01.13.08
Don’t steal my number
wtf? Suddenly Robbie Savage, Chris Gunter and Jonny Evans are jealous of my number 44 and wear them for their new clubs.
I love the number 4 and it was my squad number for my team in high school. It’s a number for a defensive midfielder and it’s also a lucky number in Japanese culture. So why not be twice as lucky and pick 44?
The only other person who had worn 44 in the Premiership was Kazuyuki Toda at his Tottenham spell.
01.10.08
Let the Newcastle fans manage the team
Because they’re the ones who call the shots every time. It was as if they are the “instated” managers in that club. Yes I know the fans are very very very passionate about the club. But even then, please respect who’s being paid for the job.
In sacking Big Sam, they’ve left a team practically devoid of confidence to face Man United and Arsenal in the next 3 games. That’s suicidal.
I can’t see anyone in those games not to lay down and die, seriously. Alan Smith can run around and show his temperamental side and do as many rash tackles as he wants, but that would only make him end his participation in the match after 3 minutes because of the newly-introduced “tackle law” these referees are policing these days.
Alan Shearer didn’t help the cause. Rejecting the job offer, even after having previously been assistant to Glenn Roeder and also working his socks off in Scotland for a managerial pro license, means that the most likely person to walk into the job and the legend who the fans would genuinely accept and give their backing, high or low, had bottled it.
But the most riveting in Big Sam’s sacking is that the team is only 11th in the table. In previous years I’ve seen Newcastle fighting for relegation in the early campaign for goodness’ sake. A great run followed which sent them to Europe. I bet Big Sam would pull the same, especially with his great dealing in the transfer market which would have allowed real top defenders to move to Tyneside and plug the defence. Now I don’t know if they could even buy any.
That also underlines the expectations the fans have at that club. Such pressure is applied on the playing staff that it makes them shake. It makes them do gaffes and mistakes that made top and rising defenders like Boumsong (France international), Rozehnal (Czech first-team defender), Cacapa (won a load of medals with Lyon) and Bramble (was a promising talent at Ipswich) become utter idiots in defending at St James’ Park.
This bloody pressure have also ousted the managers at Newcastle over the years. I say let them be the manager. It’s a new concept, but they should start it. Mike Ashley needs a break. What other top-flight club owner wears the kit of the club he owns? Can’t see Abramovich in blue. Nor the bumbling Americans at both red clubs. Kudos to Ashley for putting that businessman persona aside at every home game, and after the victories at the Newcastle pubs.
And with the dearest fans as manager, he’ll be partying through the night with them more frequently in the future.
01.06.08
WE2008 PS3 Review
I am terribly, utterly, bitterly disappointed with Winning Eleven 2008 PS3.
Sure, Konami needed to build a new engine, but it is mind-boggling how they could not harness even half of the machine’s powerful processing power. The lack of customisation and removal of the point structure just adds to the frustration. Is this the game I’m going to spend my footballing year on? I can’t believe this.
The problem started when they had to release it to the international market first, under the guise of PES, which is to me a Piece of English-version Shit. Blame my pro-Japanese views on that one. I actually had doubts over who made the package as a whole, but the credits clearly show the main people behind the WE series.
The first thing I noticed was the naming. Gone are the katakana names (yay), but instead they were replaced by ALLCAPS. That’s not really pretty, although it saves me edit time, it loses the point of having lowercaps on that field in the first place, and names like MCCULLOCH and MCSHEFFREY look ogresome without the lowercase treatment. This was the consequence of having to market WE internationally first. I don’t have qualms over the release date – I rather not go into edit hell in the summer – but still, there should really be pre-planning for this.
Then the gameplay. I wasn’t surprised that, like all previous jumps in version, I needed to remaster my crossing game. But this will make FIFA 2008 win over WE2008 for a long mile – the framerate is horrible. In the middle of action, and even in refereeing decisions, the game suddenly gets very choppy, to the effect of probably 10-15fps, or even less.
I’m baffled. This isn’t a gamethat has multiple-arena levels like Heavenly Sword or the like? It’s just a green field and a stadium (heck the spectators are only 2D faces!) and the player detail don’t seem to be really too in-depth. I mean, PS2 version never got this slow, and they have more customiseables than the PS3 one.
Other things to complain is how you can’t choose different socks and shorts for your match kit anymore, max subs is 6 instead of 7, etc. The game does introduce some nice stuff like specifically indicating who to come up for set pieces, introduction of diving and other new controls.
Then I went into Edit mode. I’ve never seen such emptiness.
You can’t customise shoes, there’s only 12 shirt templates, no German teams, incomplete namecalls, you name it. Though there are about 20 “empty teams” for you to customise, as well as more “created players”, that’s where the good points end. There’s none of that new, nice Premier League player numbering so you need to compromise when editing English teams. Konami got no excuse because Tottenham and Newcastle are licensed and they have the numbers.
Other official team shirts don’t have the appropriate numbering font unlike WE10. Even big sides like Valencia, Real Madrid, Roma, they don’t have the correct font on their backs.
The player editing is quite concise, and there’s the webcam-picture thing introduced, but that’s pointless because no one on the internet would have pics of player faces that big and facing the camera (squad pictures are too small). However, much of the accessories are gone, in particular the shirt tucks. I seriously loved this customisation, you can see clearer who a player is if he’s the kind of player who tucks in or not, but WE2008 doesn’t let you do so.
You can’t change nationalities of the in-game players anymore, that’s annoying because some do in real life. Some summer transfers weren’t carried out. And you still can’t have a squad of over 32.
Stadia are limited, or you need to unlock them first, and unlocking stuff had been made a lot harder. You need to actually win cups to unlock now, Konami scrapped the WE Points system in previous incarnations, which was advantageous for players who just want to unlock through accumulating points in the Master League. What a waste of time…
There are a lot of other faults this game has, I can’t list them all, but Konami needs to up the ante and do a big update or something. But seriously, I’m really disappointed. I’ll just plug away with EA’s FIFA Manager in the months to come I guess.
