I was laying in bed on Thursday 27th and couldn’t get the thought of Football Manager 2008 on the Xbox360 out my head. Only that week had I become aware that it was getting released soon… March 28th to be precise, which meant at the time of pondering, tomorrow.
Now to some people I’m sure Football Manager is just another game. To even more I’m sure it has zero appeal whatsoever, after all, it’s only a database. It’s basically a spruced up Microsoft Excel document isn’t it? Still, I’ve played every single iteration reaching back to the original Championship Manager before Eidos and Sports Interactive parted ways, so for me, you couldn’t really call Football Manager, ‘Just another game’, as for me, it’s not.
Anyone who has followed the games I’ve played over my Xbox Live friends list will have noticed just how much I played Football Manager 2006, a game I have a full 1000/1000 points on and that’s quite rare in a world of scorewhore gamers and quite 1000 pointers, so it’s something I’m quite proud of (pointless score or not). In fact, at a conservative guess I’d say it’s likely I’ve spent over 600 hours on it, a more accurate guess would probably be more. Frightening looking back at it.
I never bothered with Football Manager 2007 on Xbox360, instead opting to play it on PC (being that it’s the only game I can think of that my knackered graphics card can play), but 2008 brought with it updated rosters, new interfaces, new options, more enhanced control, better match engine, more scout control, an updated awards module, real-time tactical changes, more team talks, better money management options and better Xbox Live support.
Now to most that probably sounds boring, some people reading this may have even fallen asleep, others will be calling me a total hypocrite for consistently slating RTS games as boring, but to me it’s gaming nirvana, it’s heaven and it’s £40 of pure, unadulterated, unfiltered, unlimited pleasure. The problem of course was that it’s £40 I don’t (or should I say, didn’t) have.
So there I was, laying in bed, wracking my brain thinking of ways to finance this gaming marvel, it was obvious that a game trade deal would have to do, so I opted for Burnout Paradise as I knew it still had some value left in it and The Club on the PS3. I’d overplayed both, the former owned by more than 3 of my close friends alone, so borrowing it wouldn’t be an issue in the future, the latter would be dropping in price soon where I could pick it up for the Xbox360. Unfortunately my friend Catherine wasn’t at work that day, instead she was in Newcastle, so I couldn’t get it for £30, but I wasn’t to be deterred, and thankfully I was offered £48 total trade-in, I was in profit, so I picked up Football Manager 2008.
Consequently the weekend disappeared, over 40 hours were sunk into Football Manager 2008 over Friday Night to Monday morning, worrying but it was pleasurable and I’m sure over the week I’ll have over 60 hours pumped into it.
Below is a post I made on Overclockers forums regarding my thoughts on it:
Personally I think it’s fantastic, it has bettered 2006 and 2007 in so many ways, has totally up to date teams, realistic transfer prices, stricter player statistics and more options and settings to choose from. It’s brought together in a fantastic new layout that makes you wonder how you ever did without it in past ones. I’d say it’s the most radical leap since Championship Manager 3. There is a couple of flaws though and they all relate to the stick. The setting of the left analogue stick is far too sensitive, so much so you can actually trigger movement with literally a couple of mm of movement on the stick. The problem with this is that unlike the other 2 console releases, you don’t scroll to an option, press ‘x’ and then choose from a list. You now scroll to the option and then scroll left or right to make your selection, however with it being so sensitive you often change the settings of every other option simply scrolling to the option you want to change making it longer to change the important options than in previous releases. Secondly, when you’re trying to sign a player or set a value for a player you now have to scroll from left-to-right to select the value. These values always start at either the players value price, or 0. Now that wouldn’t be such a problem if the game didn’t go through so many individual prices; 1k,2k,3k,4k,5k,6k,7k,8k,9k,10k etc… It only really starts flying through values when you hit 5m, so it becomes tiresome, especially with the twitchy stick which means you might often accidentally scroll off the value up or down to another option (and change it). Thirdly, and finally, sometimes the stick ends up with a life of its own, self-scrolling to the very left. This isn’t too much of an issue and has happened only 2 or 3 times. I’m hoping they patch it, but with a 9month wait for the first patch on FM2007 I think it’s a case of living with it. It’s not that difficult and you get used to having to be very careful. The positives of this release far outweigh the negatives though. Anyone with an interest in Football should get this, it’s great. And please, no “better on the PC” comments, whilst it’s brilliant and I’ve played them all (bar this one) on PC, I won’t be agreeing or disagreeing with you. I like relaxing with the joypad (it’s excellent with the chatpad) and it’s also very, very quick. Unlike previous releases you don’t need a hard-drive either. So not only have they made it faster, more detailed, they’ve shrunk the game save size for MU and removed the need for a HDD and caching. Well done Sports Interactive.Since that opening weekend I’ve taken a risk in selling off Carlos Tevez for £22m to Intel Milan, decided to gamble on taking Inter Milan’s out of favour striker Adriano after he returned from his loan spell at Sao Paolo. Inter Milan held me to ransom (I’d already sold Tevez and the season was starting in a week) and I ended up paying around £5m more than I wanted to, and secured him for £17.5m (a £4.5m profit over Tevez as I needed to fun the transfer of a new CB (I opted for Gonzalo Rodriguez).
Turns out Adriano has fit in alongside Rooney brilliantly, even more so than Tevez (who got me quite a few goals last season [not a many as Rooney - hence why Tevez was sold, not Rooney]) and has surpassed expectations. He’s notched 20 goals in 15 starts (it’s only November 4th). I now have a frontline of Adriano-Rooney-Aguero which has cost me around £55m in buying Aguero and Adriano.
To fund transfers I sold off Nani for £30 to Arsenal. David Gill automatically accepted the offer as it was too good to turn down which was kind of a shame as Nani did well in the few games he played for me last season though he spent the majority of it injured so not too bad. Sold off other players like Campbell, Dong, Eagles, Lee etc.. and made around £10m from reserve players.
Made a total of £68m in sales including a cracking £5m for O’Shea, £5.5m for Fletcher, £3.8m for Park and £2m for Simpson!
Taken gambles on some South American players such as Lulinha (Corinthians – £4.8m), Alex Teixeira (Vasco – £5m), Cristian Rodriguez (Free), Maxi Rodriguez (Free), Gonzalo Rodriguez (Villareal – £11.5m), Sergio Aguero (Athletico – £37.5m!!! 
) and re-bought one of my FM2006 favourites, Tomas Sivok for £8m from Udinese.
Most of them are only kids who I’m playing rarely, but I’m hoping they either work out or I sell for profit. Massive changes but I’ve sold a lot of players off to take the risks.
On top of all that I’ve also managed to complete an extra season from the Spanish league as Barcelona which will go towards the 5 league achievement, but was also enjoyable as it’s a fully licensed league with player images and team badges.
I forgot how good these games were (kinda) but it’s nice to have a new addiction, everyone can talk all they want about Metal Gear Solid 4, Gran Turismo 5, Grand Theft Auto IV and Ninja Gaiden 2, but for me they all pale in comparison to the might that is Football Manager 2008. Stunningly good fun.
I’ll bet Haly wishes she had this one.
I might be wishing it…
Only thing worse than a football game is a football management game :p
Totally not my cup of tea, but my brother loves these games.
Pfft, just because it’s not on the Playstation 3 you fanboy, you!
Football is awesome, therefore football games are awesome. Ones that give you total control are legendary.