Interfering With Play 18/03/08
Posted by Dan Bolas in Interfering With Play on Tue 18 Mar 2008
Welcome to this week’s Interfering With Play. This week, I am taking a look at some of the less major aspects of Pro Evolution Soccer, features that have never been included on previous titles, and things that over the next few years of games developments, would be a welcome addition to modern titles, regardless of their genre. Your views on these ideas, many of which are from my own mind as opposed to research, would be greatly appreciated, either in comment form, or in an e-mail, whichever you feel is appropriate.
Tearing You Limb From Limb
Last week, I sat down to one of my many Master League gaming sessions, and struggled to grind out difficult victories against AIK and Celtic, using the default Master League ‘stars’. Following a run of decent results which saw my rise to third in the table, and with still a number of games to go until the Negotiation Period, I found myself with a the difficult task of going against a well organised FC Basel side. Around 20 minutes into the game, Minanda, the aging playmaker picked the ball up on the left side of the pitch, only to be crunched to the ground my no nonsense Basel centre back, Daniel Majstorovic. Immediately, I pressed pause and wished to view the replay straight away, and following Minanda’s tricky side step, what I witnessed was a horrific, studs showing and making contact challenge, landing directly on the joint of my number 10’s ankle. Again, I feared the worse, figuring I would have lost Minanda to an injury, figuring he would at least need some time off the pitch to recover from the challenge, and that Majstorovic would be appropriately punished. When I resumed the game, I was relieved to see Minanda get to his feet, but then when no card was shown to the offending player, it made me question the whole level of decisions given by PES referees. More often than not, my players are booked for mistimed block tackles, whereas straight out lunges or pulling of shirts rarely receive a free kick. This is something which I feel has caused a lot of frustration among gamers all over the world, and whilst I can perfectly understand why a conservative tackle is rewarded with a yellow card, if used to break up an attack or from behind, I can not understand why blatant moments of dangerous play are not further punished. This could be advanced further with a more comprehensive injury system. Anyone who has played a recent WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw game is well aware that the game splits your characters body into four areas, and different moves cause specific damage to different areas. So an arm bar would cause your arm to get injured, with a power bomb putting more damage on your back. This feature has been in place for around five years now, and has provided a more realistic gaming experience. Surely, the impact of tackles on different parts of a player’s leg or body could also benefit from this system. A ankle snapping challenge like that I experienced could have seen Minanda been out for a longer period than say a mistimed trip, and the consequences could be far worse for the offending player. Many gamers have been critical of the fact ever time a player goes off, he does so hobbling and holding his hamstring, well this would be a beneficial way of solving the problem. Your views, as I said before are most welcome.
One True Voice
As I have said over the past weeks and months, I find the commentary on the latest PES to be the best the series has ever experienced. Pack in the days of ISS Pro Evolution Soccer, the way the commentators said the word Nigeria bordered on the racist, and since then well recognised commentators has been brought in, only to be both underused, and given poor quality scripts. Jon Champion, whilst far from being the best commentator as regards to TV football matches, took the work seriously, and it shows in the end product. Mark Lawrenson is not the right man for the job, and whether he is analysing on Match Of The Day or co commentating, on the FA Cup, he lacks the kind of passion and enthusiasm that transfers into the gaming environment. In my opinion, bringing in someone like Alan Smith from Sky, or even Gerry Armstrong from the La Liga commentary would add a bit more atmosphere, and boost the high levels set by Mr. Champion. Compare this with the scripts given to the best commentary team Tyler and Gray, in the latest FIFA title. Normally, EA Sports provides its commentators with a top of the range set of appropriate comments that add both colour and depth to enhance the gaming experience. In this year’s title, they spent pretty much half the game talking about St. James Park and Newcastle United, when the two teams playing were both from League One! My one request for PES2009 commentary, and indeed all-future games involving commentary, other than more scripts, is to have more names available when creating players. Looking through the PES name list, I could not create a player with the commentary name Jones or Smith, annoying as I have mates with both names. I am not expecting them to have wild names, or even foreign ones, but a collection of a couple of thousand from a local phone book would make a lot of people very happy!
“Next Year Will Be… The Perfect Year”
This sections title, before we go any further, relates to a song by 90’s songbird Dina Carroll, and in no way reflects my views or anticipations of the next Konami offering. With that said, the big debate from last weeks column was whether or not gamers would be willing to wait another 18 months for a new PES, or would it make them turn to a rival title. I think the genuine view was that they would be willing to wait, but feel it shouldn’t be a case of having to. Yes, there is a rumour to only be a handful of people involved with creating Pro Evolution Soccer, but there are far many more names if anyone takes the time to watch the games credits. I, like many, want the best football gaming experience and at the moment, for all its flaws, I still find that to be PES2008. What cannot happen is Konami cannot rest on their plurals and churn out an update 12 months down the line, changes need to be made, bugs need to be fixed and problems need to be sorted, and if that takes 18 months then so be it, if it takes 9 then that’s great too. I appreciate all e-mails and comments on the subject from the past week, and hope for all gamers sake the game released is the best one yet, whenever that may be.
Whatever The Weather
My final point tonight now is something that, because of Internet gaming, may not be too far off. Anyone who owns a PS3 and users the default menu skin, will know that throughout the day, the background starts to change shade and colour, until finally at night you end up with a black and white ensemble, very trendy and very modern. The idea way first used on the PSP, whereby each calendar month, the background would automatically change to a different colour. These real life events, albeit linked to the systems internal clock, meant that the console was representing its interpretations of real life, and is a feature that I would love to see in computer games, especially football games. The option of being able to set conditions to real time, would mean that if you were playing the game at 3:00pm the ground would be basked in sunlight, or playing at night would mean the floodlights were on. This could be taken further by the use of weather conditions. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to have the weather of the cities in which the stadium was located, to be reflected in the console counterpart. For example, if you were playing against Barcelona at the Nou Camp, be it in an Exhibition match or even a League game, the game could look up the actual weather conditions in Barcelona via the Internet, and transfer them into the game for you. Therefore, if you play against Sparta Moscow in Russia, you are more likely to be playing on a cold, hard pitch than say if you were up against River Plate, where it would be a hotter game with more draining conditions. These conditions could then effect the players, in other words, Stamina, proneness to injury or likeliness of slipping over and the game itself be it the ball swirling in the wind, the way it bounces or holds up in the puddles. With there only being 15 stadiums currently available on the next generation version of PES, this would be a good time to try and implement something, and although it may act as a novelty, it would make games more realistic, and would require you to think more tactically when picking your team, i.e. playing long ball on a windy day or using pace players when the heat will tire them quicker. Any views on real life conditions in gaming would be greatly appreciated.
Again, that’s all for this week. It was drawn to my attention that the link I offered for the PC games was incorrect, so the correct link is http://www.classic-pc-games.com, if any of you get round to using it, please let me know your experiences of the website, and the games you play. The e-mail address, as always is danbolas@hotmail.com, and if your going to add me to msn, please let me know who you are first via e-mail, as I have hundreds of adds each week and then never speak to any of them!
Thanks for Reading
regarding the commentary i had an idea that would make a massive difference but has probably been suggested before but i have never seen it anywhere so here goes, why not have maybe 4-6 different commentators and mix & match them for each game like real matches. a refreshing change from listening to the same tired old double act through 10 seasons of a master league. maybe the option to choose who will be commentating at the match as well.
I absolutely love the concept of real life weather conditions. Although many will see it as wasted time, I don’t see it being so difficult to implement and would be an excellent ‘Next-Generation’ feature for a video game.
Tell Seabass about the weather conditions thing, that sounds wicked!
I agree with your first section on fouling. One thing constant in most versions of PES is the keeper can come out and trip the offensive player without nicking the ball without a penalty being called. How this has not changed I will never know.
Also, not to be a jerk, but just because it was funny, you said, “What cannot happen is Konami cannot rest on their plurals…” I’m assuming you meant ‘laurels’. lol
Real-life weather conditions were already implemented in Black & White 2, which prompted you to choose your city of residence and then looked up in the internet what the weather and time of day were for it, in order to reflect it on your gaming world. It was a very interesting feature!
Commentary - I firmly believe we should have the Jap commentary available for us PAL gamers. You can’t beat it.
Forget english commentary - its crap.
Just switch over to either Spanish (for very lively, energetic commentary) or Japanese for pure comedy.
Live weather conditions - a very good idea.
Player conditions - physio reports on players would be good, so that you can make a judgement call on whether to either:
a) risk a player knowing he has a niggling injury, or
b) bring back a star player from injury a week earlier than expected for an important game, again risking re-occurrence of the injury
I’m not holding out on konami fixing pes - I expect to be playing pes6 for the next few years in protest…
If I get really desperate I might even get the Wii version.
The wheather option would be great, I fully agree. Although it should be based on the stadium (or at least the team that plays “home”) as you would end up in issues when playing on-line against someone from another country.
It reminds me of a chat with a friend where Konami would offer the possibility to play an on-line version of the Master League, where real-life transfers, injuries where made automatically and some new youth players where sometimes added to your squad. A feature that would be very difficult to create, but that would make the game absolutely great.
I agree on the commentary. Adding Japanese commentary would indeed be great.
yes ! Agreed with the weather conditions.But , still the game play comes first
the first paragraph was a lil big, i kept getting lost in it, maybe breaking it up a little would help?
anyways the reds are dreadful, i can come in from the side and strip the ball and get red, then other times i can be behind the striker who is through one on one and professional foul him with only a yellow.
i think they need more injury motions rather than the players always holding there shin when they go down and getting subbed they walk like they have just received a rogering in prison or something. perhaps they could do something like in blitz the league, if its a truly awful tackle it could zoom in, slow mow it and show the impact or even a bone breaking. it may have to then be a 15 certificate but if they did it and didnt over do it i feel it would be awesome!a minimum is different tackles and injuries though.
i think i mentioned about the weather before but i only thought that random weather needed to be added, so it may be 3pm in winter so it starts of light, by the second half it could be dark, and by the 70th minute it may rain. the beuty of that would be firstly the originality and the visuals, the gameplay would change and it would give the dull commentators something more to talk about
godd article anyways, i doubt we will see these changes in any sort of quick time fashion but i love the idea of members connected to the internet getting live weather updates. problem would be that the teams in the game are primarily european and in a month or two its likely to be constantly warm across europe and if you was in a league you would like to see it progrees through the winter to the summer, so i mixture, rather than always been one or the other.
weather sounds good but not as important as the game modes and online play sorting first.
the red card situation can be crazy, i have rarely seen a keeper sent off for completely destroying an oncoming attacker, i often get penalties, but even when the keeper is the last man (which he usually is), he can take you down and not even get a card!!
i think leaving the game till 2009 is dangerous as i’m not sure i’ll still be interested in playing games then, it’s a bit much to assume we will all wait patiently for them to get it right. if they want our hard earned money, they need to fight for it and get something out there.
for me the main things that need to happen are that the master league needs to be more like football manager (multiplayer / can change clubs / more teams etc)
and the online needs sorting out so again multiplayer ( so 4 from each x box ) should be able to play online against at least another 4, that would be great. Even if you had fixed cursor so you controlled just one player. onine tournaments aswell, other games do it so no reason for pro evo not to
I think the last comment about red card is not true. In fact every time the keeper makes a tackle which is inside / outside the box, the keeper gets sent off. Please play the game rather than making comments which are false.
The refereeing just needs to be more consistent. I hate getting sent off for GOOD tackles where you win the ball, and yet in the same game can get away with taking out the last man.
Pro evolution soccer 2008 is not a great game
I have PS2 provu 2008, and I have thought of a few suggestions that will help make the game more realistic:
- As the articles touched on, injuries needs to be more realistic in the game. We should have foot, ankle, calf, back, shoulder, groing and head injuries not just hamstring injuries! it will also be cool if we had animations of the referee, players or the injured player signalling to the touchline that they need a physio in case of serious injuries. If the injured player still plays on after getting treatment then in a case where their injury gets aggravated, they should either be seen holding their injured part(s) or just collapsng signalling that they cannot continue any longer thus leaving the opposing team to kick the ball out of play (if they are proffesional of course!)
- More interactions between fans and players. E.g. if a player commits a very poor tackle yet didn’t get a red card or even worse didn’t get any card then the fans of the opposing team will boo the player whenever he touches the ball, not necessarliy for the rest of the game but at least until the end of the half. There can also be a situation where a player will try to get their fans to liven up like Drogba always do after he misses a chance where he would try to encourage the fans to get louder and the they respond by cheering and clapping more. Fans should also applaud a player when they play a great long ball or headering the ball to his keeper for them to pick up.
- Keepers should be able to run out their box for set pieces, especially corners when its 1-1 and in the last minute!
- Ballboys and ballgirls should be included.
- Handballs should be put in!!
- Referees should be able to PICK UP the ball when he blows for half time
- The 4th official who holds up the board signalling the subsitution shouldnt be wearing uniforms like the ref and linesmen are wearing, they are always seen wearing jogging bottoms and a jacket.
- An animation to see the 4th official holding up the time added on would be nice!
- Players who are about to be subsitued on should be seen warming up near the dugout in their training clothes e.g. jackets (in cold weather) or jus a simple jumper.
A more realistic stamina meter should be implemented. In the game, Messi and Henry can run all day on the wings without losing speed and leading to “Cutback Goals”. After a player does an amazing 50 meter sprint with the ball, their stamina should drop and must wait to regenerate in order to do sprint as fast as his stats indicate. FIFA already has a stamina meter next to the player’s name tag, but it was not exactly executed very well since players will be completely drained by halftime and need 2 weeks to reach full stamina.
I’m just so tired of people exploiting the speed on the wings and rushing the ball like if this game was american football. The game should encourage people to pass the ball unselfishly and not rely on your star players to do all the work. I played someone online that did not even try to pass the ball in the middle of the park, instead he pass the ball to Henry or Messi on the wings and they rushed the ball until they got to the endline and then cutback for a pass to the oncoming attackers.
3 Red lights………… Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!
I’ve just had to go and buy an arcade 360, how can I get the three lights at the begining of a bank holiday week end.
I now have a working 360 and a broken 360, guess I’ll send one off to Microsoft for repair, once repaired I can trade in to help pay for my PS3. I do hate the fact that my 360 died, but, what a great way of convincing your wife that you need a PS3!
I tried the HDDVD Vs Blue-Ray trick last week, she was having none of it, but, when she could see the utter despair on my face when we thought I was not going to have a working console for at least three weeks, I think she actually began to understand how important a reliable console is to our marriage.
PES on Wii looks cool, anyone got a review?
fact is without a ps3 for more than 1 week is suicidal……………….played pro evo over and over again……….even with the flaws still a great game………………..
i had the 3 lights problem but found a short term solution.. turn it on and cover the console in towels or whatever you got, leave it on for about 15 mins so it over heats, then go back and let it cool off for half hour or longer if you want.. when i turned mine back on it works now! .. not sure for how long though lol.
Wow! American tech! Wrap it in a towel…… Brilliant! And they say they can fire a cruise missile through a letter box……………… Shit we are all doomed!
afsfas