Review
We're all friends here, so let's be honest. EA Sports regularly gets hammered for sending out, year after year, only slightly enhanced versions of its sports games: these still sell, but rarely trouble the trophy cabinet. Meanwhile, Sports Interactive and Sega have been doing the same trick for the past few years, and we absolutely love them for it.
It helps, of course, that the Football Manager games remain classics of their genre, so far ahead of everything else it gets a little Chelsea-esque when it comes to considering the riches in their proverbial locker. And each year, Sports Interactive throws enough fresh ingredients into the mix to keep most of the people happy to reciprocate by throwing thirty more quid in their direction.
This year's mixture has some intriguing additions and evolutions. Scouting, for instance, has had a useful overhaul, with specific scouts now rated for their experience in finding talent in different geographic parts of the world. Also, a single scouting mission no longer reveals the full extent of a player's ability. Instead, two or three visits are needed to get a proper flavour.
There's been a lot of work done with the youth system, too. It wasn't much of a secret that players, once they retired from the game, were regenerated back as youth starlets, but the youth talent system is trickier now. The vast majority of younger players never go on to make it in Football Manager 2007, and it really adds another slice of pressure to your scouting team.
Mind you, when you do find a player you like the look of, there are new options at your disposal. The reworked and enhanced media relations segment of the game now allows you to target players rather than just managers, and it's a joy to unsettle your key target as part of a strategy to bring them to your club. It doesn't always work, but it's fun to have a go.
One area we didn't get to spend much time with was the feeder club additions. The idea is that you can set up relationships of different types with clubs across the world, be it just to arrange regular friendly games or perhaps to loan players to help build them up. Given that the clubs we managed when testing the game never really reached the heights of the big boys (but, er, we got damn close with Stockport County), we couldn't fully explore this feature.
But we did get an excellent feel for the rest of the game, and it's as strong as ever. Having explored both Championship Manager 2007 and LMA Manager 2007 over the past weeks, it's a fairly obvious conclusion that for the stat-heavy football management fanatic, there really is no other choice than this.
Again, it's not changed a great deal, and some of the new additions may yet take a couple of generations of development to reach their potential, but there's little question that the Football Manager franchise's ability to rip hours, days and weeks out of your life hasn't been tempered in any way shape or form.
Same time next year?
We're all friends here, so let's be honest. EA Sports regularly gets hammered for sending out, year after year, only slightly enhanced versions of its sports games: these still sell, but rarely trouble the trophy cabinet. Meanwhile, Sports Interactive and Sega have been doing the same trick for the past few years, and we absolutely love them for it.
It helps, of course, that the Football Manager games remain classics of their genre, so far ahead of everything else it gets a little Chelsea-esque when it comes to considering the riches in their proverbial locker. And each year, Sports Interactive throws enough fresh ingredients into the mix to keep most of the people happy to reciprocate by throwing thirty more quid in their direction.
This year's mixture has some intriguing additions and evolutions. Scouting, for instance, has had a useful overhaul, with specific scouts now rated for their experience in finding talent in different geographic parts of the world. Also, a single scouting mission no longer reveals the full extent of a player's ability. Instead, two or three visits are needed to get a proper flavour.
There's been a lot of work done with the youth system, too. It wasn't much of a secret that players, once they retired from the game, were regenerated back as youth starlets, but the youth talent system is trickier now. The vast majority of younger players never go on to make it in Football Manager 2007, and it really adds another slice of pressure to your scouting team.
Mind you, when you do find a player you like the look of, there are new options at your disposal. The reworked and enhanced media relations segment of the game now allows you to target players rather than just managers, and it's a joy to unsettle your key target as part of a strategy to bring them to your club. It doesn't always work, but it's fun to have a go.
One area we didn't get to spend much time with was the feeder club additions. The idea is that you can set up relationships of different types with clubs across the world, be it just to arrange regular friendly games or perhaps to loan players to help build them up. Given that the clubs we managed when testing the game never really reached the heights of the big boys (but, er, we got damn close with Stockport County), we couldn't fully explore this feature.
But we did get an excellent feel for the rest of the game, and it's as strong as ever. Having explored both Championship Manager 2007 and LMA Manager 2007 over the past weeks, it's a fairly obvious conclusion that for the stat-heavy football management fanatic, there really is no other choice than this.
Again, it's not changed a great deal, and some of the new additions may yet take a couple of generations of development to reach their potential, but there's little question that the Football Manager franchise's ability to rip hours, days and weeks out of your life hasn't been tempered in any way shape or form.
Same time next year?
Download Game :
http://rapidshare.com/files/30791646/fm7.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/30813457/fm7.part2.rar
Password: djblaster