Do you know where I thought we'd be with football games now? Seriously, after
25 years of PES (and FIFA for that matter)?
Just imagine at the end of each Master League season, you get one of these - featuring highlights from all your games. Month by month, you see your best goals and your opponent's best goals, with the actual commentary that was used at the time - even mentioning your best stats (e.g.
"1,104 minutes without conceding"). You see your manager avatar's reactions, the crowd's reactions, the managers who have been sacked, or retired - and their replacements. All set to music that reflects whether you've hit your targets or not (some sad acoustic guitar song if you're relegated etc.)...
If I've dedicated
hours of my life to my Master League save, I'd love a look back at my season when it had finished. The penalty that got us through to the quarter-final of the FA Cup. The fingertip save that knocked us out of the semi. My star striker's final goal for the club, before he signed for Man United...
25 years is a fucking long time. Think about who you were 25 years ago and everything that's happened in that time - think of what you could have accomplished if you were given one job to do. The tech has moved on, and game development has moved on. Look at what 2K do with the NBA games etc...
So I was thinking that, by now, PES gameplay would be so top-tier, so realistic, so absolutely awesome, that we'd have totally frivilous shit like the above to enjoy, to add some extra emotion. I even had fantasies that AI speech tech would be able to drop your manager's name into the commentary.
I did not imagine for one second some of us would be playing the games from a decade or two ago, to get - in some areas - a better simulation (e.g. AI players actually using their attributes to play like their real-life counterparts instead of every player being identical under the AI's control).
Instead of having all the licenses, or hundreds of stadiums, or innovative controls, or a deep management mode with various staff roles, youth squads with their own league performance to worry about etc... This is where we are in 2020:
Look at the goals scored in PES6. Dribbling, long-range screamers... Whole pieces of football now pretty much absent.
I mean.
What happened?
So, sure - happy 25th birthday, PES. You gave me some of my happiest memories, all those years ago. But not many since. Please get your shit together for the real football fans, and not just the myClub Pocket Money Club, for 2022.