PES Chronicles

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.