An Ode to My Ongoing Pes Addiction

You know, there is always a moment before I am about to start playing Video Games where I go through a certain thought process. It usually goes like this: I start to think of what I am going to play, and all the same ideas come up — should I continue my Fallout New Vegas playthrough, or continue to raise my fledgling army in Mount And Blade: Bannerlord?

However, all these possibilities become insignificant when one certain thought heads into my mind, eventually consuming all else and then leading me to my usual outcome — Pro Evolution Soccer, aka PES.

I have always spent a lot of my free time playing football games, but before the release of EFootball Pes 2020, (still one of the worst names for a game I have heard of), I was able to balance it all out. I used to play FIFA — which as the years have gone by has become a shadow of itself, a game more obsessed with getting young kids to waste all their parent’s money on pack opening than making meaningful improvements to gameplay. However, it has all the licenses, great presentation, and commentary that sounds half-decent in comparison to real life.

For a while, this was enough to whet my appetite, plus all the years of muscle memory I had built up were enough to make me quite good at the game, able to breeze through career mode at the hardest difficulty and barely lose a game. But then something happened for the first time since I started playing the series; I got bored.

I got bored of the football unrealistically pinging straight to a player’s feet, I got bored of the ridiculous moves you could pull off, I got bored of the basic gameplay that seemed to be boiled down to: through ball into fast striker, then tap in; also add in the blatant scripting of games and stupidity of the Goalkeepers, this all led to me finally running out of enjoyment for the franchise.

I had always been curious about Pes, but had always been put off by the presentation, as well as the years of muscle memory I had built with FIFA, but after the stellar reviews of Pes 2020, I decided to give it a whirl. I started simple, put the difficulty on Pro, which seemed to be the equivalent of normal difficulty, then got the shock of my life.

I was terrible. My passes were either way too short, straight into the opposition, or went straight into the stands. I could not get any rhythm in the game, even playing as Liverpool or Man City I was being outclassed at every turn, with everything I was attempting being read by the opposition. Although this may seem quite frustrating, it was the first time in years where I really felt something that Fifa seemed to forget over the years — I was playing a game of football.

The ball was unpredictable, flailing about in the wind and feeling like its own entity, instead of an extension of the player; the AI played like an actual football team, able to have great moments of play and unpredictable mishaps. What this led to was a desire to get better, a hunger that I did not have for so long in a sports game to actually improve on what I could do, to learn the game.

And fast forward to now. It has been a year and a half since I first started my foray back into Pes. I can now play on Legend difficulty, but if I am not on my best form can easily be beaten. I have played nearly 500 hours of both Pes 20 and 21, which is only a small update to 20 but is reflected in its £15 asking price. Sure, it is not perfect. Referees are borderline useless at times, the crowd noises and presentation are leagues behind Fifa, and the commentary is honestly about 10 years behind every other game; I am not sure how many more times I can take Jim Beglin shouting, “He’s pulled off a fine save!” after a shot a hungover Sunday league goalie could make. Also, the career mode is in desperate need of invention, after doing some research into older Pes games it seems to have stayed the same for the past 7 years and similarly to Fifa, some of the older career modes seem to have more features in them.

So, it says a lot about the gameplay of Pes where once I get going — I cannot stop, and hours of my life just disappear, which is different to when I played FIFA and would only pop on for an hour or so. There are multiple standout games that I can still remember now; my favourite being the 5–4 win I got in my career mode. I started as Burnley, and after managing to win the Premier League in a Leicester City-esque second season, got the job at Manchester City. After a great season, winning every title possible, it was an all-English showdown in the Champions League Final, with Liverpool as the opponents. Up until the 80th minute I was in control, dominating the game at 3–1. Suddenly, Liverpool went for broke, throwing all their players up front and abandoning any form of a defence. I completely panicked, and in 3 consecutive attacks Liverpool scored, leaving me with 2 minutes left in the game with the score at 3–4. Then, in the final kick of the normal time, Erling Braut Haaland, my star signing, toe poked a speculative arial through ball past Allison and forced the game into extra time. In the first attack from kick off, Matteo Guendouzi (playing far better than real life form would suggest I might add) ran past 3 players and scored. A very nervy couple of minutes ensued, but I was able to hold on and win City’s first ever Champions League, or should I say, the European Club Championship (another reminder of FIFA’s money bags approach to licencing.) Although you don’t get the cool theme tune, I would take that awesome game I have just described over FIFA’s licenses any day of the week.

Still though, as previously mentioned, Pes does have a lot of issues. Therefore, it makes the fact that I have spent hundreds of hours here far more impressive; I have quit other games for far less problems than the ones I have listed but like always — gameplay trumps all. With the extended time that Konami have spent working on Pes 22, the first Pes designed for current gen consoles, I have little doubt that while PES will never fully take Fifa’s crown in terms of sales, it has every chance to further pull away as the superior simulation of the beautiful game.