PES Chronicles

In Friday’s post I queried the lack of long-range goal attempts in any of the PES2010 and FIFA10 videos coming out of Gamescom. I actually wrote the post on the Thursday, one day into Gamescom. I thought that by the time the post was published, it would make me look slightly foolish. I was certain that we would be awash in 35-yard screamers by then.

Even after it was published and there were still no long-range shots or goals, I was sure it was only a matter of time. Somebody would have a go sooner or later, surely? Even if it was just for a laugh, or by accident, somebody would let loose from outside the box. Right?

Well… Gamescom is over and I do believe we never saw a single long-range effort, never mind an actual goal. (I can’t have seen every video. So I stand ready and more than willing to be corrected.)

Am I alone in thinking this is really, really, REALLY weird? Hundreds of people sampled both games. Many of them—probably most of them—will have picked up a football game at some point in their lives. And yet they all chose to play what I think of as ‘online football’—direct, always sprinting, and always trying either to create one-on-ones or work the ball into the box (preferably the 6-yard box) before risking a shot on goal.

This approach, amazingly, made up 100% of the tactics on display in all the videos I saw. Nobody worked the space for a shot from distance and then took the shot. Nobody. Whenever anybody did create space (by accident), they ignored it and carried on trying to walk the ball into the net.

I saw one solitary goal scored from the edge of the box. It came about via the trusty old PES manoeuvre of pulling a 180-turn on the wing and then sprinting inside, parallel to the 18-yard line, to create the chance before shooting across the keeper. It wasn’t the kind of long-range goal I mean. This is more like the kind of thing I mean:

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That’s me playing PES6 on the Xbox 360 the other day. It’s not a particularly special goal. In PES, it’s a fairly common type of goal. That kind of opportunity is straightforward to create on PES and always has been. The effectiveness of the first-time shot from distance can vary from PES to PES, but the underlying framework is always in place. You can always do it.

But nobody did it, or anything remotely like it, in hundreds of games over the whole of Gamescom. (Assuming the couple of dozen videos in circulation are a representative sample.)  Nobody did it on FIFA10 either, but at least FIFA has the excuse of not being noted for its long-range shooting in recent years. PES has no such excuse. Exquisite and explosive long-range shooting practically built PES.

It’s a mystery that will now never get solved. I will always wonder. When I go to next year’s event, I might get my answer.

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POSTSCRIPT, added 25 August

At last, we have a long-range goal. Thanks to commenter BlueChampion for the tip-off. His £20 prize is already on its way*.

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What a beauty that is—struck whilst running sideways too. At the end a player can be heard saying something in German that sounds a lot like “Who’d have thought it?” Exactly, mein freund. Exactly.

Seeing this gorgeous long-ranger comes as a relief, but now I’ve just got to ask: why was there only one long-range goal at Gamescom…..?

*not actually true

Another FIFA09 goals special today. All goals in this post were scored in Manager Mode, playing on World Class difficulty, and using semi-manual shooting.

‘FIFA09 and goals’ can be a sensitive subject in the wider football gaming community. The received wisdom is that FIFA09 doesn’t do goals very well. This is a serious issue for a football game to have. The general view (among those who have this view) is that you can’t score a wide enough variety of satisfying goals, you can’t score from outside the box (or so rarely that it amounts to the same frustrating, unsatisfying thing), and PES is still better when it comes to the dark art of goal-scoring.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been busy disproving the received wisdom—to myself, at least. Suddenly, I’m knocking in goals from all angles and distances. Whisper it, but I even look forward to playing Manager Mode every morning (I’ll have to deal with that topic on another day).

The first goal here is deliberately quite ordinary. I’ve posted it only as an example of my new bread-and-butter style of goal. Previous to this Indian summer that I seem to be having with FIFA09, my standard goals were tap-ins after rebounds, one-on-ones after aerial through-balls, and the like. Now, though… Well, here it is—my new bread-and-butter goal:

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It’s a ‘hook’ shot across the keeper, from a slight angle, from just outside the box. Until very recently, that would have been a fairly unusual goal for me in FIFA09.

Now for the more ’showbiz’ goals. They’re both crackers from distance. I’ve started knocking in shots from outside the box quite regularly, to the point where I’ve had to check that I’m still on semi-manual shooting. I’ve started scoring distance goals so regularly that I hardly bother to look at the replays, unless they’re really special.

The first goal is a ‘floater’ from my left winger, Adriano. He’s not the Adriano of PES6 fame—just an absurdly talented namesake whom I scouted for nothing.

Here’s the ‘official’ replay, as patiently uploaded to EA Sportsworld:

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Yes—that is indeed a night match. In Manager Mode. You can get them. You just have to cheat a bit. You start an Exhibition game, choose ‘night’, and quit it at any time during play. Then load your Manager Mode save, and the first match should be at night. That’s what I did on this occasion.

A few weeks ago I had a good moan about the disproportionate amount of times I was hitting the post/crossbar from a certain shooting position. It still rankles with me, but at least I’ve now actually scored a few to calm me down a bit.

Here are a few other camera angles, filmed using my digital camera. One is in slow-motion:

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To pull off this side-footed shot I used the finesse shot and trick modifiers (the two trigger buttons on the Xbox360 controller in my control setup). I have to say, though, that I don’t know what I did right here that I did wrong all the other hundred times I’ve attempted this kind of shot from this kind of distance and angle, and either missed badly or hit that accursed post or crossbar.

Onto my next special presentation, and my favourite goal from FIFA09 yet. Full stop. Again, the official uploaded replay first, Locke (another scouted player) is the scorer, and yes, in the lead-up to the shot I do ignore my own advice about laying off the sprint button…

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That’s the view and speed I saw it at when I scored it during play. It had me sitting up in disbelief—that shot actually went in?—and then I was laughing out loud. Hooting out loud, rather, at the audacity of it. I love the way the keeper doesn’t move. As can be seen more clearly in the other replay angles, he was probably unsighted…

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Spending quality time with FIFA09 necessarily involves putting up with its many sigh-making peculiarities. But persistence brings its rewards, and those rewards for me, at the moment, are more and better goals.

0-0 after 0-0. A 1-0 win. A 0-1 defeat. Then back to 0-0 after 0-0… FIFA09 is a strange beast.

At this stage of the football game year I have to say that I don’t like FIFA09 as much as I liked FIFA08. I think 09 lacks one vital ingredient that 08 had in buckets: novelty.

Let’s face it. If the likes of PES2009 (and maybe even PES2008) had appeared out of nowhere, without that decade of ISS and PES history behind them, we’d probably all think they were the greatest football games ever made. But that history does exist, and we do see the so-called next-gen PES games in their proper context, and we have found them wanting. I think some of this same effect is colouring my judgement of FIFA09.

FIFA08 was a surprising leap forward in terms of… What’s the word I’m looking for? Ruggedness, I think, is the word I’m looking for. The game was heavy. The ball was heavy—like a medicine ball at times. When you caught that FIFA08 ball on the volley, you really knew about it. I don’t get the same sense of something sturdy from FIFA09.

Yes, yes, yes. I can appreciate that the well-worn complaint about the ball acting oddly when shooting is due to a dizzying combination of gameplay factors, rather than a fault in the game itself. But the overall effect, the feeling, is of a fault in the game itself. FIFA08’s long-range shooting was better than FIFA09’s. (There. I’ve said it.) Speaking as a football game-player who just loves his long-range shooting, its weirdness in FIFA09 is a serious issue for me.

All of this self-righteous hand-wringing is my roundabout way of saying that I’m in the doldrums with FIFA09 at the moment. I might go back to PES2009—and finally sample its Become a Legend mode—sooner rather than later.

Or I might go back to the PSP version of PES2008, and play that as my main footy game for the rest of the year. Or maybe even FIFA08. I think that I will persevere with FIFA09 for now, though. Like I said last time, playing with the terrible Coventry City squad is a major part of the issue.

Somehow, I guided my Coventry City team through to the quarter-final of the League Cup. Somehow, my opponents were Carlisle United. That’s not very realistic. In the modern age, the League Cup is English football’s most seriously devalued cup competition. But it’d still be pretty weird to see Coventry City and Carlisle Utd duking it out for a place in the semi-final.

But FIFA09 is only a game, and I’ve been struggling of late, so I’ll take anything I can get right now. A nice little cup run could offset my poor league form. I’ve lost several league games in a row, all by the odd goal. It’s seen my job security plummet down to 52% or so. That’s getting dangerously near the point where board meetings take place and warnings are issued. If I get the sack whilst playing FIFA09 with all-Assisted settings, what hope is there for me?

It won’t come to that. I know that I can turn it around in the league. A good cup run or two will also help a lot.

The two-legged quarter final against Carlisle started off at my ground. I fought out a frustrating 0-0 draw. Carlisle actually had the bulk of the chances. They hit the same post twice during the same attack. Up the other end, I carved out precisely one clear-cut chance. I put McKenzie clean through on goal early in the second half. It was a one-two, with the two part being an aerial through-ball. I think this is a major fault in my FIFA09 game: addiction to aerial through-balls. They’ve been such a major part of the game in PES over the years. And they were pretty damn effective on FIFA08 last year. Over half of my FIFA08 goals came from crosses, but well over half of the remaining half came as a result of aerial through-balls.

But in FIFA09 they’re a lot less effective. They’re not ineffective. The last defender just always seems to head the ball away more often that not. You have to put a bit more on the through-ball, or look for some other way.

Anyway. McKenzie put the ball badly wide. Or better to say, I put the ball badly wide with McKenzie. I should have scored, but Assisted shooting isn’t as simplistic as some would have you believe on the FIFA forums.

Overall, I’m suffering something of a goal drought on the game at the moment. It’s not so much me, or FIFA09 itself that’s at fault. It’s the (frankly) piss-poor Coventry City players. I played a few matches of my Atletico Madrid save with the all-Assisted settings. Just to see. I won both games, 4-0 and 3-1. I was creating chances for fun in both matches. So my struggles are all to do with the unfortunate players of Coventry City. It’s the only thing it can be.

Which is fine. I like a challenge, and all that. Just not too time-consuming a challenge… I’m sure it’ll come good.

The second leg at Carlisle’s place also ended 0-0. That’s how it was at the end of extra time as well. It was a pretty dour match, all told. The penalty shoot-out came. Carlisle went first, and scored. Then I missed my first kick. Then I saved Carlisle’s next two kicks. I slotted home all my remaining penalties, and that was that. Through to the semi-final, to face Everton. The board were delighted.