PES Matters 16th January 2010
Posted by dougiedonut in PES Matters on Sat 16 Jan
I’d like to start with my first post of the new year by wishing everyone a happy new year. We enter a new decade, and with new hopes and challenges, especially with PES.
This week I would like to discuss a topic which whilst initially may not seem particularly relevant to PES, will hopefully come together. Recently I’ve seen a few single player games in the gaming mainstream which around 3 to 5 years ago I would have snapped up without a shadow of a doubt. But these days I find myself hesitating to do so. No I’m not tiring of gaming, or getting that deadly disease called “growing up”, but just find myself questioning the validity of single player games these days.
One of the games I am hesitating to get is the new Batman Arkham Asylum game. It has been getting rave reviews on metacritic, (http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps3/batmanarkhamasylum) but I haven’t bought it because of the challenge factor in the game. What I mean is that playing against AI is not challenging for many people any more. Plus add in the factor that thanks to the likes of Nintendo we now have a new demographic for games – casual gamers, because of whom, games are dumbed down for everyone.
Because these people can’t handle proper games, everyone suffers if you ask me. Games are shorter and easier – even on the harder settings, which I’m sure many of you out there can testify to. Batman’s detective element for me summarises exactly what is wrong. Everything is laid out on a plate for you. Where to go and what to do. Where’s the intellectual challenge exactly?
Uncharted was another game which dissappointed because of the monotonous theme to the game. Endless mindless enemies, although to be fair, they at least ducked and dodged and threw grenades at you if you stay in a stationary position during battles. We need only look at one of the worst offenders for me – the COD series – particularly since COD4. Completely moronic enemies that just charge at you. Proper cannon fodder. Then consider the length of the single player game. Shockingly short and very very much on rails. No room for developing a sense of achievement in how you complete objectives. No options on how or what to do, just follow the arrow for idiots and keep shooting. Job done. (Uncharted 2 is another game I’m considering but hesitating to get)
Maybe I am getting older, but is that all there is to games now? Can some of you older gamers remember a game called Deus Ex on the PC from around 10 years ago? For me it is still the single most complete single player game ever. I can’t remember how many hours I put into it. There were various objectives in the game, from which you could pick the ones that you wanted to develop. You could also enhance your character with a skills base that you chose, and made moral decisions at strategic points to enhance your experience. With several different game endings thrown in, the play time for the game is really massive.
I’m going to go off on a quick tangent, but please bear with me – I think it’s worth it! In Deus Ex, you can take drugs and drink beers too. During the story I went into a bar, ignored the barmen and got plastered on beers. When you do this, the effects in the game made your character’s head (it’s played in FPS mode) whirl round and round, and the colours on screen went funny. It actually made you feel physically nauseous, and when you tried to walk, you would stammer around! I then pulled out a bazooka I was carrying and wielded it, to the horror of the people in the bar! They were screaming and running everywhere. I couldn’t shoot straight and so was letting off random shots. It was fantastic, but indicative of an experience which I still don’t think can be matched today.
Can anyone name a game that even sounds remotely as feature rich as Deus Ex today? That is my point!
What has this got to do with PES I hear some of you ask? Well a fundamental gripe people have with the game is that the AI is not challenging enough. Which is a fair criticism to have I believe. But to be fair, we really need to consider just what was possible with football games 10/15 years ago, and what is possible now. 10/15 years ago, we accepted that we couldn’t expect there to be many different ways the AI could be programmed to challenge us. We had to accept that a basic formula was used with some tricks to help the AI get almost undefendable goals against you, to try to help create the challenge.
Nowadays we are tired of the formula and want the AI to interpret how we play and what we do, and to work out how to stop us. Sorry if this is ignorant, but isn’t that incredibly hard to do? We’re pretty much asking for human levels of interpretation of dynamic playing situations to give us the challenge we crave in single player games!
So back to my original question – are single player games relevant any more?
I remember a few years ago, I only ever played PES games in single player modes. I hardly ever played against human opponents. When I would play against friends, the game changed considerably.
A good friend of mine would always have the upper edge during games because he knew how to play against humans more than me. I would play the game as though I was taking on AI, and the difference was there to see.
So where am I going with this question? Well, I’m certainly not advocating we lose the single player game that’s for sure, but wondering whether we need to see a new direction in how AI plays against us. I don’t know how much it has changed on the current generation of games. I personally find how AI plays very robotic (in both major footy titles for the record), and not enjoyable really. Would people say they would like to see changes in how AI fundamentally challenges us? With increased computing power, surely rethinking the whole apprach is worth thinking about?
Thanks for reading.
Dougiedonut
1st
2nd :)
a few real world tactics would help
I love single player games. I’ve always played a game for the story and I’m not a huge multiplayer fan, not online anyway. I just think it’s leading to more and more kids not actually going out anymore and yano… playing footy in the park or just finding stuff to do like I did when I was a kid, playing soldiers etc. Oh and as for Batman, how can you criticise it if you haven’t got it? It is easily my favourite newer game by far and the challenge comes from finiding all of the riddlers challenges and although the enemies can be stupid, when there is a guy of about 20 of them surrounding you it can be a bit harder to keep your combo flowing, but it feels good when you do. Oh I remember Deus Ex, still have it, preferred Half-Life’s story to be fair though. As for the best single player games, I’m thinking Zelda, a few of the older tomb raider games, Banjo Kazooie and a few others. Megaman was what I grew up with and it can still to this day be the most challenging single player game.
DEUS EX… even today is the best FPS ever created…really a classic game.
I remember played DEUS for at least 3 months every day.
Why not a DEUS-EX for current generations??….or maybe today public wants simply and easy rewardable games… i dont konw..
Oh wait, i think you’ve censored me again…i take back the thanks in that case.
As long as you can read it i guess…see this is why censorship is a self defeating idea, i’ve just given you a golden idea and you could completely dismiss it…shame, really.
you should get batman but hang on as there is a GOTY edition coming. its a great game.
Hi Dougiedonut,
I’m sure you are getting as old as the rest of us, but probably not older than me!
Anyway, I remember Deus Ex on the PC and it still remains in my memory bank as one of the best games I have ever played. It was certainly varied and challenging and the different endings added a twist. It really was a ground breaking game.
As we all know, video games have an age rating.
Is it time for video games to come with a difficulty rating, i.e. recommended for Novices, casual gamers, intermediate gamers and advanced gamers
This would allow any gamer of any level to make an informed decision before parting with their money.
Your rant against Batman AA and the other games makes no sense. Maybe you would be happier if every game were an open world Mass Effect style RPG. Your rant doesn’t take into account that Uncharted is that way for a REASON. It’s supposed to be a linear action movie style experience. Just because you didn’t get that doesn’t mean that others didn’t. I, for one, loved Uncharted 2 and I also enjoy the open ended RPG style games you seem to want. They are different styles of games. I would much rather have different types to enjoy than have one type as you seem to want.
How the hell do you still have a blog on the site? Utter tripe. Yes, i get that you are bored with PES, you prefer FIFA. Please, please don’t keep reminding us. We read and visit this site because we still LIKE PES.
The sooner you leave, or at the very least stop publishing these random inane thoughts, the better.
Cheers mate.
A couple of points. Firstly I’ll go back to my running bug with current gen PES. You can no longer choose to play as your mates opposition CPU team when you are playing offline tournaments with some friends. For those of us that like to play PES this way it has effectively killed the multiplayer option, please bring this option back, it was always (and still is) available in the PS2 versions of PES. Human players are much more fun, and challenging to play against than the PES CPU!
Secondly, I recently got Winning Eleven 2010. There is a level of difficulty above Top Player, called Superstar, it is much harder, and enjoyable, than Top Player on PES 2010. See my long post in the forums here, to save me typing it again! It really is amazing how Winning Eleven differs to PES 2010.
http://www.pesgaming.com/showthread.php?t=75168
I also remember Deus Ex! Great game, I had it for the PS2, or was it PS3? Finished it anyway, an early example of a game where you had choices to decide how the game would pan out
^^ The post I linked, I should have said, it’s post number 12 on that thread
That was an interesting article. Pes games (for me) have become easier. The A.I is know where near challenging enough. In pes 2010 next gen i have stopped playing it, because of the poor A.I system they have in place. I have flirted with the other version on the ps2, and the A.i on that system is very different and provides a much more challenging game of footie – I really don’t understand this! How can the A.I be better on an inferior system? Doesn’t make sense.
dd,you might want to try bioshock and the orange box both games in single player offer depth and variety and demonstrate that intelligent thought provoking and challenging games still exist.Has it ever been any different for every brilliant game theres always a dozen average ones you just have to find the wheat in the chaff.
As for ai i personally think fifa10s is pretty dynamic and smart and offers a challenge in world class that pes productions could only dream of in pes and is both challenging and smart and will punish any gaps or mistakes.Naturally nothing ever comes close to a game against another person but fifa10 stikes a good balance in this department.
My biggest concern with pes over the last two years is the degree of control and minipulation of the game by the cpu and your own teammate ai which has taken alot of control and decision making away from the user and seems to be away for pes productions to mask the limited on rail nature of the gameplay and faults within the core of the game.Is it a concious decision by pes productions to dumb pes down to pander to a more mainstream audience or a lack of ability to replicate the deeper facets of the sport.
Needless to say it was not always this way as konami themselves did produce a freeform game of football in iss/perfect striker on the n64/ps2 10 years ago that did have ai that even today is still way ahead of its time.
dd, I think in your desperation to make pes at all acceptable (keep trying) you may have stumbled upon a good direction for this website, and possibly, your online career?
You could turn this site into a shrine for the former glory of pes, and include other old school games that were widely adored. (i’m not joking or taking the mickey btw, i think this is worth you thinking about).
As this site is accessed mainly for its comment boards and open interactions, you could get a bunch of topics and heated debates to keep this site ticking over by talking about all the classics…with pes’ former glory as the pride of the site.
This next part may sound cruel, but the way pes is going, it would seem your site will have nothing new to talk about in 2 years.
I predict PES11 to be the last in europe, being yet another rehash of 08, and winning eleven to continue as an arcade game for the next 5 or so years.
The figures speak for themselves (down collectively 50% sales, on top of the loss of profit made last year). And the voices from konami, as ever, are quite and shy, and oblivious to their worldwide market.
Lightening up a bit… ;)
Batman? Great game, definately reccommend you play it. Not new at all though haha.
DEUS-EX? Also a great game, thanks for reminding me of it, although you asked what game was simular, i would say GTA trounced it, especially san andreas.
Have a think about rebranding your site to one of being a hub for nostalgia DD, i think you’d rock at it.
Thanks for the debate
@15 Yeah, GTA was awesome. I spent countless hours cruising around Vice City and the vast space of San Andreas. 2 of the best games of all time. Even just listening to the radio was a class buzz!
J
Fifa10 might be the best thing to happen to pes as it may well force konami to open its eyes to how good a footie can be with a little effort and innovation.Can konami produce something akin to fifa10,only if they go back to the 90s and expand and evolve the classic they themselves created iss/perfect striker because this is all ea have done with fifa ie descent animation,ai and physics plus layers and layers of player control.
The only danger is restrospective pes fans on wenb and adam the pes messiah himself influencing konami with his own personel desire for a hd pes6 which if you go back to now may well be superior to pes2010 but is not the way forward for pes now.Ten years of iss/perfect striker on the nes,snes,n64,ps1 and ps2 which was sublime with 360 control and full manual control of everything,followed by 10 years of the automated pes with its 8-axis limitations and a step backwards gameplay.For the next ten years what is required is a new game from konami one that takes all the best elements of iss/perfect striker and pes but expands on fifa10s freedom and control ten fold.
I’ve been playing PES obsessively since PES 5 came out and I actually feel that this most recent version is the best yet. 08 and 09 were not the best, granted, but I do feel that 2010 is the true successor to PES 6. I really like it.
I think the reason why single player campaigns in modern games have suffered is less to do with dumbing down and more to do with the rediculous obsession people have with playing against other humans online. Online multiplayer used to be an additional feature in games, but now it’s become the main selling point for a lot of new titles. I don’t play online ever. I just can’t see the point of it and I think its increasing popularity is having a negative effect on the single player market. Microsoft are money-grabbers, and they’re very good at it. In Grid, for example, you can’t have a two-player splitscreen race. What sort of racing game doesn’t do two player splitscreen? It’s rediculous. If you want a two player, you either have to fork out 40 quid a year on Xbox Live or get your mate to buy another Xbox, link cable and a copy of the game. We are all falling victim to corporate greed and we need to be aware of this.
I really hope they continue to make PES for years to come. It would be a very sorry state of affairs if FIFA became the only choice in footy games. EA already have the monopoly on sports sims as it is, and while their American sports games are very good, they just can’t compete with PES when it comes to footy games in my opinion.
Rant over. Apologies! I’m just very passionate about PES.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Will it happen no because ea have all konamis talented coders(major a) working for them now that worked on there descent footie games.
Gav 18
But dont you want more,are you not feed up with the same game we have had for the last ten years,konami have lost there passion happy to churn out a ten year old game every year without doing much with it.Pes09 was one of the best pes games while flawed 12 months of tweaks and refinement would of given us a great game this year instead we have pes2010 the most automated and contrived pes to date but with the most gorgeous graphics.
Spend a few months with fifa10 my friend open your mind and experience a game that is light years ahead of where konami are right now with pes.You might feel at first your turning to the darkside or cheating on your first love but this will be replaced with euphoria in time and a real distane for pes productions and how there short changing there fan base every year.
I havent been on this forum in a while (probly a few months) but has there been a patch out for PES10 on PS3 yet? last time i checked i couldnt find it anywere?
cheers
W
Even if your post was a reasonable one, PES 2010 is still a bad game online…
So that whole AI talk is just another diversion.
fifa is good. Pro evo going to the dogs. Bad game!
I see no 1 is on here no more. It must be that they have made a bad job on the game. So no 1 cares no more. Ow dear what have they done to the game? May be fifa wil be the best of football games next year. As pro evo is no more. At the end of this year wil be big. They wil have to work on the game play on pro. If its as bad as its been for the last 3years well its good night to pro evo team.
And your blog has exactly wht to do with PES? Oh, Sod all…
Seems as if Konamis failing have trickled down to this site too…
I love the way this ite claims to be so impartial, representative of die hard PES fans and our direct channel in to Konami… What a joke!
Next time try to write something topical that is actually PES related oh and try to make it interesting next time. The fact that you have no friends and prefer to play alone is really not at all suprising or of much interest!
The only way for this site to make PES better is to get stuck into Konami with all the problems concerning PES, not to divert the attention to other gaming matters. I buy Pes every year and I want a great football game for xmas 2010, not Deux Ex 6.
@ 25
Stop being an utter **** – at least DD takes time to write a coloumn, which Im sure he doesn’t do just so complete nonces like you can come along and knock him.
Try writing an article yourself if your so amazin, or better still, get back over on the FIFA boards
I have made the point that PES 2010 is too easy on Top Player recently, but lately it seems like the game is redeeming itself the more I play it. This weekend was utter magic in Master League for me.
My team is not the best (best player is 83 overall, SMF), and I think that is only fair because you shouldn’t complain about the AI being too easy if your team is a Galacticos-like side. Anyway, I lost last year in the CL final, and this year almost didn’t make it into the knock out stage (lost 4-0 to BRAGA in the qualification round and needed to win my last two games to advance, did so on the final day, by one goal!!!). So, I’m in the hunt again this year, but financially we are having some trouble, and my best player is now out injured for 3 months (again, don’t complain about the difficutly if you have all the best trainers so you get no injuries). Now, I’ve sold off a few good players and financially we’re doing better. We’re tops in the EPL (wolves) and I think this might finally be the year for us in the CL. However, when I’m up against really good sides I find my team struggles to win free balls and is often out-paced. We had another great game against one such team (a stacked Liverpool side) this weekend, with me winning it in the 80th min on a penalty, then just barely hanging on for the last ten mins. Yes, at times the game verges on being too easy, aspecially as your side becomes full of superstars, but what I experienced this weekend, for me, shows that this year’s game has the potentially to be great, even if only depending on how your season progresses and a bit of luck (good and/or bad) here and there.
PEACE
Jam-Ez… Sorry, I didnt expect DD’s mum would be on here fighting his battles for him… Y’t*t!
Hi dougiedonut,
I think you are just getting old man! No offense.
I’m 36, which means i’m getting far from the age-range all these games are targeted to, and I simply don’t enjoy them that much anymore. However, I still find it quite fun playing vs humans side by side or online.
I also think game developers these days are increasingly focused on the online experience. On developing a platform where online players make their own game. The developers basically build the stadium and sell you tickets to come play with your friends. Then the developer can focus on selling you tickets to additional theaters (map packs for example) or more tools that will “enhance” your online experience.
In business terms it’s probably a great idea. They don’t only make money from the game but have other revenue streams from those buying patches or whatever the developer is selling. Also, the more people play vs other humans, the less we complain about the AI which is the toughest for the developer to get right. And next year the game gets repackaged with some minor improvements and the cycle begins again.
On a side note about AI tough, it is very difficult to make it better and better. You need to account for endless possibilities of what players might do and have “intelligent” responses to each of them that make sense. If you are familiar with excel functions….this is like a string of millions of IF statements. =IF(player fires, then hide, otherwise then attack.) or: IF(player throws granade, run for your life, but if he doesn’t stay still)
Anyway man, back to my original thought, I think the older you get the more you are interested in the game not just being challenging but also realistic (in terms of AI for example.) Which is something you probably did not care that much for or were less demanding about years ago!
BTW, thanks for your blog. It makes for interesting reading for those of us fans of PES.
cheers
half life is a good single player game
Try Assassins creed 2, great game!
?
I really agree with Pavel (30.)
its tough to program the A.I to react with the nature the player plays. Thats y it seems more better to play against human opponents. For now, i got so tired with the glitches of pes 2010 that i stopped playing the game. Its unplayable really; the refereeing (lost a lot of possible freekicks, penalties, card situations), defensive A.I, top players not reacting proper in big games, super human goalkeeping by some GK rated 60.. can go on like this..
Hey DD,
If you want an old-school single player challenge, and you own a PS3, I have two words for you: DEMON’S SOULS. An absolutely brilliant game that requires true gaming skills to beat.
I also think you should give Batman: Arkham Asylum a try. While there is a degree of hand-holding, it does provide more of a challenge than you might think. And the combat, while seemingly simple, actually has a fair amount of depth to it.
I agree about Demon’s Souls. Great game by “From Software,” the makers of Kings Field on the PS2 back in the day… It also has some very imaginative solutions to the AI-challenge aspect of games, in that you are essentially always online, and people can enter your game.
I also agree that making the AI better is easier said than done. The problem though is that so many different people play the game differently, and also interpret it differently. What some see as a challenge others see as cheating. Some try to cheat, while others play fair, etc, etc, etc.
The solution isn’t easy, but they must continue to do their best. My opinion is that they need to give us a more engrossing master-league-like online mode for next year. Online master league would rule, and it would help control the barca problem too, because there would be leagues and so your ML team would be up against similarly ranked sides.
^^ I got Winning Eleven 2010. It has another level of difficulty above Top Player, called Super Star. The AI is much better than PES Top Player
^^^^
Is Winning Eleven 2010 there for PC?
Dougiedonut
I must say I agree with most of what you say. The fact is, good (meaning realistic) AI is very difficult to program for any game, and PES isn’t as much of a challenge as most people would like when playing against AI, and I don’t really see it improving much in future iterations. Personally I get around this by limiting myself in a few ways (in master league) – I only buy players from asian countries, I always have the operating cost for doctor set to level 1 and I always sell my players if they get too good.
However, I think that just because a game isn’t challenging to play doesn’t mean it is irrelevant. Some games I play for the experience rather than the challenge – Uncharted 2 for instance I thought was a brilliant and very satisfying experience. But in a very different way to multiplayer games such as Left 4 Dead.
I think single player PES is more about the experience for me. Whilst I would welcome improved AI, I think their time would be better spent in making a more in depth Master League mode. Something along the lines of Football Manager would be nice :)
Dude, Deus Ex was legendary; thanks for reminding me of it, I’ve just installed it again and it’s as awesome as ever.
I never completed it so I’m going to have another crack at it now. I got all the way to the final level then stupidly downloaded a program called Display Doctor to try and get it to run better (I was using my dad’s old 500mhz PC at the time so game-play was jerky even on lowest settings).
The program completely messed up my dad’s PC and we had to format the hard drive, which meant I lost all my save game data, he was not happy and neither was I. Man, that was about 11 years ago.
I found it at the bottom of my cupboard a few months back and didn’t think it would run on Vista, as most of my old games don’t (Doom 3 and Age of Empires 3 won’t work at all), but it did.
Anyway, now I have a Dell Studio XPS with a Ci7 processor, 6 GB of Ram and a Radeon HD 4870 x 2 duel graphics card so I reckon I could probably run a million Deus Ex’s on full settings.
To this day I still haven’t played a game as in-depth as Deus Ex; I remember going into a bar on what I think was the China level and causing carnage – it was hilarious…
…The story line was cracking as well and maybe quite relevant to recent times. Dark sinister shadow organisations plotting to take over the world; it sounds very much like the Bilderberg Group and their plot to install a one world government – and with ratification of the Lisbon treaty we are well on our way.
I’m in the middle of reading Daniel Estulin’s book called: The True Story of The Bilderberg, it’s awesome, and quite scary, to think that there are a group of secret elitists plotting towards a New World Order that hide in secret societies like the Council on Foreign relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission (TC), the Illuminati, freemasonry, Bilderberg Group and here in Britain an organisation called Common Purpose, which controls the public sector.
There’s also a good program on channel 200, on sky TV, called On the Edge, which talks a lot about these sorts of things. David Noakes was on there last Thursday talking about the EU, the Bilderberg Group and how Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the Queen should be tried for treason for destroying the sovereignty of the UK.
Deus Ex 3 is coming out soon so maybe we won’t have wait that much longer for a game that raises the bar again – if it’s anything like the first one was when it was released then the gaming world could be in for a shake up.
Speaking of Deus Ex, what ever happened to the Getaway being released on PS3 a while back? Totally awesome game
Love reading you’re column. I also play on the PC as the presentation is far superiour to the console version.
I would like to hear your opinions on the PC version.
I believe if Konami get the online side of the game working people would be more forgiving on the other small faults.
tell me all the new players real names and the classic teams real names
for the new update february 2010