Game of two halves (hattrick.org)

Member Name: DavidJWest

Product:	hattrick.org
Date:	28/01/03 (1239 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, Engrossing, Addictive

Disadvantages: Servers down sometimes, Waiting list, Weak team to start with

Hattrick is a football (soccer) management game which can be played free of charge using a web-browser. The game is well established with tens of thousands of people controlling a team each and to be honest I am amazed nobody else has written a review of it.

Once you have read the rules and F&Q you can sign up for your team to be allocated. Due to the popularity of the game you will have to wait for a team, up to four days is normal. This delay is due to the fact you have to wait for an existing manager to resign or be sacked before you can take over a team.

You don't get much choice as to what team you get allocated, which is good in my opinion as it is more realistic. You can chose which league you want to be in, English, Swedish and so on, there are dozens of leagues all over the world to chose from with the more popular countries such as England, Sweden and Italy being catered for as well as the minnows of Korea, Taiwain etc.

Once you have been allocated a team, logged in using the obligatory username and password the fun begins.

Choose a name for the team, rename your stadium if you consider it neccessary (it costs money) and look at the bunch of losers who constitute your team. In all probability you got a team which is near relegation trouble and in one of the lower leagues. That's why the previous manager resigned or was sacked.

Don't worry too much about the sack though, it is only given to those tardy managers who don't log in frequently enough to run their teams efficiently. Last I heard that is once every six weeks so it's hardly a massive chore.

Depending on the day of the week you have a number of choices to make. The Hattrick week is based around league games, which take place on a Sunday. You also can have the cup competition on a Wednesday and if you get knocked out of that you can arrange friendlies.

Once you log on to your team's page, you have a n
umber of main menu options to choose from -

Team Page - this shows information about the club such as which league and country you are in, email address etc. Most used if you are wanting to contact another manager or just do some research on your next opponents etc.

Players - Lists all players in your team, most useful screen this one. If you are looking at another teams players the information is not so exhaustive, you just get a general overview of their skills.

Each of your own players is rated for Stamina, Playmaking, Winger, Scoring, Keeper, Passing, Defending, Set pieces. One thing I found odd about the game is that players are not designated as midfielder etc. This is actually probably more realistic though as there is nothing stopping you playing a player with good defensive skills up front of course. The skills are rated by descriptive text rather than numbers, ranging from "Wretched" up to "Divine". Most players in my starting line-up only had "passable" as their best traits.

Also each player has a graphic, if applicable to show yellow/red cards, injury status and other useful info. You also get a short description about the player's character, as well as a summary about morale, fitness etc. You also get to see how much their estimated transfer value is. Finally if you click a players name you get more details such as their career goal tally etc.

Training - You can choose how intensive the training should be and what area to concentrate on, for example shooting. You can hire and fire coaches and you can see what formations the team has played and how well suited they were. The team morale and the sponsors morale is also shown here.

Matches - Here you can look at the last few results and the next fixtures. You can see how the team performed with a rundown of all the players ratings in a star format, one star is poor, ten is briliant. Also you can decide
on what tactics to employ in the next game.

For example who will play, what formation and who is captain etc.

Arena - This screen allows you to build more seats, terracing etc to expand the stadium and therefore hopefully increase revenue from gate receipts. It's a good idea to have a large enough stadium to accomodate all the fans but don't spend massive amounts of cash on an arena which is never going to be filled.

Economy - This shows the current state of affairs at the club, all incoming and outgoings for this week and the last. Also shows a predicted bank balance for the coming week.

The Club - A useful screen showing the number of supporters, any new ones joining up, or leaving in my case! Also you can invest money in the youth squad through this page and can also promote one uouth player every week.

Challenges - Here is a list of teams who have challenged you to a friendly and those you have already agreed to play.

Bids - Used to view any outstanding player deals. Your players who are transfer listed are shown along with any bids and players you are bidding for are also shown.

It's very simple to play the game, but I suspect hard to succeed. The key is obviously to improve the squad to the level that you can win games consistently and thus be promoted to the higher leagues. To do this you need to buy and sell players.

The game revolves around the transfer market, it is the single most important aspect of the game. You only start with £200k so can't afford the really good players to begin with. A keeper rated as "passable" will be over £100k for a youngster and "solid" strikers can fetch double that. "solid" is not all that good by the way! The worst players are wretched and disastrous whilst the best are extra terrestrial and divine! A divine striker will be well over seven million pounds so you need to save up a bit for that.
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So as well as buying you need to be efficient at selling and getting the best deal you can for the players you sell. New discoveries made from your youth team can be a useful boost in generating funds as you can get good players reletively cheaply, but you also get a lot of poor players who simply demand wages week after week.

Come match day the game really impresses. You can log on and watch the game almost in real time, with the commentary updating every time incidents of note occur. The reports are well written and take up around 500 words with a final rundown of how each player performed.

Overall it's a simple game to play but I suspect very hard to succeed at as the human opposition is not likely to be easy to overcome. Although the rules are quickly learned the different options will keep all football fans immersed for as much time as you have got! Anyone who has played computer games of this nature will be amazed that the game is free to play. Another good thing is you can spend hours looking through all the screens and exploring the leagues, but if time is short just 10 minutes a week will be enough to manage a team adequately.

There is also an element of diplomacy in the game as you can send messages to other managers and challenge them to friendlies. Some managers take the game very seriously as they have their own web-pages. Also available for free to download are various utilities to help keep a track of your team and the results.

If you do decide to join up then look out for my motley crew, called "The Sun Never Shines on TV" ID 7564 and currently 6th in league V.149. The V in my league shows how far off the Premiership we are, each league being of 8 teams. The name of my team is very clever, so clever you may not get it! Here's a clue, I live in Leeds.

It is possible to setup friendly leagues and if there are enough people interested we could setup a Dooyoo mini-league, lea
ve a message if you are interested in this.

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