Soccer Gaming

Football Manager Handheld has recently been released for the iPhone and iPod touch. The game is available on the iTunes store, priced £6.99, and involves many of the features you would associated with the long running PC game. This review is designed to give you a little more information about the game, and hopefully help you make an informed decision about the game.

The Football Manager franchise is one of the most respected sporting game franchises ever. From its initial PC roots, it has become a firm favourite on the PSP, Sony’s portable machine, and has gone from strength to strength on iMac’s as well as its home format. As a brief introduction, that game allows you to take control of a football team, running all aspects of their tactical play, along with decisions such as buying and selling players and dealing with the media. Where Football Manager differs from other football games on the market is that fact that come match day, it is very much a hands off approach. There is no way of controlling the players during the match, and you are restricted to watching the action, making tactical changes based on the plethora of statistical information the game throws at you. Fans would go on record saying it is one of the most addictive games ever made, and from a personal point of view, over the years, I have spend entire waking days just sat at my PC looking to bring a team to glory!

To compare an iPhone or iPod touch version of the game to the PC version would be the biggest mistake I could make when reviewing this game. If we look at the other games available on the iTunes store, we see that they are quick fix games designed to kill time during a train journey, lunch break or waiting room. Whilst Football Manager is far more in depth than most offerings, (including all other football management sims on the format), it still isn’t anywhere near as detailed as its big brother, and to be honest it has no need to be. When you flick the game on for your iPhone, you going to want to fill a short space of time doing as much as possible, not rolling through screens and pages of information. Football Manager Handheld allows for a quick game continuation, and gets through to the match days with speed slower PC systems fantasise about. The won’t replace the PC version, and if you have the choice of which one to play,90% of people will choose the PC version, but that is missing the point entirely, Football Manager Handheld is for on the go, and it does that perfectly

An impressive 34 leagues make up the set up on Football Manager, including all the big European divisions. Ahead of its rivals, the game allows you to control some minor teams too, and still offers an impressive database size, irrelevant of which league you choose. The up to date, 20,000 + roster is very strong, and whilst reserve and youth teams are missing, there is still enough depth in each squad to ensure you can field a competitive team on match days. In true FM style. players can become unhappy or injured, and require supervision to ensure they are playing to their full potential. The option to interact with players, telling them how you feel about them or just slapping them with a fine, is present, along with the usual transfer settings. Want to loan out your young striker to get him some experience, feel free, whilst making signings again is a very similar process to the PC game. just slightly watered down.

The control system, as with pretty much everything for the iPhone is touch screen based. Menu’s are exceptionally easy to navigate, and shaking the phone acts as an instant continue, either moving the game forward or bringing your attention to a news feature that requires a response. It is a feature that works quite well, but has no major benefit in the long term. Probably the most fiddly part of the control system is team selection. Most people will be used to dragging a dropping players into position on the formation screen, or swapping two players on the pre-match screen by dragging their icons over each other. Whilst this is possible in FMH, it is very much touch and go, and you may just as easily scroll down the screen as actually select the swap you intended. This becomes even more frustrating in match. If you wish to make a tactical change for any reason, for example your GK is sent off and you need to swap an outfield player with a GK sub, and then again swap position, you can spend 20 minutes trying to drag that new GK into the correct slot, and even then still not be guaranteed he will get there! I am quite skilled on the iPhone, yet I found this unnecessarily tricky, and was longing for a click, click method, the same feature as when making a substitution, to swap players positions around. As with nearly all iPhone/iPod Touch games, sometimes practicality is avoided to include style, and this is one of the few moments were Football Manager Handheld falls short of its exceptionally high standards.

During the match, the game runs almost identically to the second PSP version. The 2D pitch is present, and whilst miles off the PC version, still offers a graphical interpretation of goals, missed chances or talking points, something which Management fans from the late 90’s craved! The statistics available are ridiculously impressive. Along with the usual conditions ratings, you have the option to see information such as pass completion, tackles won and headers won, along with the much loved out of 10 rating Football Manager has enjoyed throughout the years, and is now being slightly belittled by the decimal system featured on the PC version. The handheld version keeps it simple though, and for this is actually appeals to me more than the big version. The text commentary is very strong and gives a good feel for the action, to be honest providing everything a Football Manager fan would love to know. Swiping your finger across the screen allows you to view in play tables, current scores and action zones during the game, all of which really add to the depth of the product.

Other features, such as handling the media, the hall of fame, swapping jobs and the backroom staff all play their part in making the game very realistic and enjoyable to play. The main thing though is in which the speed the game loads and plays. On a journey, you are not going to wanting to sit through hours of loading screens and on FMH, you really don’t have to. The average week takes about 1 minute to get through, with matches taking a couple of minutes meaning on a 20 minute journey you should get through maybe 8 matches. That is totally the point of an app, and therefore when it comes to meeting its target demographic, Football Manager Handheld does it perfectly.

At £6.99, the game is one of the more expensive on the App store, especially when rival management gamesroll in at roughly £2.99. I am delighted to say though that this is not an average football management game. This is a Football Manager title made for handheld, and has features that make the competition look average. Having played many of the other management offerings, I wish I had saved my money and spent the £6.99 on FMH, and I hope that piece of advice alone is enough to encourage some people here to do the same. It is not perfect, as very few first attempts are. There is no option to swap between countries in an existing saved game, nor can you create custom formations. However, these are the same problems that feature on every iPhone football management app so far, and FMH does the other parts so much better!

I was waiting for Football Manager to release an iPhone app, expecting something later this year. For it to come now was a pleasant surprise, and the quality of the game was even more surprising. I have found myself cheering in my car at a last minute winner, throwing the phone down on my sofa in disgust at a red card, and looking optimistically during my lunch break as I went for another low money, big name signing. Very few games do this, even fewer on the iPhone, but thankfully, Football Manager fills the void nicely!

For more information on the game, please visit http://www.footballmanager.com/index.php?p=info_iphone