Well well well this is a first for a while....a review from me....not that anyone has actually read my "reviews" or anything like that but too bad it's another one of these nonetheless. As you will soon find, as in if you click on my name for my other reviews, you will see I have reviewed some football management games and I am probably the only person to have reviewed more than two on this site...and this review is no exception as I review Graeme Souness Soccer Manager by Zeppelin Games...which is of course a football management game...or soccer for Americans, or grown men falling over for others.
Anyways, when the game loads you immediately get to pick your team. I cannot say for certain how many teams are present but rest assure it's a lot. Regardless of who you select you will start in the Football Conference....or the Zeppelin League as it's called here. I'm not sure though if this one league or every league is called this...for reasons that will become clearer as this review goes on...so pay attention as I'll be asking questions later. Oh and in case you are curious I selected to manage Halifax Town, just because.
So, to the menu then where we have a number of options to click on with our mouse cursor...even though this is played with a keyboard and/or I believe a joystick or controller as well. You get to select your squad of 11 starting players and 2 substitutes, you can view your bank statements and players wages as well as visit the bank manager or chairman or stepdad or whoever he is meant to be and doing something with an overdraft which I never could understand because I'm thick and all that, you can view your league and cup fixtures as well as the league table, there's the physio's report for viewing injured players and how long they'll be out for, you can buy and sell players although all the players you would want to buy to improve your squad cost too much money so you will almost certainly have to sell players before you buy....and your squad is pretty thin from the get-go so you're a bit stumped. You can also save your game to cassette or load your game from a cassette which is a little pointless now since we have emulators and save states now...but back then of course you didn't so they're there for a reason.
You will notice that there is no music during the menu...or at all in fact...but there's a video on YouTube which has custom music played during the menu....oh wait it's mine....ho hum.
Anyways, to the match itself then and our first league match is against Wycombe Wanderers, and according to the pre-match screen, the pitch is perfect and my scout's report on the opposition reads that the defence is poor, the midfield...is poor and the attack....is poor....easy pickings by the sounds of it then....and yes it was....for them as it turned out!
Now like most football management games you don't play the games and instead you watch....like a manager does...see a lot of people miss the obvious there, you're the manager so you sit on your arse on the dugout and watch the game....probably not exciting yes but it's "realistic" so deal with it....well if you were watching these matches from this game how could you deal with it.
Because this game is viewed with a scoreboard with a timer going down and it is interrupted from time to time with highlights of a scoring chance with one sound effect for when the ball is kicked and is the only sound in the entire game, and they usually come from the opposition...and roughly 70% of the time they score and 30% of the time they don't...and your team don't seem to do anything like 96% of the time...for you see in the first three matches, of two league matches, which I lost and drew and an Impulze Cup match which I lost I scored zero goals and only had 2 shots...yes that's right two bloody shots in three matches and my opponents had like 20! In fact in 12 league matches I had 3 draws, 9 losses and scored 3 goals...yes just 3 goals....and my losses included 4-0 and 5-0....to say this game is heavily biased against you is a brutal understatement!
And by this stage, no-one has bought any of my players that I have put in the transfer list and I still can't afford anyone decent...I did sign a striker on the cheap to cover my losses having lost one through injury....and guess what? First bloody game he is injured and out for 6 weeks.............................and that lengthy line of periods was my will to live sapping away from me.
So what did I do? I reset and reloaded the game and managed a much stronger team....Everton in fact....thinking that would increase my chances....but oh no it didn't, as it's the exact same squad with the exact same abilities and the exact same luck....none...first game against Wycombe I lost 4-1! And so I switched off and it shall never be played again from here on out.
I've played a lot of football management games in my time and I cannot think of playing one that is completely unrewarding as this one. Can you actually win a match? I have not only never won but I've never scored more than one goal in a match...I only managed three goals in thirteen matches! Of course with your luck run out from the very beginning it clearly won't take long for this game to get so boring and redundant. It's clearly not fun when you can't win nor score and you can't improve your squad because you don't have the budget for it....plus they get broken after one game anyway!
So to sum it all up then, Graeme Souness, he failed as Liverpool manager, he failed as Newcastle manager, he failed in Turkey and his game sucks balls as well. If you do happen to be Graeme Souness and you are reading this, hello, welcome and thank you for reading my review.
P.S. YOUR GAME'S RUBBISH!!!
Review by YOR on 06 Dec 2018 (Rating: 1)
Oh dear, where do I begin with this travesty. This game borrows a lot from Kenny Dalglish’s Soccer Manager game, the look of the interface, the squad setup, the match highlights, almost as if it's a direct sequel. However it's safe to say that is a far inferior sequel. The match highlights are quicker but much more primitive, with the goalie only diving to his right and all the players remain static. It's also more challenging as no matter what I do I don't seem to win, I'm either losing or drawing, plus two games in my goalie got hurt, out for ten weeks, and I cannot afford to replace him. Just, flipping, great. And that becomes a problem in my game, injuries and not being able to replace injured players properly as the players are much more expensive here, and the one time when I do buy a replacement player HE gets hurt on his second game as well. This is quite unique as it's a football management game that achieves the dull look and feel even with match highlights. Simply put, Kenny Dalglish's game is much better.
