Reviews

With the football season only a couple of weeks away now (or in progress if you're reading this between August and May - if so I hope Spurs are doing well), you may fancy stepping in the shoes of those poor managers. It's a tough job in real life, lose a few games and you're fired, so can you handle the heat of football management? Whether you aspire to be Jose or Harry, test your football mind and become a champion...or get relegated and face the sack.

A manager's job isn't only about standing on the side-lines and shouting at the players, there's more behind-the-scenes tasks that need to be taken care of. Such as, the players, tactics, finances, transfers, training and stadium affairs. There's plenty to think about before the important task of kicking a ball and winning a game, and as manager, it's your job to do the lot (well, you don't have to kick a ball).

Your goal is to lead your team out of Division 3 and into the top league, and eventually become champions. You'll spend most of time in the menus, adjusting your players and tactics, preparing for match day. Each player comes with their own set of statistics, such as, power, technique and fitness percentages to salary and market value. Winning games will reward the players with experience points, which improve the quality of the player and increase their market value. This, in theory, improves the team and helps you to climb the league table.

After you've chosen your teams formation, you have the option of selecting the method of play. If you're a Chelsea fan, you may opt to play in a defensive 'form wall (park the bus)' style, whereas Liverpool fans may opt for all-out 'offensive', whatever Spurs fans choose it'll probably result in frequent draws. As well as the playing style, you can set the team's aggression. This ranges from normal to extreme, but being too aggressive may result in burn-out and injuries.

If your team does start to lose game after game, then perhaps the training isn't intense enough. Each field position can go through intense training if you wish them too, but this is a simple as selecting the intensity on a bar, rather than pinpointing specific players and highlighting their weaker areas. These features may be a nice touch, but strangely there's no feedback to see how effective or ineffective this can be.

Start winning games and the money will start coming in. Companies will approach you with contracts to fill up the advertising spaces and the stadium can be upgraded to increase seating capacity. If you need to, you can even sell a player on the transfer market to help fund players of better strength, some of which can be scouted out, though this also requires money. If dealing with finances is not your thing, then this aspect may be somewhat off-putting, but it is fairly basic and shouldn't be anything to worry about too much.

The games themselves are top-down 3D affairs, which are fairly dull to watch. Luckily there's a skip option, which takes you straight to the results page. Although, skipping the game takes away that manager aspect of changing formation and tactics when things are going against you, or defending a precious lead to kill the game. Thankfully this can be changed during the game, but losing patience and skipping could result in defeat after defeat.

For license nuts, it has to be said that this game is 100% unofficial. The team names are basic versions of the actual teams, for example you can be Tottenham or Manchester, but these are minus the Hotspur and United. Arsenal fans may not be happy with being called Arsenia. I could think of a much worse name for them though (and I usually do). At least you can edit the player's names into something a bit more familiar, that's something I suppose.

It's not as complicated as it may sound and is actually a simple test of your sporting and economic skills. Although the game tries to go in-depth with it's finances and such, it always feels a little too simple for a game of this type. Also, the lack of feedback given in many aspects of the game could be enough to put-off budding managers.