Can you control the team of your dreams.
There is no story to tell of, you choose a club to control choosing from 5,000 clubs in 50 countries.Your aim as the manager is to get your club to the top of their respected league while also tending to staff and players and also keeping track of ticket prices and finance.
On the surface Football Manager seems like a very simple game of choosing a team and by luck hoping they win the match, if you dig a little further you can see it is a game of stats and figures where one small change in the team or even a players number can mean the difference between a win and a loss. Football Manager 2008 lets you control every aspect of the club you choose to run from their finance, buying players, training regime, wage and even ticket prices. The game has a huge amount of depth that may confuse new players but fans of the series will feel at home straight away, there are only minor changes from last years game mainly the layout on screen and also the roster which changes every year due to summer transfers. There is a lot of fun to be had with this game, but only if you have patience and a head for stats and figures.
The interface is pretty simple, and easy to pick up, everything is controlled by the mouse and keyboard.
There is little to be seen in the way of graphics as the game is basically a huge database, this does mean though that nearly any pc will play the game. The addition of the players pictures when you click on their stats is nice, but nothing to rave about and the new layout is very simple and easy to navigate. There is also very little in the way of little sound, no in game music just fans chants during a match which is a little annoying but can be switched off.
Dubbed the widow maker by many UK gaming magazines, Football manager will draw you in and you won’t be able to stop playing for hours, a whole lot of fun, the only drawback I see with the game is hardly anything changes with each annual iteration. Also it tailors to a very niche market.