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.

PES2008 arrived at 11.00 this morning (Wednesday 24th October). I managed to spend three hours on it before I had to leave - reluctantly, of course - for work. I was very happy to get it two days before the official release date. I’ve got it early in years gone by, but that was in years when the High Street retailers broke the release date, which they haven’t this year so far, so I do feel very fortunate to be one of the lucky ones who got their mail preorders today.

As the game loaded up I also felt happy that I no longer have to sit on the internet for hours, reading and re-reading those reviews and previews that all seem to start the same way: And so we come again to the time of year when the two big guns of the football game world, PES and FIFA, line up facing each other, and blah blah blah... *Shudders*

The loading screen cleared and I sat through the introductory video. It’s my annual custom to watch the entire thing on first load, but then I never watch them again. PES2’s unforgettable, spine-tingling We Will Rock You intro was the sole exception. I watched that one all the way through almost every single time I started up the game. It was one of the greatest-ever videogame intros, in my opinion.

The PES2008 intro video finished (and already forgotten), I found myself in an all-new Menu screen. It was already familiar to me from the 360 demo. I like the new Menu setup in PES2008. I even - get this - quite like the music. Actually, let me qualify that: I don’t dislike it as much as I think I’m supposed to dislike it - you know, if I want to be cool and stuff.

Straight into an Exhibition game, England vs Scotland, as is my tradition. Why England vs. Scotland? Not because I feel any great sense of nationalistic rivalry, but simply because this fixture was a very important annual game when I was growing up, and I looked forward to watching it every year on television. They were usually great games played in a fiercely competitive spirit. People would talk about them for days and weeks afterward. There’s nothing like them today.

My team selection and formation were almost exactly the same as PES6, apart from the necessary omission of Hargreaves. He’s not included in the England squad this time round. I’ll have to edit him back in at some point, but for now - time pressing and all that - I stuck Gerrard at DMF and Lampard on the left. Time to see how my customary 4-3-3 would stand up to PES2008. And to Scotland, of course.

Difficulty: Regular. I always play my first game on a new PES on the default level. In years past it’s taken me a day or two to move up to the top difficulty. I had an awful feeling that I’d be playing and winning on Top Player in PES2008 before the end of this session, but we’ll see.

Kick off, and almost straightaway I’m forced to acknowledge what I don’t want to acknowledge. That the notorious slowdown in the PS3 version of PES2008 is real, is obvious, is painful to see in so many ways, and is going to be a problem for me over time - unless I can implement one of the many workaround solutions that are currently appearing on the internet. Some kind of downloadable patch from Konami would be ideal, but that’s unlikely in the short term. I will speak about slowdown (or the framerate issue, as it probably should be called) in a special post in a day or two, after I have had time to fully absorb it. It’s not a game-wrecking phenomenon (mostly), and it’s the game itself that I want to talk about now.

Kicked off and instantly saw the difference between this game and the 360 demo. It’s so much slower! I don’t know yet if this is solely due to my TV setup. Plenty of other people who got the game today are reporting over on PESfan that the game plays ludicrously fast for them. To me the pace feels just about perfect - slow, but not too slow; fast at times, but not too fast.

Passing is pretty much standard PES. Shooting is the big difference in this year’s instalment. It’s so much heavier. I broke down the left wing with Rooney and cut inside, a move straight out of the PES6 playbook. I ran on for a few yards, then ripped off what I thought would be a howitzer of a shot - and the ball just tamely trickled into touch,yards wide of the goal.

Aiming shots in PES2008 is far more than a simple matter of holding in one particular direction - maybe it never was as simple as that; maybe I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. Aiming seems to be partly touch-sensitive. Hold in one direction and you’re more likely to miss. Press and release in one direction and you can achieve more precision.

I took the lead, a nice goal scored by Rooney just after half time. It was nothing special, but it was my first goal on the full game. I saved it.

Scotland stunned me by exerting an extreme amount of pressure and scoring two goals in quick succession. Boom, boom, and I was 1-2 down. Hmm. This doesn’t usually happen. I can usually rely on Scotland to roll over for me in my first game on PES every year. Something seems different about them this year. I think the makers might have taken into account the real Scotland team’s recent good performances.

I lost the game - on Regular difficulty. Even more humiliatingly, after Scotland took the lead I didn’t have another shot on goal. I could hardly get the ball. When I did get it the CPU blocked off all my efforts to run down the wings and get a cheap goal (I’m not too proud to admit that’s what I was trying to do). Was this Konami’s much-heralded ‘Teamvision’ in action? Or do I just - how do people on the internet put it - suck?

More tomorrow, in a much more ‘review-oriented’ post.