Taking a step back from the PES build-up provides a nice bit of time for contemplation.
This year we've seen Konami finally, after a decade of begging, take note of what the community wants. This is something that I thought would never happen, Konami seemed to be running PES akin to how the FIA regulate F1 - in that no matter how hard they try, fans keep coming back. So that's something beneficial in the long run.
For these past few years we've seen people say that FIFA is the only next-gen football game. For me, this sums up what a piss-poor state the football game market has been in. For the best game in a market to be labelled as... suitable for its generation always sounded a bit odd to me. The joy of PES on the PS2 was that you felt you were playing a game that felt way too advanced for the technology it was played upon. Which is where the problem lies for me, we were told that PES was hitting technological barriers around PES3/4. I connected the dots from this to mean that they were begining to develop with the next generation in mind, so that they have a headstart on the new wave of technology.
Obviously there was a fuck up somewhere.
There's little point lamenting on how poor 2008/2009 were because you can click on any of the pages in this thread and find some angry words with some angry emoticons informing you of how the illuminati colluded to give PES 2008 8/10 instead of 0.
I wouldn't say that there is a raging fanboy inside of me, as I am a casual gamer at best, but I do eagerly anticipate each PES game - Primarily for the fact that if any game is capable of disintegrating our socks, it's the one that filled my underwear back in the day. Fifa's current position as the best football game is a bit of a hollow one really, it's almost anticlimatic in a sense. Following PES from the PS1 days was almost like an underdog story, we followed the little game that could as it reached a crescendo with one of the greatest games of all time (PES5/6, both could apply I guess). PES triumphing over Fifa for me was like the Man Utd Vs Bayern CL final, it was the bomb diggity.
Right now, Fifa's recent victory feels like a Johnstone's Paint Trophy Semi Final (first leg), where one of the teams arrived with 3 players, one of which missing a leg. Simply put, PES hasn't turned up. One day they will muster together some of the left over nuggets of joy and churn out the game we've been waiting for.
which proved to be
