Review: Football Manager 2008 - PC

Football crazy, football mad

Player screens are now overflowing with information, including the happiness of the player and their plans for the future. There’s so much information that some of it could be deemed useless, but it all adds in some small way to creating a realistic football management experience.

The interaction between yourself, the team and the media is now more elaborate and outside of matches you can submit quotes to the press about individuals inside or even outside of the team, which may affect their confidence or morale. You can spur on individuals or team members by speaking with them before, during matches or at half-time, or tell them how disappointed you are with their under-par performance. The options really do seem to be endless.

There’s the new addition of betting odds before matches, courtesy of Sky Bet (ker...ching!), which adds a touch of realism and there’s an improved and more complete coach reports on individuals and teams.

The only negative aspect of Football Manager 2008 is that it’s only really enjoyable when you’re winning week in and week out and if you want to be successful it does requires a lot of time and commitment. But, there’s no question at all that real football fans will enjoy the challenge.

Miles Jacobson, the Studio Director of Sports Interactive, summed Football Manager 2008 up when he said that his team would “once again be raising the bar in the sports management genre.” Well, they’ve kept to their promise and once again delivered with a slicker, more accessible football management game that, whilst continuing to appease fans of the franchise, certainly deserves to attract new ones as well. If the wife asks you why you're spending so much time on the PC, just tell her you're searching for her Christmas present on Ebay.

Pros
Slick
Intensely addictive
Believable
Improved accessibility

Cons
Could take over your life

The Football Manager series has proved itself once more. Football Manager 2008 is the definitive football management game

HEXUS Awards

Football Manager 2008 - PC

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Football Manager 2008 is available now.

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i got it and about to try it on my pc at work :P

I've been playing this quite a bit over that last couple of days and its ridiculously hard. It's not helped by the fact that your players don't actually tackle….

o its hard? have u played previous FM games? the last similar game i played was championship mananager 02 :P

clearlyolly
I've been playing this quite a bit over that last couple of days and its ridiculously hard. It's not helped by the fact that your players don't actually tackle….

Hmm, I'm about half way through the season and top of the league with Walsall (Div 1) - thanks to new signing Marcus Stewart.

Are you setting all the opponent tactics (man-marking and how hard you want to tackle etc?)

Hard tackling makes no difference, as does closing down. I'm pretty sure its a bug of somesort. I've played every FM/CM since CM2.

Great game though I'm still addicted. Just having to adjust my tactics to compensate from the lack of tackling from my defenders. Also, anyone noticed the vast amount of dissallowed goals?