TheMemoman
Registered User
There has been so much head-scratching bashing of PES 2008 that, well, I just couldn't stay silent anymore. So here's a very delayed and seriously thought-through review of PES 2008 in the light of PES 2009 and next to it's competition FIFA 2008, both franchises whose 2008 entries I've played. Or just a rant, either wat it's honest.
[I saw WEZ, Thugzmaster and Itsme say it loud and proud on the PES 2009 announcements comment section, and I had to speak my mind in support.]
PES 2008 is the best soccer game out in the market, and I gotta say something that may not make me the most popular guy around: It seems, from what I've noticed from my friends, that those who bash PES 2008 (mostly as FIFA reborns) just are... bad at it. Really, I'm sorry to say it but it's an empirically collected fact. No offense to them, and I'll speak of it no more, It was necessary for me to say it in order to show my honesty.
I will however speak of what is good from PES 2008.
The graphics with a good video card and full detail on PC are great, and I gotta say, I like them better than the FIFA 2008 ones: FIFA looks burned with it's quasi-sepia-nextgen-brownish light filter, and some players may have a thousand more polygons, but they just don't look like their real life counter parts, sorry but they don't, much less when it matter: in PES you can still pick them out just from looking at them from affar and by how they feel when you control them, this is impossible to do in FIFA 08. Also the animation, well it's just superior in PES2008, that compared to every other single football game made in the history of the current homo sapiens sapiens. Everyday I discover a new move, or a keeper makes a standing-ovation-worthy save after an awesome surprise shot, it's just footballing love translated to animation, you can't beat that with no mather how many millions of dollars in production. FIFA still, to this day, has players that run like they have a serious issue with their hips.
FIFA has amazing sound and commentary, and they bought and monopolized all the licenses. I'll give them that and their nice menus.
PES music sucks, in 2008 it's horrible. But i turn it off and play iTunes' Radio Memo or Radio Trippy and I am game, set and match for the music.
However, I hate when players just seem unable to control a lost ball, or when they stop-and-go instead of keeping on running on a counter, or when deflections always fall back on the striker's feet, or when everysingle goddamn AI freekick is an instant goal, or when the low pass from the wing to the penalty box is sent just a couples steps behind the rushing center forward, or when 3 or 4 good, honest tackles fail to bring down a "Magical One".
PES 2008 is not perfect, but with it I learned to play the most beautiful and artistic style of football that I could imagine. Plays can be mesmerizing, people will cheer in true footballing awe: A game between to good players in and overall experience of tense jeet-kune-do-focused ability (and a bit of luck), akin' to a GO challenge between equally leveled masters, creating offensive plays that are intricate webs of perfect timing and coordination, like an unstoppable force rushing to it's inevitable glory, or defensive behemosts, inpenetrable and armored, coordinated to perfection to close even the tiniest opening and contain a blizzard with barehands, or just getting right that near-impossible, last-ressource "it has got to work or I'm screwed" tackle, you know the one. And the best part is when in-tune, just in time for the beginning of a small 4, 6 or even 8 friends tournament I can truly deliver an expression of top class utopian mechanical-orange, brazilian-magic kinda of football performance.
I loved mastering the new feints and deft turns, so much more responsive and useful, like chainable devastating combos of tricks. Those perfectly timed passes and through-balls. Those perfectly weighted lobs. Getting those corner kicks and freekicks tuned tight. That subtle and powerful running-while-shielding-the-ball technique. Just getting the right amount of power to obscenely blast-it home and not over doing it. Cheek-in-tongue going that one last step too far into "magic overflow" while trying to create an obscenely vulgarly gorgeous, work-of-art goal, that sometimes you actually manage to pull off in the most unbelievable moment and it's goddamn sweet!
You just know how much soul has been put into this game and why FIFA's pretty-lit, headless-chicken-random running-and-bumping-around, broken, sluggish gameplay is not even close to disturbing PES. I love football, good football, and I'm not distracted by shiny things.
I'm Amazed by the news on PES 2009.
[I saw WEZ, Thugzmaster and Itsme say it loud and proud on the PES 2009 announcements comment section, and I had to speak my mind in support.]
PES 2008 is the best soccer game out in the market, and I gotta say something that may not make me the most popular guy around: It seems, from what I've noticed from my friends, that those who bash PES 2008 (mostly as FIFA reborns) just are... bad at it. Really, I'm sorry to say it but it's an empirically collected fact. No offense to them, and I'll speak of it no more, It was necessary for me to say it in order to show my honesty.
I will however speak of what is good from PES 2008.
The graphics with a good video card and full detail on PC are great, and I gotta say, I like them better than the FIFA 2008 ones: FIFA looks burned with it's quasi-sepia-nextgen-brownish light filter, and some players may have a thousand more polygons, but they just don't look like their real life counter parts, sorry but they don't, much less when it matter: in PES you can still pick them out just from looking at them from affar and by how they feel when you control them, this is impossible to do in FIFA 08. Also the animation, well it's just superior in PES2008, that compared to every other single football game made in the history of the current homo sapiens sapiens. Everyday I discover a new move, or a keeper makes a standing-ovation-worthy save after an awesome surprise shot, it's just footballing love translated to animation, you can't beat that with no mather how many millions of dollars in production. FIFA still, to this day, has players that run like they have a serious issue with their hips.
FIFA has amazing sound and commentary, and they bought and monopolized all the licenses. I'll give them that and their nice menus.
PES music sucks, in 2008 it's horrible. But i turn it off and play iTunes' Radio Memo or Radio Trippy and I am game, set and match for the music.
However, I hate when players just seem unable to control a lost ball, or when they stop-and-go instead of keeping on running on a counter, or when deflections always fall back on the striker's feet, or when everysingle goddamn AI freekick is an instant goal, or when the low pass from the wing to the penalty box is sent just a couples steps behind the rushing center forward, or when 3 or 4 good, honest tackles fail to bring down a "Magical One".
PES 2008 is not perfect, but with it I learned to play the most beautiful and artistic style of football that I could imagine. Plays can be mesmerizing, people will cheer in true footballing awe: A game between to good players in and overall experience of tense jeet-kune-do-focused ability (and a bit of luck), akin' to a GO challenge between equally leveled masters, creating offensive plays that are intricate webs of perfect timing and coordination, like an unstoppable force rushing to it's inevitable glory, or defensive behemosts, inpenetrable and armored, coordinated to perfection to close even the tiniest opening and contain a blizzard with barehands, or just getting right that near-impossible, last-ressource "it has got to work or I'm screwed" tackle, you know the one. And the best part is when in-tune, just in time for the beginning of a small 4, 6 or even 8 friends tournament I can truly deliver an expression of top class utopian mechanical-orange, brazilian-magic kinda of football performance.
I loved mastering the new feints and deft turns, so much more responsive and useful, like chainable devastating combos of tricks. Those perfectly timed passes and through-balls. Those perfectly weighted lobs. Getting those corner kicks and freekicks tuned tight. That subtle and powerful running-while-shielding-the-ball technique. Just getting the right amount of power to obscenely blast-it home and not over doing it. Cheek-in-tongue going that one last step too far into "magic overflow" while trying to create an obscenely vulgarly gorgeous, work-of-art goal, that sometimes you actually manage to pull off in the most unbelievable moment and it's goddamn sweet!
You just know how much soul has been put into this game and why FIFA's pretty-lit, headless-chicken-random running-and-bumping-around, broken, sluggish gameplay is not even close to disturbing PES. I love football, good football, and I'm not distracted by shiny things.
I'm Amazed by the news on PES 2009.
