• Summary

• Reviews

• News
• Images
• Videos
• Downloads
• Hints & Cheats

By Keith B (13th May 2008)If you're into world football and have no friends, good news: Football Manager 2008 has arrived.

Football management games have a pretty small target market, mainly because while many people have some of the following traits: obsessive, football fan, spreadsheet hero, willingness to spend entire days in one room with a flickering screen – not many have them all.

Well, lucky for SI Games then that there are plenty of people around the world that do enjoy managing their favourite teams as they search for success both domestically or on the world or European stage. And, for those particular people, the Championship Manager series, which is now Football Manager, is the top of the pile.

Without trying to simplify the overall context of the game, for those not familiar with it, I’ll give you a quick run down. In Football Manager 2008, you make a profile and then pick a football team to manage, and the list is extensive. All the major leagues around the world are duly present and so you can select to either go for an already established club like Manchester United, Liverpool or Chelsea, or work your way up from the dusty leagues below and earn success instead of inheriting it. Once you’ve stuck in all your information you’re handed the keys to the club, in a manner of speaking.

And, from here, it gets complicated. You see, FM08 doesn’t just allow you to manage the matches but every single aspect of the club. You can ask the board for more money for wages or to expand the stadium, you set training programs for your players, send your scouts off around the world to find the perfect addition to your squad, sign players, sell players, enforce discipline and so much more. You can even work with the marketing side of things to work out prices for items and ticket costs.

Pretty engaging so far. But once your season gets under way, you now have to deal with press enquiries, stroppy players, injuries, suspensions, tactics adjustments on the fly mid-match, and a plethora of other small things to keep an eye on.

For the football fan, it sounds glorious, and so it should. But the age old question will always come back – will such a detailed game, which requires more menus than you can shake a muddy boot at, work with a console controller? On the PC, you can click away as fast as you can and thus make the game progress quickly. On a console, it’s not the same. It’s certainly no dead duck, but it does take some getting used to having three large menus available from the controller.

What the developers have done to help people get to grips with the maze of options is put in a dynamic help system. When you click on a screen, a help box pops up and asks if you want help with X,Y, and Z, whatever’s on the particular screen you entered. You can select a guide on how to do what, then tell the help you no longer need a pop up for those options. What unfolds is a mammoth amount of help at the start, dwindling as you tell the console what you’ve got down and what’s still causing you headaches. All in all it works well, and doesn’t feel like you’re starting something you may never finish.

Visually, the game is about as standard as you can get. To put it in perspective, the only moving animations in the game are an overhead shot of the pitch with players represented as dots, chasing the white dot, being the ball. Other than that, everything is a database, or spreadsheet. Funny to enjoy a vide game that makes a statement by having no glitzy stuff to show you.

The sound is the same, because as you play through the management screens it’s to the wonderful wall of silence. When you play a match, you get a generic crowd cheering in the background. And again, that’s it. So you can see now why this appeals to a small section of the gaming world.

But, if this is your field, then Football Manager 2008 is the gaming equivalent of crack cocaine. It is, and the predecessors too, the most addictive series I’ve ever played in my life. I was hooked on Championship Manager 99/00 so that’ll give you an idea of the history I have with this. I could also tell you, because my sad life allows me to know, about all the upheaval the series had in the past and what not but it’s not important.

What is important is that FM08 takes the game one step farther this time around, although only fans of the series will notice it. The transfer system is refined, the player management is developed (allowing you to speak to players about their attitude, ask them for recommendations from the club they played at before yours, and so on).

Improvements also include more detailed club finances, a confidence system, international management, and the aforementioned real time tactical changes. The list is huge.

What FM08 isn’t going to do is pull a great amount of new people to it, because I don’t think it really wanted to. The people that opt for this in their local game store are a particular breed and they don’t mind, dare we say they might even like, the simplicity of presentation and the immense level of control it can provide as long as you’re willing to go there and explore. Trying to make this game with a broader appeal would be akin to adjusting a Ferrari because you want middle class people buying them. Not going to happen. You either love it for what it is, or you don’t, and whichever you are you can be sure it’s not going to change any time soon. But for purists, this is the closest you’re going to get to taking over your favourite club. Just make sure you clear you life of job, partner, and social network before you play. They’re no good to you as you try and sign Christiano Ronaldo from Manchester United and Fernando Torres from Liverpool for Nottingham Forest anyway.