Oktoberfest: Beer And Blood (Netflix series) — An ambitious brewer (named Curt Prank…?) in 1900-set Munich sets out to build the most dominant beer hall at his city’s annual Oktoberfest festival. The series promises to get both brutal and bloody.
A World Of Calm (HBO Max series) — This might be the most invaluable series of 2020, given that the voices of Keanu Reeves, Oscar Isaac, Idris Elba, Mahershala Ali, Zoe Kravitz, and more will guide you on an immersive tour aimed at relaxation. The episodes are based upon Calm’s Sleep Stories, which aim to be “bedtime stories for grown-ups.” Sold.
Good Morning, Verônica (Netflix series) — This isn’t your everyday procedural. Away from her job at the Homicide Police Station in Sao Paulo, Verônica Torres witnesses a death that changes everything. Soon, she’s diving into an endless series of mini-investigations that threaten her very existence.
Star Trek: Discovery (CBS, 10:00pm EST) — Ahead of the show’s Season 3 arrival (at some undetermined point) the CBS All Access show keeps cranking away with Klingon vessels facing down with the U.S.S. Shenzhou.
Mysteries Decoded (CW, 8:00pm EST) — This week, the Salem Witch Trials get the spotlight with updated expert analysis and a Navy vet turned P.I. on the centuries-old mystery.
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Ethan Hawke, rosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
Late Night With Jimmy Fallon — Michael Che, Colin Jost, Kaitlyn Dever, BTS
The Late Late Show With James Corden — Gloria Steinem, Sally Hawkins, Craig Roberts.
Late Night With Seth Meyers — David Wright, Miranda July
In case you missed these offerings from last week:
Utopia (Amazon Prime series) — Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn is a showrunner now, and she also wrote this U.S. remake of the U.K.-born series for Amazon. The show, which stars John Cusack, Desmin Borges, and Sasha Lane, is a conspiracy thriller that just happens to include details of a pandemic. Flynn didn’t plan for the show to arrive in the middle of an actual pandemic, but here we are.
Sneakerheads (Netflix series) — An ex-sneakerhead and stay-at-home dad, Devin, jumps back into the game and loses five G’s in a get-rich-quick scheme. Before his wife finds out what’s amiss, Devin must go on the hunt for the holy grail of hard-to-find shoes, “Zeroes,” along with a ragtag gathering of fellow shoe addicts.
Tehran (Apple TV+ series) — This series promises the exhilarating story of a Mossad agent undercover in a deep way during a mission in (of course) Tehran, where she and those who surround her find themselves in peril. The first three episodes drop on Friday with weekly episodes to follow.
Enola Holmes (Netflix film) — Netflix loves Stranger Things‘ Millie Bobby Brown, who’s now making her turn as Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister Enola Holmes. As a bonus, The Witcher‘s Henry Cavill is onboard to play Sherlock with Sam Claflin stepping in as Mycroft Holmes, and between the two of them, they have the fancy hair and twirling-of-mustaches quotient covered.
Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant officially joined forces last summer — they’ve admitted it was a decision solidified at the All-Star break back in February 2019 — but we’ve yet to see the two on the floor together as Durant continued his rehab from his Achilles tear and was unable to play this year.
Among the discussion points was Durant’s co-host Eddie Gonzalez asking the question that is always posed to new star combinations: Who takes the last shot. The answer from Irving will certainly raise some eyebrows, not with his assessment of how the Nets will handle those situations, but with his thoughts on past teams he’s been on.
“Depends on who’s hot,” Irving said. “I don’t see it as anything other than that. 1-3 pick-and-roll or it’s an iso for either one of us or it’s something great for our team. One thing I’ve always been comfortable with is, I felt like I was the best option on every team I’ve played for down the stretch. This is the first time in my career where I can look down and be like, that motherf*cker can make that shot too and he’ll probably do it a lot easier. I feel like, yo, it’s not so much deferring, because in past situations if I didn’t take the last shot I felt guilty. I was like I want this game-winning shot but you want to trust your teammates — not to say I didn’t have the trust in my teammates — but I felt like I was the best option. And now, 10 seconds down, OK, K, get us a f*ckin bucket, I don’t care. I’m going to crash the offensive glass. I know how to play the game without the ball. I’m like, yo, if he makes, misses, I’m living with it. If I make, miss, he’s living with it. I think when you match that up together, hey, now you get to really see it, two guys that are unselfish with that end of the game but going for that game-winner we’re trying to make it and that’s all I care about.”
Durant would concur, noting he wouldn’t have any issues standing in the corner and letting Irving take control late in some games because of the importance of playing the decoy sometimes was something he learned in his time with the Warriors. It’s the right approach and it’s nice to hear two stars that think that way, but the focal point of the conversation will surely be on Irving saying it’s the “first time in my career where I can look down and be like, that motherf*cker can make that shot too” and he’s always felt he’s been his team’s best option, given that he once played with, you know, LeBron James.
Irving certainly hit some huge shots with the Cavs, none bigger than his Game 7 game-winner in the 2016 NBA Finals, but one would think he would’ve had the same approach with James — or at least seen it that way in hindsight. That said, James’ approach and Irving’s approach and the shots they create and take late in games are different, so there is maybe something there to Irving looking at Durant as someone capable of creating the looks he would be trying to make more than LeBron. Still, it’s an eyebrow raising quote but that’s come to be the norm for Irving. The good news for the Nets is it seems he and KD are very much on the same page with their relationship and where they see themselves fitting on the court, and the rest is just fodder for the rest of us.
Americans spend about $1,2000 a year on average for prescription drugs. That’s more than anywhere else in the world. Private insurers and government programs pick up the bulk of the costs which we then pay through higher taxes and insurance premiums.
A major reason why Americans pay so much more than other countries is that the U.S government isn’t allowed to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.
To better understand the underlying reasons for these astronomical prices, the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee held hearings on Wednesday with current and former executives of three major drug companies.
Democratic Representative Katie Porter from Orange County, California proved to be the star of the hearing for how she clearly explained how price gouging works using a whiteboard and the testimony of former Celgene CEO Mark Alles.
Celgene launched a cancer drug called Revlimid in 2005 at a price of $215 per pill. After more than 20 price hikes, the drug now costs $763 per pill or $16,023 per month. According to Porter, the price increases have cost American taxpayers over $3 billion.
While drug companies commonly cite research and development costs as a reason for raising prices. An investigation found that the CEO repeatedly raised the price to help the company meet revenue goals.
The investigation also found the company was profiting from a drug that was developed using taxpayer funds. According to the investigation the company “relied heavily on taxpayer-funded academic research to develop Revlimid, and its internal pricing decisions appear to have been unrelated to past or future investment in research and development.”
Rep. Porter grills Big Pharma CEO for price gouging
Porter opened her questioning by remarking how Revlimid price increases seem to counter traditional economic logic.
“I’m curious, did the drug get substantially more effective in that time? Did cancer patients need fewer pills?” she asked. “How did you change the formula for the production of Revlimid to justify this price increase?”
Alles responded with a non-answer: “The indication changes are for subsets of different patients with disease.”
She then pushed him again, asking how the drug improved over the past seven years.
He admitted that the manufacturing for the pill was “the same.”
Porter then brilliantly related the price increase to the financial situation of her constituents. “So, to put that in perspective, you hiked the price by $500 when the average Orange County senior only has $528 left in their bank account after they’ve paid their basic monthly expenses,” Porter said.
While the CEO claimed that no one pays the list price, she asked about uninsured people. He said he could “imagine” that there were uninsured or underinsured people who have probably paid the list price.
via Katie Porter
Porter finished her presentation by tying the price increases to Alles’ paycheck. As CEO, Alles made $13 million a year, 360 times the average person on social security.
“Any increase in the price of Revlimid would also increase your bonus by increasing earnings. Isn’t that right Mr. Alles? she asked. “That was a part of the calculation of my compensation.” the CEO agreed.
Porter then showed how the CEO has made $500,000 over the past two years in bonuses by raising the price of the cancer drug.
“So to recap here: The drug didn’t get any better. The cancer patients didn’t get any better. You just got better at making money. You just refined your skills at price gouging!” she stated.
As I watched the presidential debate—in horror, like most—I perused Twitter at the same time to see if other were as appalled as I was. About an hour into the blazing tire fire, one tweet stood out to me so much I took a screenshot of it.
Because Biden has spoken publicly about trying to manage his stutter, I feel comfortable noting, as another person… https://t.co/xmoPA4BSg0
Biden has shared publicly his struggles with stuttering, which he’s dealt with since childhood. In 2011, he wrote an article for People magazine detailing his experiences.
“I never had professional therapy,” he wrote, “but a couple of nuns taught me to put a cadence to my speaking, and that’s why I spent so much time reading poetry – Emerson and Yeats. But even in my small, boys’ prep school, I got nailed in Latin class with the nickname Joe Impedimenta. You get so desperate, you’re so embarrassed.”
Biden’s success at managing his stutter and rising to public office—a job that requires a lot of public speaking—has served as an encouragement to young people who have stutters. At the Lab School of Washington—a school for kids with learning disabilities or other difficulties—Biden told students in 2010 that he saw his stutter as “a gift from God” while also telling them, “Don’t let your disability define you.”
As other people with stutters chimed in to praise Biden, it became clearer and clearer what was happening on that stage and how extraordinarily Biden was handling it.
@jgrandy @nathanheller @SamanthaJPower My daughter has a heart of gold and said, “Momma his stutter hearts my heart… https://t.co/3uSWhxonlC
But for those of us who don’t stutter or aren’t close to someone who stutters, this post by Wes Kennison was perhaps the most helpful in understanding the dynamics on the debate stage from Biden’s point of view. Kennison wrote:
“Joe Biden is a stutterer. Like many others, he has overcome the disability by understanding it and exercising extraordinary perseverance and discipline. If you know and love a stutterer and you watched the presidential debate last night, within minutes it became obvious what was going on. Abusive tone of voice, rapid fire interruptions, zigzagging change of topic, personal insult and humiliation, and family pain are all tripwires that scramble a stutterer’s ability to speak. There was nothing unplanned or spontaneous in the President’s strategy. The bastards did not prep him to attack Joe. They prepped him to attack Joe’s disability hoping that by triggering his stuttering they might deceive an audience unfamiliar with the disability into thinking that Joe was stupid, weak, uncertain, confused, or lost to dementia.
If you have ever gotten in the face of a bully on the playground protecting a stutterer that you love, the game being played last night was nakedly and painfully obvious. If you watched with glee while it happened, then you haven’t made much progress since the playground.
However, the stutterer that I love taught me early on that he did not so much need my protection. He fought back by owning and integrating his disability into who he is. He learned how to stand his ground as master of perseverance, knowledge, and empathy. Without his example, I would not have recognized the game that was being played last night. I would not have been able to recognize the subtle but intense struggle against the disability that Joe was winning at the same time he was struggling to advance his positions on the issues in the midst of a rhetorical shit storm.
But, like the stutterer that I know, Joe didn’t need any help on the playground. I was proud of him.
The President flushed his family fortune down a gold-plated toilet and somehow wants us to believe that he is the poor victim of mean people. Then he tries, and fails, to beat up a kid with a disability on the playground. I’m done with this, guys. I want my country back. Thanks, Joe.”
Even those of us who don’t have a stutter would find it difficult to stay focused and verbally acute with someone constantly interrupting, insulting, and distracting us. If you dive at all into the methods that stutterers use to compensate, what sometimes appears to be searching for words is simply shifting to a new word when the stutter rears its head.
As a stutterer myself, just want to say it’s not Biden not knowing things all the time when he speaks. He is stutte… https://t.co/Q4UV79w5M8
Trump and his supporters have tried to paint Biden with the “cognitive decline” brush, largely by focusing on his gaffes and verbal slip-ups (as if Trump doesn’t have a full montage full of mispronunciations, misspeaks, and mistakes in his speeches). But knowing about Biden’s speech impediment, how well he has overcome it, and how impressively he performed during a stutterer’s “worst nightmare” scenario at the presidential debate, all questions about his mental acuity should now be put to rest.
Well done, sir. You’ve offered a hopeful example of perseverance and resilience to all who experience speech struggles.
And thankfully, the debate commission has added the option for moderators to cut the microphone when candidates go overboard, so hopefully the final two debates won’t be as much of a nightmare for all of us.
Teyana Taylor released her towering third LP The Album back in June. The record is quite the undertaking, boasting 23 tracks and clocking in at well over an hour. Since its release, Taylor has followed-up her music with a handful of cinematic visuals, the most recent being her “1800-One-Night” video. Now, Taylor taps her husband, basketball player Iman Shumpert for a sultry video to her track “Concrete.”
Directed by Taylor herself under the Spike Lee-inspired alias “Spike Tey,” the visual depicts the singer pulling up to her lover’s house. The two start of in a heated argument, but manage to make up by taking things to the bedroom.
Ahead of the visual’s release, Taylor revealed she gave birth to her second daughter, Rose, who was delivered with the help of Erykah Badu. “At 3:28 am on Sept 6th 2020 Rue Rose decided that the baby shower thrown for her and mommy was too lit. She didn’t make the party but she managed to make the next day her birthdate,” Taylor wrote alongside the birth announcement. “Now…when we buy homes, we always find a bathroom with great energy… but not in a million years would you be able to tell me we’d deliver both of our daughters in a bathroom without the assistance of a hospital!”
Akon has made quite the name for himself over the years, but he’s not the only person in his family who is a big deal in the music industry. His brother, Abou “Bu” Thiam, is a former Def Jam A&R VP who currently serves as Kanye West’s manager. Thiam was profiled for a Rolling Stone feature recently, and in it, he offered some insight about Kanye’s new music and explained why it’s some of his finest.
He asserts that Kanye’s recent activities — his presidential run, business dealings, etc. — are giving him more material for his art, which is helping to make it great: “It’s some of the greatest music he’s made. And everything that’s happening now is making the music better. He has more to talk about, more to say.”
Thiam noted that involved with Kanye’s new album is rising artist KayCyy Pluto, who landed a writing credit on Lil Wayne’s Funeral album (on “Big Worm,” under his legal name, Mark Mbogo) and may have been with Kanye earlier this year. He also revealed of Pluto, “Kanye and I are in the process of doing some other stuff with him.”
He also said of Kanye more generally, “I’ve never met another human being like Kanye. God has put something on this guy; he sprinkled extra greatness on top of him. He has a vision and a drive like no other. We can all make money, but making history, doing something that’s going to be around for hundreds of years to come — that’s what I’m excited about.”
How do you improve upon the residual hype from what just might be the greatest fast-food chicken sandwich on the market? With a side of powdered sugar-dusted chocolate-filled beignets, apparently! Popeyes is currently testing out their take on the French Quarter classic at select stores in Massachusetts, according to Foodbeast who was able to track down the beignets in Everett and near Malcolm X Park in Boston.
The beignets come in sets of three for $1.99, six for $3.99, or a dozen for $7.49, though prices mary vary when they finally get a nationwide release which is apparently coming… sometime soon a Popeyes rep to confirmed.
If you’ve never had a beignet, we envy the sweet position you’re in. Prepare yourself for a deliciously airy fried treat dusted with powdered sugar that is chewier than a donut yet also flakier. They aren’t always filled with chocolate, but when they are, it truly is an out of this world flavor experience that is absolutely worth trekking through the New Orleans humidity to procure.
If you’re ever in New Orleans, do make sure to get the real thing. But we’ll take the Popeyes version in a second, too. Popeyes already won the fast-food chicken sandwich game last year, did they just win the fast-food dessert menu game too? Only time — and a forthcoming taste test of those beignets — will tell.
There are very few things in the world more fun than the first two-to-ten episodes of a ridiculous primetime soap opera. Things can and usually do careen off the rails at some point after that, which is understandable because there are only so many things you can do with these shows before you devolve into self-parody, but the beginning, right in that little window where everything is fresh and new and just being explained for the first time, that’s the sweet spot. So much happens so quickly and, if you’re lucky, it becomes something so crazy that people stare at you with their mouths open as you explain it all to them. It’s a lot of fun to do.
This brings us to Filthy Rich, a new primetime soap on Fox that stars Kim Cattrall as the matriarch of a scandal-plagued family of televangelists. The show aired its second episode this week and has already burned through, conservatively, about three seasons of plot. There’s no way the show can keep this up. It’s not a sustainable situation. Someday soon this sucker is going to start rattling and falling to pieces on the highway like a used car doing the Cannonball Run, but until that happens, man, it’s a heck of a ride. I can’t wait to explain it all to you.
But I’m sure you have some questions. Please, fire away.
What do you mean by scandal-plagu-
I’m sorry. I have to stop you there. I need to tell you some things that happen before the opening credits of the very first episode.
Okay, shoot.
In order:
Kim Cattrall torches her family’s New Orleans mansion while wearing a white fur wrap and says “rot in hell” as she stares at the flames
Her character’s husband, Eugene, the head of the huge Christian television empire the family operates, appears to die in a private plane crash while entertaining two prostitutes, moments after he removes his belt while saying “I am one rich son of a bitch”
Both Kim Cattrall’s character and the home audience learn at the will reading that Eugene had at least three illegitimate children with three different women and they are all entitled to a piece of his estate
This is a good way to start a television show.
I’m sorry. I’m still stuck on Kim Cattrall burning down this mansion.
It was great. The whole thing was set to, I swear to God, a cover of “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood complete with wailing Christian guitars that was later revealed to be performed by the network’s charismatic and power-hungry reverend. Here, look.
FOXFOX
Mother of God.
Yeah, buddy. This is barely 30 seconds into the premiere.
Do… do we meet the illegitimate children? What’s their deal?
I’m very glad you asked. We do meet all three of them and, yes, I need to go back to bullet points to introduce them. We have:
Antonio, an MMA fighter who is raising a young son — named Jesus, because everyone on Filthy Rich believes in God but not subtlety — by himself
Jason, a Colorado drug dealer whose first action on the show involves walking into a trailer filled with weed
Ginger Sweet, a media-savvy Las Vegas entrepreneur who runs a very adult-oriented farm-themed webcam service called — again, no subtlety required or even desired — Sinwagon dot com
It’s fantastic. It reads like the beginning of a great joke. (“An MMA fighter, a weed dealer, and a porno tycoon walk into a church…”) It’s kind of like… remember the old TNT continuation of the show Dallas, the one that aired a few years back and once featured Judith Light doing lines of cocaine at a rodeo?
Yes.
This is all kind of like that but with Jesus instead of oil.
That’s high praise. Tell me more about Kim Cattrall’s character.
Gladly. Her character is named Margaret Monreaux, the spelling of which, in addition to the Southern accents characters dip into and out of from scene to scene, is our constant reminder that the show is set in New Orleans. She and the family are trying to start a kind of all-Christian Amazon called SunnyClub. It is struggling to land subscribers and these new revelations will not help.
Margaret Monreaux is also a perfect Kim Cattrall character. At one point her family catches her smoking a cigarette with a rubber glove on and she explains that she is trying to keep the nicotine stench off her fingers because she is “a lady who smokes, not a smoker.” At another point she orders a martini “very cold, hold the vermouth,” and when it is pointed out to her that this is just a glass of vodka, she replies “Your point?”
My favorite extremely Kim Cattrall moment, however, was this exchange with Ginger, regarding SinWagon and its continued existence.
FOXFOXFOX
I… I love this. Ginger Sweet seems fun.
Oh, is she ever. She’s a classic bomb-thrower, like a Julie Cooper from The O.C., someone who carries a 50-pound sack of chaos with her everywhere she goes and sprinkles it about liberally. She turned down the family’s payoff and moved her entire SinWagon operation to New Orleans (yes, she and her mother drive around in a vehicle emblazoned with “SinWagon,” but you probably figured that out already), and, in the second episode, agreed to be baptized live on the family’s network — an attempt to legitimize Eugene’s misdeeds — only to, surprise, reveal that she had nothing on under her now-soaked robe but an advertisement for her new Bible-themed rebranded adult webcam service called SaintWagon dot com.
SAINT WAGON DOT COM
Correct.
fo
Okay, just a few more questions here.
Whatever you need.
Earlier, you said Eugene “appears to die in a private plane crash.” Does this mean…
Oh yeah, he is super alive. He was fished out of the swamp by an old woman who is nursing him back to health in a dilapidated cabin and re-baptized him in the bayou at the same time on the show as Ginger’s baptism.
… Baptism montage?
Correct again.
This feels like the kind of show where one of Margaret’s children kisses her new half-brother on the mouth and feels gross about it until she — and we — later discover that the “half-brother” is actually the doppelgänger adopted brother of her biological “half-brother,” who is in a coma, and this is all part of a Parent Trap ruse to get money from the family for medical bills.
I mean… wow. Yes. That is exactly what is happening here. I’m honestly very impressed.
I figured it was a short walk from “secretly alive philanderous religious figure finding god on the bayou after a plane crash” to some coma shenanigans.
Fair point. Oh, quick note about the plane crash…
Mysterious circumstances? Foul play suspected? Possibly by a recently fired investigative reporter who announced to anyone listening that he “doesn’t do puff pieces”?
Okay, don’t lie to me. You’ve been watching the show, too, haven’t you?
I mean…
DO NOT LIE.
OKAY, FINE. THINGS ARE WEIRD. I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF TO YOU.
It’s okay, man. It’s really okay. I’m glad you’re watching it. It’s a decent escapist release for 45 minutes a week. And it means I can ask you about the reveal at the end of episode two wh-…
WHERE IT TURNS OUT THE LONGTIME SECRETIVE SINWAGON/SAINTWAGON BIG SPENDER WHO HIDES HIS FACE IS ACTUALLY MARGARET’S JEALOUS SON WHO IS PLOTTING WITH THE SINGING PASTOR AND MAY BE TRYING TO WRIGGLE CONTROL OF THE NETWORK AWAY FROM MARGARET?
lol yes
I somehow saw it coming 10,000 miles away and yet I still gasped like an old woman who just saw a ghost.
With its highly-anticipated return only a few weeks away, Disney+ has unveiled a brand new poster for The Mandalorian Season 2. Featuring Mando (or Dyn Jarren as we learned in the Season 1 finale) on the move on a speeder bike with his cape fluttering in the wind, the badass looking poster also contains a super cute addition tucked into the corner. With his big reveal already out in the open, Disney can lean into featuring Baby Yoda now, and there he is riding shotgun in a cloth pouch. Judging by promotional photos and the Season 2 trailer, it seems like something will happen to green guy’s floating cradle thingy, and he’ll be spending some time being carried around in a side pouch as Mando searches for The Child’s “people” a.k.a. the Jedi.
You can see The Mandalorian Season 2 poster below:
Disney+
Star Wars fans are itching for the new season to begin thanks to reports that beloved characters like The Clone Wars‘ Ahsoka Tano and the original bounty hunter himself, Boba Fett, will be popping up when the streaming series returns. Katee Sackhoff is also reportedly making an appearance as her Star Wars Rebels character Bo Katan. Although, none of these castings have been confirmed by Lucasfilm who are playing things close to the chest, but the season two trailer did seem to tip its hand by seemingly revealing WWE wrestler Sasha Banks as Sabine Wren. (Or is she?)
What we do know for certain is that Mandalorian fans won’t have to watch the new season alone because of the pandemic. Disney+ recently unveiled it’s new GroupWatch feature, which will allow users to have socially distanced watch parties without anyone leaving their houses. Watching Baby Yoda and not spreading COVID? That’s a win-win.
The first thing I notice with PES is that I really, really suck.
My evolution as a soccer gamer goes something like this: When I was about 5 or 6 years old, I got a FIFA game for my Nintendo 64. I used France a ton because they had this guy named “Zinedine Zidane” and he was extremely good. From that point on, I played a whole lot of FIFA. That’s, uh, the end of the story.
As you can tell from that abrupt tale that also spans about 23 years of existence, playing PES was never really in the cards. It was, to be clear, a brand loyalty thing: Like someone who wants a Google Pixel but has always had iPhones, I just never really felt the urge to try and learn a new soccer game when I’ve known the intricacies of another for such a long time. As such, I had literally never played PES, save for one demo of PES 2019 for about two minutes before I realized how bad I was and decided to go, I dunno, read a book or something.
It’s part of why I wanted to review eFootball PES 2021 Season Update. There are only so many opportunities in the world of sports games when you can go into something completely new and unaware of everything — every NBA 2K release is pretty similar to the last, every Madden features little tweaks here and there, every edition of MLB The Show follows the formula that has made it a juggernaut. Playing PES offered a chance to try something completely new, and for a person in my shoes, it’s something new at a discounted price.
This year’s edition is a season update as opposed to a standalone, gigantic release, and Konami responded to this by putting together a full game for $29.99. There is a conversation to be had about whether this should be the model for all sports sims — it is so hard for companies to come up with new, innovative games every year, they can oftentimes grow really stale because of this, and perhaps it might be wise to adopt a monster season update every other year so a new game can legitimately be new. That’s a conversation for a different time, though. As for this game, I figured it would the perfect entry point into the series, and I was excited to try out the various bells and whistles with fresh eyes.
Konami
For all of these reasons, I fired up the game, used my beloved Manchester City against small Belgian side Cercle Brugge and oh dear god I lost 1-0.
The act of playing PES is, even for the worst first-timer, fun. It isn’t the most dynamic and video game-y soccer playing experience, but it managed to be a slow, controlled game that doesn’t feel like it’s stuck in the mud, a really hard balance to strike but one it finds very well. The presentation is also very, very good, although we’ll get to some of the quibbles I have in a little.
The big thing, though, was I had zero idea how to actually play PES. Fortunately, the game does a great job in looking to get you up to speed. Its training menu is quite vast, and seeks to familiarize you with dribbling and passing mechanics of all sorts. It takes quite a long time to get through everything if your goal is a complete understanding of the controls, but PES creates the exact kind of hyper-immersive experience that really helps new players figure out what they need to do when they’re playing.
Still, spending this time is invaluable, and getting into a game when you know what’s going on is, shockingly, a much better experience. The weight of the ball is the biggest thing that comes through as you play — again, the game doesn’t feel nearly as quick and loose as its virtual footy counterpart has in previous editions, but there’s legitimate weight to every pass, the dribbling feels incredibly controlled, and you get to mix in skill moves and feints that look and feel authentic. That authenticity in gameplay is something that PES really seems to hang its hat on, and it’s a joy.
The game’s presentation is also outstanding, when it’s able to be. There is a pretty obvious issue that the game has when it comes to licensing for most clubs — the Premier League is the English League, with teams like Chelsea B, Liverpool R, and Manchester B in it — but the players all look pretty good. And when you play for or against a team with whom PES has an official license, like Barcelona, Juventus, or Manchester United, the presentation is absolutely stunning. Using the Catalan giants, for example, leads to a breathtaking pregame experience, while the in-game version of the Nou Camp looks lifelike. The stadiums, in particular, my word. They look remarkable if you are using one with which the game has a licensing agreement — Celtic Park in Glasgow and Stade Louis II in Monaco look just as good as, say, Wembley Stadium or Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena. In the places where Konami was able to leave no stone unturned, they made sure they did not.
Konami
The feel for the game does take a minute, though. If you are like me and PES is not your soccer game of choice, getting the buttons down is particularly tricky. But on the whole, the act of actually playing soccer in the game is a blast, which was the one thing I anticipated coming in — other PES players I know have said that while FIFA is the bigger game, PES is the better football-playing experience, and it’s very easy to see how you can come to that conclusion the more you play. It manages to feel lifelike in so many of the right ways, although if I had to file a complaint with anything outside of the licensing stuff, it’s that I really, really wish defending in the game felt a little more even.
One thing that I love about FIFA is how easy defending feels, both 1-on-1 and with the AI, and PES just isn’t quite there. Speaking of the AI, I feel like it’s not quite intelligent and reactive enough to what you’re trying to do on the pitch, which can be a gigantic pain in the neck. This is a really hard balance to strike, because, well, you can’t know what’s going on in a person’s head and how they imagine a player off the ball is moving, but there is room for improvement here.
The menus as you’re assembling your team can use a little work as well. They just look clunky, with players’ heads sitting on top of their positions/ratings and names, although I do like how you can quickly adjust positioning and have that play to a player’s strength and see what happens to a player’s rating if they are put in an unfamiliar position. The list of formations isn’t particularly gigantic, but PES is really good about giving you the flexibility to move players around and position them as you like. And when it comes to putting together attacking and defensive instructions, along with giving yourself the ability to use a collection of advanced instructions that you can bust out during matches — telling your striker to play as a False 9, making it so your fullbacks fly up and down the flanks, having your defensive line sit back deep — the options are both plentiful and fun to explore.
I still need to do a lot of digging into the other various modes, such as myClub, which is Konami’s take on EA’s various Ultimate Team modes — I generally avoid these due to my aversion to things that are built on microtransactions. Master League is a career mode in which you take over a team and try to lead them to glory (fun twist: you can make your manager a number of footballing legends, like Diego Maradona). Become a Legend is basically exactly what you’d expect a thing called “Become a Legend” to be, where you either make a player or take over an existing one and play through their careers.
But overall, I wanted to use my first however many hours of PES to learn about the game, learn how to play it, and get a sense for a virtual footballing experience I’ve never had before. It’s not a perfect game, because there are scant few of those, but for individuals who want to get into it, picking up a copy at a relatively cheap price is not a bad idea in the slightest. It’s like an audition before next year’s game, which Konami promises is going to look far different due to the implementation of a new game engine. By then, hopefully I’ll be able to give a review that is a bit more informed based on prior experience, and can answer decisively whether it’ll be worth that price. Until then, a full, fun game for $29.99 is quite a steal, even if you are like me and you really, really suck at soccer in the PES universe.
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via Katie Porter
