Screenshots :.
Football Manager 2007
PC
Matt
20-06-2007
"Not easy to comment on a text based football managing game"
"I mean how do you hype that up? Seriously"
"Yet another screenshot of stats and such. Good job the game's fun eh?"
We’re all football managers deep down, aren’t we? We all spend our time sitting in front of our televisions yelling at messrs Mourinho, Benitez and company to inform them that the careful tactical planning they’ve spent all week working on is utterly useless and that we could do far better ourselves on half the wage. For those people (and we are many), the Football Manager series has consistently given us a chance to at least go some way to proving that inside our own minds, and this year’s edition is packed full of options, stats and players to enable us to do exactly the same all over again.
As soon as you hit the game’s front end you feel at home, with the functional-yet-basic layout remaining basically untouched from last season. The game’s impressive depth also remains, and should you wish – and have the processing power to cope – you can have as many as 30 leagues running simultaneously across several different countries, leaving you with an impossibly large database of players and staff to sift through. Of primary concern however is your own squad of players and the various options to tinker with them, and this year Sports Interactive have tweaked and added numerous options to help you turn your team into a winning machine.
The first and foremost change is to the much-maligned training section. For years now the crew behind the game seem to have not quite nailed this aspect on the head, and this season’s version sees yet more changes. Regimes are assigned via a selection of sliding bars for things such as attacking, defending, ball control and strength amongst others. Individual players can be assigned individual roles, and each will react differently to how much of a workload they perceive themselves to have. This provides the aspiring manager with a much more intuitive feel to proceedings and gives a slightly simplified yet much more useful feel to the training section.
Day-to-day management of your selected club remains generally similar in feel to before, with the main news screen bringing you snippets of information as it happens around the football world and informing you of events which relate to players and staff under your control. The menu systems have now been honed to perfection and any page or menu in the game is easily accessible from one another, meaning you spend a lot less time fiddling around whilst navigating the framework and a lot more time actually getting into the nitty-gritty of looking after your sporting concerns.
More changes can be found in the way in which you are allowed to use the media to criticise or praise opponent managers or respond to rumour and speculation. You will now often find yourself goaded by opponent managers, or subject to transfer speculation if you have been scouring the transfer market. Don’t go thinking that these are mere dressing on the main game’s salad however, as your responses will directly influence your players’ frame of minds and also performances. Don’t be surprised if a bit of rummaging around looking at profiles of opposition strikers sees your own goal-bagger get unsettled and perform under par. Just as equally, the player might see this as a kick up the backside and start knocking in goals every match, so it’s a double edged sword. The upshot of all this is that man management is now a crucial aspect of the game, and learning how your players react in different circumstances off the pitch is as valuable a tool as knowing which tactics suit them best on it.
The man-management aspect continues to match day, as pre-match and half-time team talks now dramatically influence your team and can see them throw away comfortable leads or produce the kinds of comeback which even the 2004/5 Liverpool squad would have been proud of. Again, this is purely a matter of learning how your own group of players react to things and applying your knowledge to suit. The whole upshot of this is that Football Manager 2007 feels much more personal then previous instalments have, and for the first time getting to know your players really pays dividends where the league table is concerned.
With this added dimension thrown into the mix you will find yourself becoming more and more absorbed into what you’re doing. The classic days where you’d skip meals and social events just to see your team through the third round of the F.A. Cup or postpone a crucial school assignment to find yourself a star striker will come flooding back and you’ll find yourself perched on the edge of your seat staring into your monitor for hours on end.
On the flipside, the game now demands more time than it ever has, so anyone hoping to be able to get any success with only a moderate level of involvement will find their teams almost impossible to manage properly. For those who just can’t dedicate a good chunk of time to their managerial pursuits, Football Manager 2007 will more than likely leave them out in the cold. For those who can, there is as much care, attention and data packed in to keep them happily wrapped up in their own little world until the next version of the game hits the shelves late this year.
As soon as you hit the game’s front end you feel at home, with the functional-yet-basic layout remaining basically untouched from last season. The game’s impressive depth also remains, and should you wish – and have the processing power to cope – you can have as many as 30 leagues running simultaneously across several different countries, leaving you with an impossibly large database of players and staff to sift through. Of primary concern however is your own squad of players and the various options to tinker with them, and this year Sports Interactive have tweaked and added numerous options to help you turn your team into a winning machine.
The first and foremost change is to the much-maligned training section. For years now the crew behind the game seem to have not quite nailed this aspect on the head, and this season’s version sees yet more changes. Regimes are assigned via a selection of sliding bars for things such as attacking, defending, ball control and strength amongst others. Individual players can be assigned individual roles, and each will react differently to how much of a workload they perceive themselves to have. This provides the aspiring manager with a much more intuitive feel to proceedings and gives a slightly simplified yet much more useful feel to the training section.
Day-to-day management of your selected club remains generally similar in feel to before, with the main news screen bringing you snippets of information as it happens around the football world and informing you of events which relate to players and staff under your control. The menu systems have now been honed to perfection and any page or menu in the game is easily accessible from one another, meaning you spend a lot less time fiddling around whilst navigating the framework and a lot more time actually getting into the nitty-gritty of looking after your sporting concerns.
More changes can be found in the way in which you are allowed to use the media to criticise or praise opponent managers or respond to rumour and speculation. You will now often find yourself goaded by opponent managers, or subject to transfer speculation if you have been scouring the transfer market. Don’t go thinking that these are mere dressing on the main game’s salad however, as your responses will directly influence your players’ frame of minds and also performances. Don’t be surprised if a bit of rummaging around looking at profiles of opposition strikers sees your own goal-bagger get unsettled and perform under par. Just as equally, the player might see this as a kick up the backside and start knocking in goals every match, so it’s a double edged sword. The upshot of all this is that man management is now a crucial aspect of the game, and learning how your players react in different circumstances off the pitch is as valuable a tool as knowing which tactics suit them best on it.
The man-management aspect continues to match day, as pre-match and half-time team talks now dramatically influence your team and can see them throw away comfortable leads or produce the kinds of comeback which even the 2004/5 Liverpool squad would have been proud of. Again, this is purely a matter of learning how your own group of players react to things and applying your knowledge to suit. The whole upshot of this is that Football Manager 2007 feels much more personal then previous instalments have, and for the first time getting to know your players really pays dividends where the league table is concerned.
With this added dimension thrown into the mix you will find yourself becoming more and more absorbed into what you’re doing. The classic days where you’d skip meals and social events just to see your team through the third round of the F.A. Cup or postpone a crucial school assignment to find yourself a star striker will come flooding back and you’ll find yourself perched on the edge of your seat staring into your monitor for hours on end.
On the flipside, the game now demands more time than it ever has, so anyone hoping to be able to get any success with only a moderate level of involvement will find their teams almost impossible to manage properly. For those who just can’t dedicate a good chunk of time to their managerial pursuits, Football Manager 2007 will more than likely leave them out in the cold. For those who can, there is as much care, attention and data packed in to keep them happily wrapped up in their own little world until the next version of the game hits the shelves late this year.
8/10
