The football management game (Football Manager 2009 (PC))

Member Name: LukeLovesBecca

Product:	Football Manager 2009 (PC)
Date:	17/09/09 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 3D match engine, all players in the world are available, better than LMA manager

Disadvantages: Sometimes strange results like team in 1st place being beaten by team in 24th

Football manager 2009 has continued the football manager series with the same features and layout of the game as the past versions, but this time features a new 3D match view. The game has many good features that would make me more willing to buy this game over the biggest competitor, LMA Manager 2009. Firstly, the game can be installed very quickly, and you can choose the countries and the leagues who wish to play in, or buy players from. For example, if you only wanted to play in the English leagues, you can do so by only entering the English leagues to play in, however if you then in future wanted to play in another countries' league(s) you would have to hope that that country or club makes you an offer to manage them. If not you will be stuck with only being able to take over teams in the country that you have selected. Many fans of the game will take over their local team and try to lead them to the premier league and beyond, before the game really gets to a point where it just becomes boring winning the premiership over and over again. So for the first few seasons it is quite fun and addictive. So far, I have taken my local team of Peterborough to the Championship where they are first in the league and should be promoted to the Premiership soon enough.

The 3D match screen is a nice little improvement, and graphically Sega have done well because the players do look somewhat realistic and true to life. The only problem with watching the game in the 3D match view is the annoyance when you see your players running slowly away from the goal with the ball of passing the ball around badly. However with the good teams the match view does look very good. On one saved file I have cheated a little by buying all the best players for Manchester United, and the match view does look very neat with all those great players I have bought playing. Despite having all these good players I often struggle to actually get a result, with brings me to my next point and the only one where I find a fault in the game. With a world class player in every position and my best set of tactics, I still find that sometimes I get beaten by a team at the bottom end of the table, which I find very annoying and weird at the same time that a team with such quality can be held back by a team where all the first team players are not even as expensive as a single player in my squad. Other than that though I really do enjoy the game as it can bring hours of fun and having played the LMA Manager a few years ago, I can say this series by Sega is the better game of the two. It is a good feeling to see a tiny club that you support go from rags to riches and the Johnston's Paint Trophy to the Champions League.

On thing to mention about the game is not to buy it second hand, as the game requires an activation code that can only be used once, so after using it the serial code on the back of the users guide is useless.

Summary: Definitely worth buying and looking forward to next years version