Reviews

"It's better to burn out than to fade away" So sang Neil Young and he could easily have been singing about the Football Manager series, because whilst the first 2 games were great, this is a steaming pile of crap!

Worse than its two precedessors and worse than I expected ...

1991 Addictive Games (UK)
by Brian Rogers

I haven't played this game enough yet so I can judge it properly. But for now, my thoughts go for the somewhat delirious ambition of the programmer. Which, with the best intentions I'm sure, and with the responsibility in making a sequel to such an important game, went too far with some features without having the necessary skills to do it (or time).
There are some great ideas, some still used to this day in modern versions. I'm referring to the "real time" match, which, unfortunately, maybe due to bad decisions, lack of time or lack of skills, don't work out the best. There is an absurd amount of color clash for instance, the players blend with each other to the point of invisibility and the matchstick figures are too small to make out some otherwise well thought tackle animations. Overall, it's an average strategy game, with great ideas thrown in the mix, that could have worked better with a little more work.

It was inevitable and here it is. In 1991, a full nine years after the original game, came Football Manager 3. And this time, unlike the first two games and the World Cup spinoff game, Kevin Toms had absolutely no input on this game whatsoever. I'm not sure if he had much or any involvement on the Spectrum release of the World Cup Special but he did design it on other systems, this though, no, his face isn't even on the cassette inlay. Instead taking the reigns is one Brian Rogers of Bedrock Software who was responsible for the accursed World Cup Special game, and I think we already know where this review is heading don't we? This time we have a menu consisting of a desk and it's an absolute fiddly mess. It's very unresponsive and some of the options didn't work well for me, perhaps it's something I'm missing but it's not clever to have a football management game without a straightforward interface. At least the match screen is better than the World Cup Special, the players are smaller but it's easier to look at and it doesn't flicker all the time, plus there is match commentary. However, you don't actually see a lot of it as the action is far away, not a major gripe but compared to what we've had in this series it's a bit of a big deal. Also, the commentary at times has a seizure by reporting multiple things at the very same time, which gets annoying quickly. Also, no sound effects again. With this and the World Cup Special we can see why the first Football Manager games are so beloved, because of the genius of Kevin Toms, once he had less input the writing was on the wall. To make things even easier I have come up with my own red flag setup, ready? If it reads the words Bedrock Software, and more precisely, Brian Rogers, AVOID! That should cover it.

To take a quote from Michael Lee Aday, two out of three ain't bad. The first two Football Manager games are legendary classics, but the third installment is a classic fail and shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as the first two games.