Reveiw - Football Manager 2008

[Burned Your]

Can anyone save Newcastle from the drop? Er,No...

Like the rest of the series, Football Manager 2008 is garguntuan, so comprehensive, that you may mutilate your backside after days of sitting on it if you don't take the necessary precautions. A nice comftable cusion would be one option. Either that, or a bottle of antiseptic lotion for the developing sores in your region.
If your not fimiliar with the series, you might once known of Championship Manager back when it was soley a PC Game - albeit one that sold by the lorry-load. It's the football managment sim that is so accurate in its tracking and prediction of player and team development that some league coaches and scouts have been known to dip into it for pointers on where to turn for the next Frank Lampard.
Given its pedigree then, it's nto much of a suprise to find there's no great leap forward in this year's version; no startlingly brilliant new features or flourishes to compare with the introduction of the series' 2D Match engine, that allowed you to the fruits of your of your tinkering played out before you - even if it was only in the form of 22 coloured blobs gravitating around a green rectangle. FM2008 is more of a reshuffle and fine-tune to go with all expected roster updates and stat changes, with some new shortcuts carved into the code to make all those menus, sub-menus and micro-menus a little easier to nevigate.
Only a little, mind you. Those new to footy-based stat-crunching will find the array of menus and the variety of options avaliable bewildering to say the least, but there is a Windows-like advice box that pops up whenever you come across a new screen. But once has stopped resembling a NASA Mission Control worksation some of the finer improvments can be enjoyed.

This Game has been submitted as a 7 by a Xbox360 Verdict!

-Burned