Football Manager 2005

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Seeing the number of football addicts in this forum, i am sure some might like to play this game. The previous best football manager game were championship manager series. The original developer is done with the series and now has came out with a new game, Football Manager 2005.

"Everyone is a football manger", so says its video ad. And that is essentially what makes people to play game, to do things they wanted to or think they can do better than but can't in real life.

CM is an excellent football manager series. You have bugs here and there but the realistic tactical and on pitch simulation is unsurpassable by other football manger game. And so, the people of CM is now working on FM. On top of the superb simulation, FM carries an larger data base some "semi mod" friendly feature, like adding club logos and player portraits to its database.

From my limited playing experience so fay, the basics of FM does not differ much from CM4. Even the much disappointed training feature of CM4. If you open the individual training schedule (under football manager/data/traning/) with notepad, you can find that the each session is broken down into 9 stats and some session works better in unexpected area than others regardless of its description (i.e. overloading defense). Team and individual instructions have more features than CM4, as it should. i haven't know to what extend these additional features will do in a long run, i am still in the 3rd match of pre-season friendlies.

As so, since Micheal Owen is out of the picture, as i always said, Gerrard is the king and Liverpool is his kingdom. When i am done with Liverpool, i will continue with Bari, as usual.

[ November 26, 2004, 06:55: Message edited by: teekc ]

 

Yes, I've got to admit - I'm thinking of making the purchase - although with Half Life 2, Sid Meiers Pirates are also in the reckoning. I also have Rome Total War and Halo 2 sitting on the shelf. So I'm feeling a bit guilty about making any further purchases until I've given these a little milleage first
A couple of mates have already bought this and the usual lengthy conversations are already taking place. Apparently the performance ratings seem to be a little inconsistent, one ended up in the bottom half of the table with average ratings of 6.95 - 7.80 in his first team. The champions in his league had an average rating of 6.6 - 7.1. So a patch seems to be needed here - if you can't judge performance properly you're in for a rough time!
I did feel a little let down by the last 2 installments though. In the last version I really got annoyed with the amount of tactical tinkering I had to make. I eventually downloaded the infamous diablo tactic from a site - and ended up winning everything after 2 seasons, lame I know but you don't seem to able to win by playing to your strengths like in the older versions. Nethertheless it was still pretty good fun with Cavenaghi and co. But I prefered the days of James Flood, Woozley, Sigporsson etc (CM97 - 00).
On a more positive note I heard you can start slating rival managers. I can't wait to get stuck into Wenger, Ferguson and Moriniho.
Playing with Liverpool is hardly a challenge though (although Owen more often than not had great stats but never produced). I start with Villa and get jibes from my mates for taking the easy option (Walsall supporters) I usually have a go with a conference side then and see if I can take them to champions league glory later on. Let us know if you unearth any gems.

 

i seldom pay any attention to average rating. Too many reasons are accounted for rating. i usually look at the individual stats (tackling %, heading %, etc). The central def in 352 usually gets low rating not because low performance but low involvement, which is a good thing too. No matter how good a defender is, when he went up aganist Shearer will get low rating because of the low heading won and lost ratio.

 

Fantastically brilliant game. If you do not own it, you should die a horrible death.

Get it.

 

I don't own it. No matter how brilliant it is, there's no way I have time to get caught up in the endless addiction that is sports management games. I would end up playing it all night (just one more match, just one more team selection) and never get any sleep.

 

I have mostly managed to get the CM poison out of my system. CM4 was so dull that I have a hard time working up enthusiasm for FM. Have a friend who have played a bit and he isnt very blown away either. I actually prefer the simpler not as flashy CM1 and CM2.

 

CM1 and 2 has a big flaw, the engine doesn't update its tactic. So, anyone can download a win all be all tactic and cruise all the way through. That's not the point with CM3 or CM01/02. Although there are still win all tactic (433owen or 4132nakano) but this time, the engine will update its data to find a way to crack your tactic. Choosing among cm and fm, i would say cm01/02 is the best.