individual development arcs.

Ronaldinho, aged 20, was fairly weak and pointless nearly all the time. Saviola, aged 18, was very good. Mantorras, the senior member of the group at the grand old age of 21, was pretty much the finished article. I tried to sign him in this transfer window but he wasn’t having any of it. Or his club wasn’t. Either way, I failed to sign him with all my staff at level 5 and as the reigning European Champions.

Post-season (or pre-season, depending on your perspective) is a great time for pruning the squad. I decided to sell Mathieu. It wasn’t an easy decision for me. What Castolo still is to many Master League aficionados, Mathieu is to me. The Myth of Mathieu? I didn’t give it time to take root. He’s an average left-back and midfielder now. The explosive DMF who defined the phrase ‘Middle Shooting’, and who was arguably my player of PES5 (it’d be between him and Bergkamp), is a figure of the past. I got £2,000,000 for him—a good price.

I promoted a goalkeeper from my Youth team, a 16-year-old named Moya who is rated an incredible 86 OVR. I’ve heard about these young super-players popping up in other people’s Master Leagues. It’s the first time I’ve had it happen to me. And in my 17th season too. Clearly, there is no universal template for a Master League career.

With three GKs on the books, one has to go. I transfer-listed Zuberbuhler, a faithful servant whose time has come. He went straight into a mood, and nobody came in for him, so now I’m stuck with him at least until mid-season. Buffon takes over in the number 1 spot (about time too). Moya will deputise occasionally in selected games.

I have one other new signing, a name I’ve heard conjured many times in recent years. It’s KUKTAYAN, an AMF/WF/CF, currently aged 20. He’s 79 OVR and showing some impressive stats behind the scenes. He got a goal on his debut but has been quiet otherwise. As a youngster he still lacks real control and pace.

Zaki is fading. I’m officially worried. He feels very much like a spent force nowadays on the pitch. His touch and power and shooting ability are pale shadows of their former glory. The downturn started after he won the European Player of the Year last season. The same thing happened to my previous winner, Itzhaki. If Zaki doesn’t pick up by mid-season, I’ll have to move him on, and sentiment be damned.

And so to the football. I’ve had a decent opening few matches. STOKE CITY, of all teams, are in 1st. They’re newly-promoted this season, and I shouldn’t sneer—Liverpool came up last season and won the title at their first attempt. Speaking of Liverpool, they were my opening round opponents in the D1 Cup. I beat them comfortably in both legs. My Champions League group consists of Stade Rennais, Besiktas, and Porto. Bring on the Treble!

Finally a couple of amusing incidents from my first few matches of the season. In the first clip, my superbly talented left-back, Capuano, performs a wonderful double takedown tackle on two opposing players. As he gets up he’s already performing the universal finger-wag of appeal to the referee, but the red card was inevitable. In the second clip, it’s late in a 0-0 match where I really want the win. Out of desperation I’ve started pumping long balls up to the front, hoping for a lucky break. And I get one…

Link:

I have passed through the mid-season transfer window in season 16 of my Master League career. And I’ve come out the other side with two more new loan signings. Both are strikers, and both are better than my other two loanee frontmen, Ronaldinho and Chevanton. Both of these players are sound prospects for the future, but they’re lightweights at the moment and they don’t really help me. Ronaldinho currently is only a little better than a raw Youth.

Out of all my existing strikers, only Munitis and Zaki are first-rate. I’ve got a Treble to win. I had a look for other loan strikers and managed to sign up Saviola. He’s only 18 but he’s rated 78 OVR, and already handles like a seasoned pro. This is the genius of PES—or perhaps it’d be better to say it’s the genius of Master League. Ronaldinho is 20 but has yet to even begin to hit his stride. Saviola is only 18 but is already close to the finished article.

My other new loan striker is a player called Mantorras, aged 20, currently rated 81 OVR. He’s not a Konami player, as I thought at first. Currently in real life he’s a 28-year-old Angolan international playing for Sporting Lisbon.

My Mantorras is a Regen. This player feels VERY good indeed. I scored an important goal with him on his debut and he scored two in my second leg Champions League match against Lyon that made the tie safe. I also attempted, and scored, a once-in-a-blue-moon chip with him. PES2010′s gameplay is a little… what’s the word… ‘unpredictable’, sometimes. Strikers who generally handle well, and can turn quickly, and have that extra yard of pace and a bit of strength besides, are essential in this game. I’ve found them surprisingly hard to come by.

Going by the evidence of Mantorras’s first few matches for me, I will be making serious efforts to sign him at the end of the season. I’ve been looking for a striker to play on the right. Munitis owns the left. Zaki owns the middle. Mantorras is already first choice on the right, and I’d be interested to see what kind of fully developed player he’d become in my team.

I still have the young Regen Morientes. I’m waiting impatiently for him to shape up. He’s slipped a few points of OVR rating, and he’s unhappy at not playing regularly. I know that I do need to play him more, but he cannot dislodge the European Player of the Year, Zaki.

Speaking of Zaki. Ever since he got that award, he has been a different player. A slightly worse player. I recall the same thing happening with Itzhaki after he won the award, and I ended up releasing him. It’s too soon to anticipate the same fate befalling Zaki, but I’m worried.

I’m still second in the league table. I feel as if I’ve been in second all season, probably because I mostly have been. I can’t seem to overtake the current 1st-placed team, newly promoted Liverpool. I’ve got a 6-pointer coming up against them soon.

I played Liverpool in the quarter finals of the D1 Cup and beat them easily—which bodes well for that titanic league encounter. I brushed past Lyon in the first knockout stage of the Champions League, thanks mainly to Mantorras. My Quarter Final opponents there will be Sevilla. So far, so good.

This is the season for the Treble. I feel it.