Football Manager 2008 (PC/Mac)

For anyone who has played the Football Manager series this is a definitive purchase and for those looking for a football manager game there really is nothing better.

For those new to the series the match engine is in 2D and most of what you will be doing will be receiving messages from various staff, looking at attributes and playing with sliders for your tactics. THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. This game can run on almost anything, the game is quick and many leagues can be loaded. Further more the 2D screen makes it far easier to track down problems in your tactic and correct it. Also if you give it a chance I am sure you will be jumping off your seat when your number 9 punts the ball from 20 yards into the back of the net.

I would say that FM2008 is a little harder than previous titles however just like previous titles a bit of persistence will go a long way. Furthermore the SI forums are a good place for tactical questions and general answers to queries about the game.

Now a bit about the bugs. The problems I have noticed are as follows...

Non-league teams have all there players greyed out. (A big problem if you wish to manage around the conference level)

There are some "hmmmm" moments as a striker who is 10 yards offside puts the ball into your net and the linesman lets it stand. Furthermore once in a blue moon a shot which looks like is going over will hit the back of the net. These are all small match engine bugs.

Mac Installation problems. If you own a previous SI game then you will need to remove or rename the 'Sports Interactive' folder, otherwise the game is installed with iffy permissions and it will not run.

There are several others however these bugs are far from game breaking. If things are going well you will ignore them.. if things aren't you may find them annoying. However SI have a good history with supporting the FM franchise so I am sure they will fix this up soon.

There are many many enhancements but the 4 game changing ones are the following.

Confidence - After each game you will be told how the fans felt about it. At the end of the month the board will give you feedback on your performance and it is far more detailed than ever before. If you have a few bad games you will feel the heat from the supporters very quickly. This is a departure from previous games where a run of defeats only led to unrest if your team was seriously under performing.

Pitch Size - At the start of the season you can define your pitch size. Why is this important? Well it allows you to dictate the type of play. A small pitch will mean there is very little space and the game will be congested. A bigger pitch has loads of space, play will be more fluid and as a result more goals will probably be scored.

News System - The news system has been completely revamped. Now you will receive only new on your club. You can then view the division screen to see news from your division. This means you will be receiving perhaps one or 2 messages a day instead of 8-10 from previous games.

Budget Adjustment - You can now budget adjust your way to safety, what does this mean? If your wage will is too high you can sacrifice some of your transfer funds mid season to raise your wage budget. This works both ways. So if you see a 13 million striker that you "need" you can generate much of the transfer funds by cutting your wage budget. Its neat.

I gave this game 5 stars because despite the handful of bugs it is still best football manager game to grace the PC.

In short the game is very fun to play, the new features which have added a new dimension to the game. Confidence is perhaps the biggest change since they brought in the 2d engine. Its addictive, its fun, its hard, its everything you want football manager to be.

If you have a previous FM game BUY THIS NOW.
If you want the best football management game out there right now BUY THIS NOW

If you know nothing about football AVOID

This is agonizingly close to being a fantastic game, but unfortunately contains enough irritations to make it (for me) unplayable.

Minor annoyances within the game aside, it's the match engine that's at fault. If they could sort out the following, all would be well:

1. The human player is unable to instruct the goalkeeper to distribute the ball to defenders, thus building from the back and retaining possession. Tick boxes exist for this, but they don't work. On the game company's website, pretend experts on message boards advise how to get your keeper to do this, but their advice doesn't work and even if it did it would invalidate most tactical setups (anything without an ultra-deep defensive line). Instead, your keeper will hoof the ball up the other end of the field (in the vague direction of your most inappropriate player to receive such balls), only for it to ping all the way back to your own penalty area for constant reverse-route-one attempts on your goal. Your keeper, allied with unrealistic AI clearances, is thus the opposition's most effective attacker. In FM9, the act of translating the 2D view to 3D evidently brought home, at long last, the unrealism of this to the programmers. While the GK distribution instructions STILL don't work, the reverse-route-one AI attempts at goal have been toned down.

However, in FM8 it will account for 30% - 40% of goals conceded. This wouldn't be quite so annoying if this affected the AI team in the same way. It doesn't. The AI team can build from the back perfectly well.

This amounts to the game cheating. Intentional or not.

2. The effect of team talks and pre-game press releases are wildly overdone. Pick the wrong pre-match teamtalk (no matter how reasonable) and you won't even get out of your own half, no matter what your tactics. You just have to hope you get the half time talk right and the ai manager doesn't.

In FM7 the team talks had an effect but not to the extend that tactics were sometimes rendered redundant. In FM8 you can almost immediately tell if you've chosen the wrong talk; if you have it really isn't worth watching the game, tweaking tactics, anything.

3. The AI team will score the vast majority of their free kicks within ten yards of your penalty area by deflecting the ball off your wall. This will account for another 30-40% of goals conceded. It's almost like awarding them a penalty. Again, no such luxury for the human player. It wouldn't be so bad if I also had a "bounce free kicks off the wall for 30 goals a season" option. Effectively another AI cheat.

4. The AI team has at it's disposal a cheat tactic. The ultra attacking 4-2-4 it uses if required in the closing stages of a game. This will score it the required amount, without fail.

There are extreme measures that can be taken to counter this. You must have a pre-prepared anti-4-2-4 tactic ready and waiting! Watch the match with the opposition's formation visible. The very nanosecond they change to the 4-2-4 cheat tactic, hit pause, go into tactics and institute your counter 4-2-4 ct measures.

Problem: the game can wait for up to 12 minutes of match time before implementing your tactical changes. When do you think it will do that? Yep, when the AI team are running around celebrating the inevitable 4-2-4 cheat tactic goal.

In a previous incarnation of the game (CM3-4) some bright spark came up with a tactic called "Diablo". This human player's tactic destroyed the AI team's tactics. "Cheat", the game purists cried and vilified anyone using it. Strange how SI can programme a cheat tactic into the game to use against the human player, isn't it.

5. For some odd reason, the programmers have deemed goalkeepers congenitally unable to keep hold of the ball, except for the very weakest shots straight at them. The few goals you concede that aren't from AI free kicks bouncing off your wall, reverse route one goals from your own keeper or 4-2-4 cheat tactic goals will mostly be from the ball bouncing, yet again, off your keeper and falling conveniently for an attacker to stroke it into an open goal.

This, though, is one fault where the human player will score as much as the AI. Still annoying, though. This sort a goal happens in real life, but is far too frequent here.

If these things (three of them effectively AI cheats) could be improved it would be a five star game.

As things stand, the match engine is far too annoying to play. A game I can't play is worth nothing.

Buy FM7 - very good. Has faults, many similar to FM8, but not so extreme. Unfortunately, FM8 inherited FM7's match engine faults and multiplied their effect to an intolerable extent.

If you are new to the series prepare to lose your social life ! if you are a regular to the FM dynasty you'll be wondering how much value for money FM2008 is over 2007, ok there are some nice features but other than those minor improvements, is it anything more than a re-skinned 2007 with a newer player database ??

It is a steady improvement in the evolution of the series and I do recommend it but is it honestly different enough from its previous incarnations ??