Xbox 360 Review: Football Manager 2008

Another year, another Football Manager title graces us with its presence. The level of esteem this game is held in by its fans (me included), make it one of a very few titles immune to negative reviews. Does this incarnation really repay that loyalty?

I’d just like to start this review by stating that this is the first console based version of the game I’ve spent any significant amount of time with. Having been an avid Football Manager fan since the late nineties (when it was still known as Championship Manager), my experiences have purely been centred on the PC versions.

Consoles, however, have come of age and the addition of hard drives has meant this series is a legitimate option for a PC port, starting back with the original Xbox.

So, for anyone (in Europe at least) that has been living in a bomb shelter the last fifteen or so years, Football Manager 2008 (FM08) is a text-based management simulator in which you take the helm of your favourite football (soccer) club and lead them to glory.

What fans have come to expect over the years, among countless other nuances, are vast databases of players, clubs and staff, a realistic player progression system which allows you to groom the stars of tomorrow and an unmatched level of immersion within the game itself. On these levels, the game certainly does not disappoint.

The game now allows you to take control of clubs in fifty, yes fifty, different countries ranging from the European heavyweights such as England, Italy and Spain to the distinctly lighter weight leagues of Hong Kong and India.

In terms of content, this version of FM08 is certainly on par with its PC brethren. And, of course, this means the immersion factor is just as strong – you want to change what your defenders do when taking a corner kick? You can. Want to sign that unknown kid from Argentina who you expect will turn into the next Maradonna? Done. You really do feel like a full-fledged manager. Awesome! If that’s your kind of thing.

As we have come to expect from this series, the progression from last year’s game (Football Manager 07) is minimal. The game interface has been given a new lick of paint and a few extra sections have been added to streamline your experience (the transfer centre being the best of these, allowing you to easily monitor the progress of your clubs wheeling and dealing in one place) but, other than that and the obvious transfer and statistical updates, very little has changed.

For serious players, such as myself, this isn’t necessary a bad thing – why fix something that isn’t broken in the first place, right? However, there are some faults that make this version of the game inferior to its PC counterpart.

Firstly the processing power on the 360 just isn’t up to the job if you’re trying to run any more than five leagues, that’s five LEAGUES not five different countries. I started off playing this game with five countries selected – England (4 leagues), Italy (1 league), Spain (1 league), Brazil (1 league) and Argentina (1 league) – my typical set-up when playing on the PC.

In short, the 360 just couldn’t deal with it. If you want to spend countless hours watching loading screen after loading screen fine, but if that doesn’t excite you then I’d suggest limiting yourself to no more than five leagues total. It’s a shame because my PC isn’t phenomenally powerful and it can easily run the aforementioned 8-league set-up no problem, so just why it’s so slow is a mystery.

Now we get to the big problem with the game; the control system. This is something I would advise anyone familiar with the series to take into account when thinking about picking this game up. After years of play on PC versions of the game the jump to using a controller from a mouse and keyboard was a nightmare.

Having to use a combination of the shoulder buttons and the left stick to navigate around the game never felt natural or instinctive. Granted the interface has been modified from the original PC game to streamline the process for control pads, but it just doesn’t go far enough.

Even after a good five hours of play I was still pressing the wrong buttons and, infuriatingly, accidentally canceling transfer requests and team formations I’d spent serious time perfecting.

Being a text based game, you will be spending a good chunk of time keying in player and club names throughout various search boxes. Again, using a controller for this is extremely time consuming compared to a PC keyboard.

Having said that, owning the Live Messenger Kit does help significantly but, it’s still not as good as the old fashioned keyboard. How hard would it be for Microsoft to make their PC products, such as a mouse and keyboard, compatible with the 360? That would be a huge bonus for a game like this.

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh but my expectations, due to past experience, with this game are very high and this control system just brings the whole experience down. In short I’d recommend that, if you have the means, you go for the PC version (it’s cheaper anyway) and get ready to lose a couple of hundred hours of your life, because this embodiment of the game just doesn’t touch it, not even close.

Still, if you want to just dabble and have fun with your mates (online play is much easier to set-up in this version) then go for the console edition, just don’t expect to be playing for too long before you wish you had it on the PC.