
We'd qualified for the Champions League a couple times by finishing top four and found the group stages quite easy, but then kept getting dumped out in the quarter finals. PSG ran us over without noticing we were there one year and then the next year we won 1-0 in Munich, then lost 3-0 at home.
The next year we cruised through a group featuring Juventus and Porto, then immediately ran into an Atleti stonewall in the first knockout round for 0-0 and 0-0 before losing on penalties.
So... about that Champions League. The following year I had what looked like an easier group but I got myself into real trouble.
We drew the home opener with Levekusen and then lost the next game away to Lyon to immediately put ourselves in a hole. Despite bouncing back from that we still needed to beat Porto in our final game to guarantee progress.
We only managed a draw, but it proved to be enough to scrape through in second.
In the first knockout round we smash Schalke 7-2 yadda yadda and then it's on to the Quarter Finals where Atleti are waiting for us yet again.
We lost 1-0 in Madrid to about the dumbest goal I've ever seen, meaning we'd have to get a result at home but in that home leg we immediately fall behind 2-0 in the first half hour.
That's 3-0 on aggregate and Atleti's two away goals mean we have to score four times in an hour. f*ck.
Riiiight at the end of the half Ben Brereton sneaks onto a through ball at the edge of the Madrid area and fires across the keeper into the far corner to make it 1-2(1-3) and it's not much, but it is a tiny sliver of hope.
Which turns into my best comeback ever.
Four unanswered goals, 4-2 on the night, 4-3 on aggregate.
In the semi-finals we get Barca and that game turns out to be much easier than Atleti, thankfully. Once again we lose 1-0 in Spain, but then we're ahead 3-0 at half time of the home leg and that's the final score, putting us into the final where we'll meet... Real Madrid.
Madrid have got Mbappe now and he sprints away from my midfield right before half time and gets yanked down by a defender about an inch inside the area. Mbappe stands up and takes the penalty himself for 1-0.
On 70 minutes he scores again, latching onto the rebound from a fantastic save to tap into an empty net for 2-0.
I don't really have too much to do here now. My regular second striker behind Brereton is injured, so I have to throw on squad player Thomas Olivier Amang who has a lot of pace and not much else.
He immediately scores with his first touch.
The remainder of the game turns into the Amang show, as the tired Spanish defenders can't handle his speed and he could have four goals in 15 minutes.
Ultimately he only gets two, but that's all I need to force the game into extra time where youth product Euan Wilson, who might be the slowest winger the world has ever seen, is left completely unmarked for a long punt upfield, dribbles in from the left and slots home near post for 3-2 AET.
The perfect time for FIFA20 to go on deep sale.
I saw some PES 2021 Youtube content pass by, went on Amazon and saw that the game was already discounted from 30EUR to 20EUR. Delivery is scheduled for Friday
(honestly, I never got the outrage on Konami skipping this year. It seems like a far more honest approach than the usual sports games schtick of promising REVOLUTIONARY improvements and then charging full price for a roster update and Ultimate Team/ MyClub reset)
So the SpoonyPizza review I posted above is 100% correct, except for that fact that the refereeing against AI still stinks.
So yes, the players are more responsive when dribbling or performing skill moves, and shielding the ball has been nerfed a bit. Which are definitely improvements. That nerfing has highlighted the bad refereeing even more though: you lose the ball more easily to the AI, but you get a foul when trying to steal the ball from them.
The roster updates are a joke for the smaller competitions by the way, as in NOTHING has changed since last season for the Belgian league. I mean, it's nice that I can still play with Kompany and Chadli at Anderlecht, but come on Konami!
All that said, I'm hooked again because PES.
Oh and Football Manager 2020 is still available for FREE on the Epic Game Store, until 24 September.
With the COVID situation I should probably let go of my console-only policy for soccer games. It's been 6 months since we last got together and played some local couch matches now, with no sign of things getting better soon. Next year, if they don't have a vaccine, I'll get it on PC and finally get to spend more time installing mods and add-ons than actually playing the game
The AI does that thing again where every chance = a goal for sure. I think PES 2020 is the only soccer game I ever played that didn't have that issue. So I won a game 4-1 with shots on goal 8-1, lost 0-1 with shots being 4-1, etc. I've also had to turn down one level for now.
Give yourself a break though. You're coming not just from PES 2020, but from The Other Franchise. Creating chances is all about feeling how far you can dribble/pass without losing the ball, and that takes a while to grock.
Agreed on all accounts (and actually I've fallen of the bandwagon again), apart from the midfield play. I'm getting a lot more than 6 shots combined, in Regular/Professional against AI and online. Most chances come from losing the ball in midfield, and the opposition being a little bit out of position. At least for me, as I'm horrible at dribbling.
I'm really praying that PES 2022 will be the real deal. There are so many little annoyances baked in right now, like the editor as you mentioned, the stupid limit on number of imported images on PS4, the horrible GUI, the cheesy Master League animations, the atrocious commentators, and so on.
and again, yes, presentation, which I'd said for years didn't matter and it turns out I was lying.
It just gets tiresome after so many years. I rationalized it as Konami being the scruffy underdog. But it's just a lack of focus and direction. So many small dev teams get it right in their indie games, but Konami can't?
Neither game really knows how inside forwards work
imo in PES they work slightly better than default if you set them up as CF or SS positioned as wide as the formation editor will allow rather than WF (which is where it puts them by default).
I played the AI in MyClub, on Superstar level after only playing in regular or pro, and it was peak PES.
Bayern dominated possession without creating any real chances, until they got a light free kick on the edge of the box. It went in. With my first two chances, one from a cross and one from a combination in the centre, I got ahead 1-2. The first one especially was one you would never see in FIFA: a tap-in deflected by the defender that went in under the keeper after he briefly touched it.
Then I tried to head a lobbed pas back to the keeper, but for some reason my defender did a diving header while the attacker tried to volley. Dangerous play said the ref, and he put the ball in the exact same spot. It went in again, same spot same player same everything.
In the second half, Bayern scored a beauty. They crossed the ball from before the box, and Lewandowski headed it into the net. I was furious, because I couldn't do anything to stop it, but that's kind of a good thing sometimes? Beckham scored a screamer from outside the box to make it 3-3, nobody scored in extra time (despite a few nail-biting scrimmages) and then the only un-PES thing happened: I won the penalty shootout!
My first game at higher difficulty did show that the AI is much more versatile in its attack patterns. They took shots from outside the box when I successfully blocked their passing lines, scored a beauty from a cross and mix up high balls with through balls. If only they had fixed the refereeing...
juv3nal wrote:Neither game really knows how inside forwards workimo in PES they work slightly better than default if you set them up as CF or SS positioned as wide as the formation editor will allow rather than WF (which is where it puts them by default).
I'll have to give that a shot
What do you want them to do? I see the modern winger/inside forward like Hazard or Messi as someone who cuts into the centre AFTER they get the ball and only sometimes tries to find space in the center off the ball.
Also: this review of FIFA 21 is brutal. I'm not sure how bona fide he is, I follow his channel because his tutorial video's cut right to the chase and are very much on point. But the weird physics and bland lighting issues are very apparent regardless of SpoonyPizza's reviewing chops.
What do you want them to do? I see the modern winger/inside forward like Hazard or Messi as someone who cuts into the centre AFTER they get the ball and only sometimes tries to find space in the center off the ball.
I'll admit my preference to playing them not as WF may not be realistic but mainly I want more people attacking central areas when I'm controlling a guy on the opposite flank ready to serve up a cross or cutback. WF prioritizing width can lead to less favourable angles for one-time shooting. Come to think of it though I also haven't really played around with the false-9 strategy which might be another way to help that.
So KnightMD is biased, but he does a great show of what makes PES so good (on the pitch, at least).
Here is my simple take. I assume Knight is playing on one of the hardest difficulty levels, and as he notes, he's using manual passing/shooting, which are not exactly welcoming to first-timers!
I shouldn't have to use do either of those things to get the game to play a good, realistic-feeling game of soccer.
He's playing on Superstar, which is pretty meaty indeed. You can always use manual passing, when holding the left trigger you pass/shoot/cross manual as well. That works best for me: in most situations the auto-pass is just fine but I'm training to go manual once in a while, when I want to make sure the pass goes to the right guy.
Honestly, I got that realistic-feeling game of soccer mostly. In MyClub, the vs COM challenges are usually 2 games in regular and then one in professional. I barely beat Juventus 1-0 on regular because of their playing style, but then beat Liverpool on professional 7-0. Okay maybe that's not realistic, granted, but the playing style was definitely true to form. I dominated less against Liverpool, and had real trouble getting out of defence due to their gegenpress. But when I did, it almost lead to a great opportunity. Juventus played much more conservatively, almost parking the bus, but they were never ever going to win.
On another note: I stink online. In PES 2020 I occasionally won a game online, maybe 30% of the time. Now I just get clobbered time and again
I need to stay clear of MyClub, it's toxic. It always makes me feel like I'm not doing enough to grind, improve the team, etc. If the best multiplayer modes weren't packed in there, I would have quit a long time ago, but it's not worth it. Games shouldn't feel like work because the publisher needs a revenue stream, dammit.
Fifa 21 has just been added to EA Play (Not Pro, just base EA Play). which means it's also available if you have GamePass Ultimate.
I was really disappointed in FIFA20 to the point that I went back to FIFA18, but I downloaded 21 yesterday to give it a chance and it's still just complete garbage.
Defending is laughable in these two latest versions and the advice from the usual youtube suspects seems to be to tell your fullbacks to constantly hang back when you go forward and don't use contain at all if you can help it, because EA have clearly not watched any modern games of football.
This feels a lot like what happened to PES around the 07/08 time period where they completely lost direction with their game.
Does anyone have experience with PES mods for PC? I have the game on PS4, but I just want to go super optimized single player now.
A football-management game called We Are Football has just released. Reception on Steam is "mixed" right now.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...
I hope the devs make some post-release tweaks to improve it. Back in the 1990s, I was an aficionado of the genre, and there were so many management games: Championship Manager, Player Manager, Tracksuit Manager, The Manager, Football Director, Graham Taylor's Soccer Challenge, Ultimate Soccer Manager, Premier Manager, Graeme Souness Soccer Manager... and probably a bunch more I can't remember.
Nowadays, there is one. Football Manager. I mean... I understand that FM is basically untouchable as an in-depth simulation of football management, but surely there is room for some niche entries in the genre that have a different focus and are less dense. (In the same way, there must be space for football action games that are not trying to be photo-realistic replicas of the televisual experience, a la FIFA and PES).
I'll keep dreaming, I suppose.
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