Every Sunday on PES Chronicles is Other Football Game Sunday—a special day when I take time out from my hectic PES2008 schedule to report on my experiences with any other football games that I’ve played during the past week.

Today’s OFG news is… not much news, really. I’ve gone back to my usual behaviour of playing PES2008 pretty much 95% of the time.

I’m still plugging away with the PSP version of PES6 during bus journeys to work and lunchtimes etc.

The first goal in the clip is from my very occasional PSP Master League career with Barcelona. I just wanted to see what it was like to play with Barcelona. I’m anti-Barcelona. But 90% of PES players aren’t, and I wanted to see how the other half 90% live.

It’s okay really, but not very challenging. I seem to score a wonder goal with Ronaldinho in every other game.

The second goal is one that I found lurking on the memory stick. It’s been a very long time indeed since I played with International teams in PES6 on the PSP . So the goal must be from the first few days after I got the game—November 2006. It’s a long-range screamer from… Wayne Bridge.

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I did play a game-week in Football Manager 2008 as Coventry City (naturally).

I signed Malcolm Christie and David Thompson, both good additions to a mediocre squad. I played a pre-season friendly against Falkirk that I won 2-0, using a narrow 4-1-2-1-2 formation that has always worked excellently well for me in past versions.

During the 2D match highlights my PC started making the kind of asthmatic noises that signal an imminent shutdown. I got through the rest of the game, but I know my PC of old and I quit the game to avoid a reboot. It looks as if I won’t be playing FM2008 in full until I get a new PC sometime later this year when I can afford it. A few weeks ago I bought an Xbox360 and it more or less depleted my emergency fund (that’s the spare cash I keep lying around in case I have to go on the run from the authorities at a moment’s notice. Everybody has one of those funds. Right?).

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Speaking of the Xbox360… I haven’t had the chance to play Sensible Soccer at all this week. It’s a shame, as I was just getting into it—I was just starting to see what all the fuss was about—when I started playing Bioshock.

After that, well, the console might just as well be renamed the Bioshock360. All my Xbox time this week and most of last has been devoted to completing that sublime game. And having completed it, I’m itching to play it again on Hard, and in a different way (evilly), collecting all of the plasmids and seeing all the stuff I was too enraptured to see the first time around.

I will play Sensible Soccer for an extended period—for a couple of days, or a week—very soon. Before I start a league career I want to get good at the game, then play with the mid-1990s Coventry City squad. It should be interesting. Hopefully I’ll have something to report next Sunday.

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I only played a grand total of three matches on next-gen FIFA08 this week. This year’s FIFA on the PS3 and Xbox360 really is an oddity—a slow, almost stiff hyper-simulation of football. We have never seen its like on a games console before, to my knowledge.

One of the games was in my fledgling Manager Mode career with the lowly Dagenham & Redbridge in the Coca Cola League 2.

One of the major criticisms that PES players have of FIFA08 is that there is too little difference between all of the players. It’s a valid criticism. In PES2008, my dashing young AMF, Camacho, is a palpably different player at the age of 20 than he was at the age of 18. In FIFA08, all the players feel much the same, all the time. Of course, after a long time with the game, you start to notice that there are differences, but Michael Owen might just as well be Micah Richards, and vice versa, a lot of the time.

It’s only when you play with seriously inferior players in the lower leagues that you can feel a great difference. My Dagenham & Redbridge players are awful. They can’t run, they can’t pass, they can’t shoot. In the August transfer window I did get a few good players—Darren Huckerby, Bianchi, and a couple of midfield journeymen from the Free Agents list—but the bulk of my players are still FIFA08’s equivalents of the PES Default donkeys.

I played that one game and then scurried back to my ongoing Coventry City career, with my team of galacticos. For the first time in a few months FIFA08 annoyed me.

It seemed awkward and relatively dull compared to the fireworks and drama of my current PES2008 ML career. It’s only to be expected. You can’t swap between two radically different football games, as these two are, and expect to be able to translate your style of gameplay from one to the other—as a few too many PES players expect (or even demand) to do when they try out next-gen FIFA08.

Here’s a couple of goals from those three games on next-gen FIFA08 this week. The first is from the Dagenham & Redbridge game. The second goal is a super-duper-long-range strike from Van Persie (in my CCFC team):

I was going to say a few words today about the parlous state of FIFA’s online ‘community’ but I haven’t had time. Maybe that’ll be another one for next Sunday.

In this sickeningly disappointing year for PES gamers, I am flailing around in search of a football game to play for the rest of it. I’ve narrowed things down to three potential choices: PES6, PES2008, and FIFA08. Today it was the turn of PES6 to be given the once-over.

I have already flirted with going back to PES5 (my most-favourite PES). But after all this time, I found it wanting. The gameplay was too fast for me. FIFA08 can probably be blamed for that. And I found myself repelled by, of all things, the graphics.

What do graphics mean, really? When I say graphics I mean good graphics. Great graphics. The summit of what modern technology can achieve.

I never thought that graphics meant anything to me. But I’ve discovered over the past few weeks that they do mean something to me.

I don’t like to think of myself in that way. I don’t like to think of myself as the kind of gamer for whom graphics mean something. (Thus I will probably contrive to continue to believe that they don’t mean anything to me.)

But they do mean something.

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I enjoyed my session on PES6 this morning. It wasn’t as big a shock to the system as PES5 was. As I have mentioned previously, I am playing a sneaky Master League career on the PSP version of PES6. It’s just something I dabble with on bus jorneys and lunch breaks, occasionally.

The crucial thing here is that I didn’t need to relearn the game’s quirks during today’s several games on the PS3. I already knew them.The pace is almost as fast as PES5, but not quite as fast. And the graphics are better. You still know you’re playing a PS2 game, though, and that is a problem.

I never thought I was a graphics snob until I got a PS3. In five years’ time, when the next next generation of consoles comes along, I’ll probably still think that graphics don’t matter. But they do.

I loved Lords of Midnight on the ZX Spectrum back in the day - 1985 was it? So long ago. As a strategy game fan I would acknowledge it to be one of the genre’s greatest. But a few months ago I played an emulated PC version and… it is bad now. Lords of Midnight is bad now. After so many years - after all the Civilization games, the Total War games, the Command and Conquer games, and so, so many more - it looks and plays like a musueum piece. It is a museum piece.

Match Day 2 is another ZX Spectrum game from more than two decades ago. I don’t specifically remember much about this game, but I remember playing it to death. As with all football games of its era, there was a virtually guaranteed scoring method. The graphics were cutting edge for the time (honestly).

Graphics dictate much more than how aesthetically pleasing a game is. They dictate what games can do in terms of animations, and this in turn dictates the depth of the gameplay. Next-gen PES2008 would seem to be a case against the point I have just made (when playing with good players, it is as about as deep as a puddle). But the immersion factor should not be overlooked or downplayed.

On my HDTV, with my next-gen PS3 console, I’m used to playing games that look stupendously great. Games that shine out of my screen with a preternatural, shimmering grace unmatched by any kinds of graphics from the past. Call of Duty 4, anyone? Oblivion?

I played three games of PES6 on my PS3. I swear I wasn’t biased against it beforehand. If this game grabs me again, I thought, I really will toss PES2008 out of the window. I have no difficulty adapting my expectations to play it on my PSP. Why should things be any different here on my PS3?

But they are different. The gameplay seems shallow without the shining-bright next-gen graphics. I’ve behaviourally conditioned myself over the past few months to expect more when I have a joypad in hand whilst in front of a HDTV.

So my football game this year won’t be PES6. PES6 is another game that I have to consign to its place - the past. If there was nothing else available, I’d play PES6 and be happy to do so.

One thing that PES6 does have going in its favour is online play. The servers are still open and busy. Not surprising, that, with PES2008 continuing to be a disgrace online.

I’ve also been playing next-gen FIFA08 today. The Quadruple is still on. I’ve already won the League Cup. I’m in the semi-final of the European Cup. I scraped into the FA Cup Final on penalties. I’m top of the Premier League on goal difference with three games to go. If/when I win the Quadruple in FIFA08, will my interest in the game diminish?

Tomorrow sees the return of PES2008 on my PS3. I’m actually looking forward to it. For all of its impressive realism and formidably difficult shooting system, FIFA08 can be a bit tiresome some of the time.

It still angers me that none of this would be necessary if Seabass & co. hadn’t dropped the ball and pushed out a sub-standard arcade game ‘for the kids’ this year.

In my quest for a football game to play all year (it’s a bad year for PES) I was going to play PES6 today, FIFA08 tomorrow, and PES2008 on Thursday before making up my mind to play one, some, or none of them from now on. There’s been a slight change of plan.

I last played PES6 several months ago. My old Master League save is stuck on a PS2 memory card. I’m not going to pay £10 or £15 or whatever it is for a PS2 save converter that I’ll only use once. So there’s nothing going on for me in PES6 right now. I’d have to build it all again from scratch.

FIFA08 is a different matter. I wanted to play it this morning. I had to play it this morning. I’m in the midst of an ongoing narrative in FIFA08. I felt the urge to carry it on. I’m invested. I have a great manager mode career going with Coventry City that’s in its 6th season. Here’s my current First XI in FIFA08:

I’m playing on Professional difficulty - the middle of five difficulty levels. It’s hard enough for me at the moment. My record in the current season so far is won 15, drawn 6, and lost 6. I’m 4th in the Premier League with 11 games to go. I am also still in all the other competitions: European Cup, FA Cup, League Cup. The Quadruple is on.

Even with my team of quasi-galacticos I have to work hard for every result. Manchester City turned me over 1-3 in my last league game, denying me the chance to go top. I failed to take them seriously and tried to ‘PES2008′ my way to victory. It didn’t work because you just can’t play FIFA08 that way. Almost every goal has to be the result of thought and skill in some combination.

Take this goal for example. Van Persie applies what looks like a simple finish, but just watch the build-up:

I’ve just played and won the League Cup final. My opponents were Chelsea. It was a great game, one of the best I’ve played on FIFA08. It ended 3-2 to me - a rare kind of scoreline. I was 2-0 up but let things slip to 2-2. Then, in the first period of extra time, I scored another FIFA08 rarity. Goals like this do not come along very often in this game:

The shooting mechanic in next-gen FIFA08 is one of the reasons so many PES fans hate it. Everything has to be just so, otherwise the shot will balloon over or go straight to the keeper. In the above replay you can almost see me, the ghost behind the machine, waiting for the ball to bounce just right, and then guiding the shot toward the far corner.

No other FIFA game has affected the PES community like FIFA08 has. The forums over on PESfan show a lot of confusion and anger flying around in all directions. Some posters love next-gen FIFA08; others hate it; still others are somewhere in between, as I am.

People are very categorical when it comes to games. “FIFA08 is the most realistic football game ever, no question.” “FIFA08 is crap!” They interpret their own estimation of any game as an objective, infallible, universally-applicable measurement of the game’s worth. But it is not so. Check this interesting PESfan thread (membership required to view) for abundant examples of frayed tempers, partial judgements taken to be objective truths, and sheer aggro. I’ve stayed out of all the arguments, despite being tempted. My days of arguing on the internet are long gone.

I think I could play next-gen FIFA08 for the rest of the year. I don’t think I’d play it every day, as I have done with PES games in the past, but at the moment it’s the leading candidate. There are gameplay issues that rankle, but PES has issues too, and I never had any trouble loving PES (until this year).

But I can never quite shake the feeling that liking next-gen FIFA08 is shameful in some way.

I can feel my cheeks almost burning with shame and peculiar embarrassment to admit that I prefer next-gen FIFA08 to PES2008 (at the moment; PES will still get one more chance). Liking FIFA has for so long equated to being a frivolous and shallow football gamer that it really does almost stick in my throat, despite this year’s next-gen version being a wholly original and refreshing change of style.

Tomorrow I will be playing PES6. If I can drag myself away from my pursuit of that Quadruple…