Get ready to throw some teacups -- LMA Manager 2001 (LMA Manager 2001 (PS))

Member Name: mmuk

Product:	LMA Manager 2001 (PS)
Date:	29/08/01 (281 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Take your team to glory, Plenty of challenges to increase game longevity, See rest of op

Disadvantages: 15 blocks of memory, Management games are slooooow

Inside every football fan there’s a manger screaming to get out. LMA Manger 2001 is your oppurtunity to prove it.

Football management games – aren’t they great. You take control of your favourite football team and the rest is up to you. Delve into the transfer market, build new stadia, sack your incompetent staff…but if you don’t win games you will be out on your ear faster than Michael Owen over six yards.

Until the League Managers Association Manager series began the undisputed king of the sims was the Championship Manager range. However, the new king stepped in by dumping the evil nest of menus inflicted on us by the PC boffins, replacing them instead with a clean, slick and sparkly frontage. Not only was it nicer to look at but it was also simple and quick to navigate.

Now don’t get me wrong I love(d) the Champ Manager series, but I prefer to play games on my Playstation so when I heard that LMA 2001 was out I decided to buy it. I ordered the game from Gameplay at a reasonable cost of £22.99 as soon as it was released.

Now onto the game itself, it opens with a nice FMV showing a manger with his talented team scoring various wonder goals. Eat my Goal is playing and is also used when saving the game.

The main menu is divided into two parts on your screen. The bottom and largest area shows the particular screen you are on. In the top section there are eight icons, which you toggle through with the R1/L1 buttons. There is also a current date, your name, team name and cash available to spend. Finally there is another group of icons – these are unique to whatever section you are in such as: Squad, Messages, Information etc. You toggle through these icons with the R2/L2 buttons.

After you have picked your team you will be set a target. I will use Portsmouth as my example from now on. They are set the tremendous challenge of avoiding relegation. Next up you will want to chec
k out the staff screen. BTW you should choose to have no staff when you begin the game because the ones you are given will be pants. Start off by getting as good an assistant manger as you can, a good physio and at least one good scout. Various other members will be up to your discretion and staff budget.
You won’t need a commercial manager unless money is no object – all they do is decide to spend your money on your stadium, and pick sponsors – although not always the ones which pay the most money.

Certain members of staff can be set tasks. There is a comprehensive training scheme you can use, but I leave this to my Head Coach. Other tasks include contracts, recommending youth players and sorting out your backroom staff.

You need to trim your squad to save your wage budget or make room for new signings. If you don’t have much money keep an eye on your youth squad -- you can offer them a 2-week contact to see if they have potential.

After your original squad is sorted you can delve into the transfer market. This is often a make or break part of a management game and LMA certainly delivers. You can set various criteria for a search, whether it is position, age, price range etc. The only gripe I have is unlike PC games you can’t search for specific players by name. Also you can only loan players who are listed whereas the computer can seemingly do it without this need.

Unlike the previous game the money is not in one big pool, instead different areas are given budgets. There is a stadium budget for building a new stadium, staff budget, player wage budget as well as your transfer cash. If you want to upgrade a single stand you will have to spend your transfer money. Your budgets for each season will increase each season – although it will take a while till you can afford the 100,000 seater stadium (unless you use a cheat or two, see later in the op…).

So now you have sorted you
r team, got a good formation and are ready to move on. You can choose to move on a single day or up to a week. The game will stop moving through the days if you have a message such as transfer news or when you have a match to play. This feature is great as it means avoiding the boring task of clicking yes or no for five minutes to reach the ‘advance to next day’ whilst still letting your players train and the game continuing in the background.

The tactics available in the game do offer a wide variety but the formations in particular are a little sparse. I think they could have had one with a holding player in front of the back four or a couple more basic systems rather than examples of famous teams.

At the end of the day its matches which sort the Man Utds from the Colchesters and its here where LMA really shines. It keeps the same basic approach as the original, whilst improving the game engine. Something quite original about the game is actually watching the match unfold rather than following a bar with two colours moving up or down. Although it wasn’t the first to offer this (I’m thinking of Ultimate Soccer Manager) it certainly does it the best. You don’t need to read stats to see who is playing well, its obvious when your players have confidence because of little passing triangles set up and your teams surge forward in waves of attacks.

I would like to have seen the vidi printer scrolling text from the original as it can be hard to see which particular midfielder is running the game although you can have numbers above their heads.
At the bottom of the (match) screen scores will flash up – crucial if you need to win a game so you can adjust your tactics accordingly. You can use the shoulder buttons to give your team special tactics, such as long ball, all-out attack or keeping possession.

The after match highlights are also flashier than ever and although after a while you will see the
actions repeated there are still a vast number to see. I found it quite useful to turn off the non-essential highlights, so in true Match of the Day style sorry, The Premiership style you will not watch the main game instead just the goals roundup. One problem I had is that the game crashes after you have watched a highlight. This happens in the second season. I am not sure whether it is bug in my game or it might have something to do with getting Pompey promoted. Perhaps the developers never thought it would happen ;-)

If you get bored of the normal game you can elect to compete in a challenge, such as a £100 million dream team or winning every division from third and finally the Premiership. Although the £100 million isn’t as easy as it sounds because the top players like Luis Figo and Zidane will cost a cool £32 million each.

So is it perfect? Well not quite – it has a very solid engine with good graphics but there are a few things, which bug me. Crashing in a game is bad but in an unpatchable console version it is nearly unacceptable. The game is also slow, saving and loading takes an age not helped by the fact that it needs 15 blocks, which means a whole memory card. Also bad is the fact that the fan base doesn’t increase too much if you are winning constantly or move up a division – same thing with European matches; instead of a full house you will see more fans at a league match.

Despite such imperfections LMA 2001 is a very good game, it lives up to and excels in many places its predecessor. Codemasters could have followed EA’s Fifa route, churning out a sequel with just a revamped graphics engine and new stats but I’m glad to say they haven’t. Not only is it a great management game it is a great Playstation game.

Here is a list of cheats for the game. You enter them in the name section. Beware -- use them wisely because otherwise the game gets a bit too easy:

§ FILTHY
RICH -- £500 million to spend
§ NO CONSTRUCTION – Stadiums built quickly
§ SUPERSTARS – player ratings go to 90%
§ BLIND REF – no bookings for your players
§ POTIONS – players recover from injuries quickly
§ EASY LIFE -- Best team and tactics
§ AMPHETAMINE – Faster players
§ HARD AS NAILS – Aggressive players
§ LUCKY STREAK – win every match – also most pointless cheat
§ YOU THE DADDY – all players come to you for whatever price you want, you can offer them whatever wages you want too – Best cheat

If you enter the names correctly you will hear a sound.

Thanks for reading this op

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MMUK
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