Interfering With Play 01/04/08
Posted by Dan Bolas in Interfering With Play on Tue 01 Apr
Welcome to this week’s Interfering With Play. Since its release on the Wii, PES has seemed to once again been drawn into the public eye, and as a result, I am receiving more e-mails than ever regarding topics to feature in Interfering With Play. I would like to point out that I will not be writing anything false in this article, as to play into the April Fools game that has been flowing through the Internet today, and instead will be focussing on topics that have been raised by members of the PESGaming.com public. Before I start, I would like to give a shout out to Jason Lee from ConsoleGoals.com, for embedding the video file in last weeks article. The site is a top one for your PES Goals and action, and therefore should be put in you bookmarks/favourites as soon as possible!
The Only Option
More so than ever over the last few weeks, I am being inundated by requests from gamers asking what to do regarding their PES Option file, in particular as to regards the next generation consoles. I have covered this in previous articles, but will send one more quick reminder. Due to the poor quality of the edit mode on PES2008, and coupled with the fact your Option File data links directly to your own personal progress record, it is my advice that you edit the game yourself, using a combination of your consoles camera, the forum on PESGaming.com and your own footballing knowledge. It is very frustrating there is a lack of pixel editor and emblem editor; therefore you are better off doing it yourself, and saving your progress record in the process. It took me just over 3 hours to do all the English Team kits and club names, adding players such as Kenwyne Jones where required, with creating my own team, Wolves, taking a few nights work. Of course, its open for debate, and I am sure if your search the web you will find Option Files out there that fit your own personal bill, but my recommendation, and that of many of my mates, is to do the work yourself. For the future, and for PES 2009, it remains to be seen how editing will progress. Should we find ourselves in a similar situation 12 months down the line, as some predict, it might be worthwhile looking towards setting up an ‘Idiots Guide To Editing PES’ website, but until then, your best bet is to work off your own back.
Tow The Line
Incredibly, PES is now entering its 6th month of release, and every week people message me asking how to ‘sort out’ the online problems they are experiencing with their console versions of next gen PES. I am yet to play the PC version, something that will be changing in a few days, but the online mode regarding consoles has always been plagued with lag issues, slowdown issues and basically is unplayable. I must apologise to all those contacts on my PS3 who see me online and offer me a game, as I will happily play you on Warhawk, Call Of Duty 4 or even Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008. However, I will not support PES 2008 online whilst the game does not share the same online experience as it does offline. If you find the game unplayable, the simple solution is to not play it, and hope that PES 2009 sorts this problem out like we all pray it will. There is not a quick fix, an easy download or even a temporary solution to it, so I apologise to all those who constantly ask, vent your anger towards Konami and Seabass, not myself and the PESGaming.com team!
Fit But You Don’t Know
Now into a full swing Master League, I will bring up a topic I raised many months ago, and something that has been a concern on PES for a while, the level of Player Fatigue, and how quickly it rises. Nowadays, I appreciate you need almost two squads to be a top four side in any division. Playing in three to four competitions, travelling across countries and multiple plane journeys, along with intense fitness based training sessions are going to take it out of any team, and as a result you arguably need two players available to play in each position, one acting as cover for the other, or in the for of a Rafa-style rotation policy. However, especially when playing in Division 2 of Master League, it is nearly impossible to field the same team twice due player stamina dropping below half each game, regulate condition sapping whatever is left in order to ensure your players have positive conditioning arrows. Due to a league and cup clash, I Played SC International 3 times over the course of 3 weeks on during my first season, and each time they fielded exactly the same side, with their players showing no ill effects. I had to change by team for each of the games, due to the fact that the stamina bars were so low. Realism tells us that players do need a rest, but only if they are playing twice in the same week, and unlike most domestic leagues, the Master League has many weeks where each team only plays one game. In fact, other than the top four sides, most teams tend to keep a settled team as to build momentum over a number of weeks, as opposed to bringing in 10 new players each game! Form could be taken into account perhaps, along with higher risk of injuries later in games, and this could be reflected in the condition arrows or even minor injuries making players unavailable for the following game. However, the fact that you can’t play your star player in the cup because he played in the league is truly mad, and something that far from reflects real football at most clubs!
Looking Animated
One huge positive, and something that has always impressed me about the Pro Evolution Soccer series, is the attention to unique animations. This was brought in during ISS Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, and saw Roberto Carlos have a different run up when striking a free kick. This has been taken to many new levels including Penalty run-ups, celebrations and corner kicks, and seems to be updated every year, which all in all is worth taking your hat off to Konami about. A few popular additions for next year, from my part anyway, would be the C. Ronaldo ‘poser’ free kick, Anelka’s ultra cool butterfly celebration and Yakubu’s very calm Penalty run up and strike. The whole penalty stance is another thing that could be address, with the option of placing, powering or chipping your spot kick. For example, a power penalty has more chance of missing the target, but less of the GK saving it, even if he went the right way. A placed penalty won’t go wide or over, but will almost certainly me stopped by the keeper if he gets the right way. A chipped penalty will always hit the target, but will be stopped even if the keeper dives late. With spot kicks such a lottery regarding accuracy, having this would give three times more options for the taker, and three times more decisions for the GK.
Ding Ding, Gloves Off, Round One
Over the past few weeks and months, there have been a number of talking points in Interfering With Play that have spewed out into mini arguments in the form of comments. Many of these involve two users, mn9ajas and assache. The whole purpose of Interfering With Play is to get debate up and running, and I just want to give both you guys a shout out and to keep up the good work. It’s the whole purpose of a community to have people who share each other views, and have those who want to argue each other’s points. Better to do it in this kind of environment that with weapons in a war zone, well that’s my opinion anyway! The most recent talking point, is regarding the back chat referees have to put up with on a weakly basis, and the lack of respect these multi-millionaire footballers have for those trying to keep the game played in a good spirit. The cry from some mediums is that the game becomes more like rugby, with only captains being allowed to talk to referees and any backchat being instantly punishable with a caution. Unfortunately, there is very little chance a yellow card is going to influence this factor; I mean players still jump into the crowd or remove their shirts, gladly taking the caution if it means a more passionate celebration. The other end of the stick is Mascherano, who should have been punished for raising his hands against Middlesbrough, then was punished for saying “What’s Happening?” to an official against Man United. Players need to understand that whilst the referee is there to inflict the laws of the game, they also are there to protect players from serious injury, and listening to their brief conversation could help stop someone being badly hurt. I am lucky enough to know an ex-Premier League official, who says in spite of all the ‘abuse’ he received, he was never once directly swore at my a footballer. When you look at these pictures on the TV, they might not be telling the whole story.
So what is the solution? Maybe give each referee a microphone to record everything they say over the course of a game, and hear the response the player gives. By doing this, any incident could be cross-referenced to the relevant point on the recording when being used as evidence. Perhaps have a code of conduct for players when speaking to the ref. The player must stand approximately 1 metre away, straight with their hands behind their backs if called over by an official, reluctance to do so is seen as disrespecting an official and an immediate caution, one game ban or fine. Any player who approaches the official without being requested should be asked to leave and failure to do so is an automatic sending off. It would make Chelsea’s crowd the official tactic a very costly one! But above all else, above all these arguments it is down to the F.A and the Premier League to get a grip. The Championship and Lower Leagues in the UK have foreign players in them, and are home to as many red cards as any leagues, yet there is far less players answering back, and these refs tend to be a lot worse than the ones at the top level. If the Premier League spent more time dealing with the core factors of their division, disciple, player attitudes and sportsman ship, and less time worrying about corporate deals with chewing gum and ‘exclusive’ gaming licenses, many of these troubles could be nipped in the bud. You don’t see Andrew Strauss blasting an umpire because he feels he was given the wrong decision, and its very rare players like Lebron James speak back to officials in Basketball. It is the governing body’s responsibility, and whilst talking points are good, these things will eventually damage the sport, and the children that are growing up playing it.
With that rant over, that is the end of this week’s column. Great point raised by 88Champion at the bottom of last week’s column, regarding ISS on the N64. I will be addressing that next week, following a few hours of Nintendo gaming on ISS98 to remind myself of the games redeeming qualities! Any comments can be left at the bottom of the page, or you can hit me direct on danbolas@hotmail.com. This site is there for you to express your opinion, so don’t just read, but your point across
Thanks for Reading
Cheers for the shout, funny, myself & mn9ajas just had a mini tiff on a prior post. lol.
Don’t think I’ll go over my points with regard to refs again.
I do believe that the Premier League is now so consumed by the entertainment side of it all that I simply view the back chat, diving & play acting as part of the whole big show, I’m not sure if I’d be that interested if that show was taken away!
Oh and the 10 predictions post is just frightening! That’s an April fool….. Right!
Horrah! A mention for me too ;)
Keep up the good banter assache!
ps You know I’m right (only Kidding!)
Yes, accumilated fatigue really needs tweaking for the next installment in the series.
I’d like to know what most PES players do to overcome this. Do you simply go with it and do the best you can, or do you turn the accumilated fatigue option off.
Kind regards, Arnold
@Arnold Frick
I choose to put up with at the beginning of a master league campaign and build a huge squad and rotate. When I lose I blame it on my own rotation policy!
i build a large squad on the cheap using non-affiliated players and newcomers. These can then be traded/sold to bring in the players you want. Rotation has the plus side of forcing your younger players to play sooner and thus advancing their development!
Hey guys, this sounds really sad but on the Master League I was sick of european teams getting promoted from division 2 to division 1. I noticed a few people on this site were annoyed as well so what I did was spent a few hours one boring Monday night picking 17 foreign teams and reducing every player stats to a crap level. Its quite easy to beat them but they never get promoted. If you have your team, Rangers and Celtic in Div2 then the only foreign teams getting relegated or promoted are the said Scottish teams.
Sad but no longer frustrating.
I really, really hope that English kits don’t get locked down. Spain, Italy, France and Holland get kits in PES and FIFA, it gets me annoyed that we don’t have this. If English kits are locked, will the German ones too?
Continued from 25/3/08 IWP: @mn9ajas
Cheers, that was probably what I was expecting to hear, but, probably not what I wanted to hear!
I would love to be able to go out and buy a PS3, but, it just seems to be taking a bloody lifetime to settle down. As you mentioned, how long in it’s life cycle is this machine?
As someone who, as yourself, has been through with PS1 & PS2, to have to wait almost two years into PS3’s life cycle before feeling you can make a balanced purchase is just so frustrating and the fact that one of the reasons I had a rethink on buying one at all was because it had won the HD-DVD Blue-ray war is just a little bit sad.
pro evo 2008 is the most crap game i have ever played o my god i bought the game the day it came out and i was dissapointed the game is not good at all game play is rubbish, same whole master league upgrade the game what is master league. there is no enough team no right name no right league no right jersey for god sake look at fifa there is a big different game play is brilliant right league name etc come pls make the game better i didnt spend 2 month playing the game and i payed €80 for it i just gave it away it horrible
sodiq
I seriously hope that is a sarcastic post. If the names and kits are important to you then fair enough choose Fifa, but never, ever tell football fans that Fifa is better than PES for gameplay. Every single Fifa character model is the same, just with a photo of the player imposed on it. They all move the same, react the same, have the same ability ( seriously when was the last time you saw JT do a few step overs, then strike from 40 yards and get it on target nevermind in ! yet on Fifa its possible ). Realism is something that EA Games negates every year with every release. Konami have found the perfect blend for football simulation.
Fifa – A gamers choice.
PES – A football fans choice.