Best Football Sim (that's "soccer" to you colonial types)

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
..........

If you find FM too easy you can try and play it in a more realistic way. Try not using player search or staff search to find people to sign. Use only scouts to find players and only the job centre to advertise for staff, it's much harder to get up and running.

Ah yes that would make it more tricky. And now you've jogged my memmory you are right CM series was pretty easy to get good personal etc. FM(since 2005?) has made that much harder especialy as a lower league club. In fact just getting out the lower leagues(Conference North/South) and keeping in Div2 can be tricky when only poor players/coachs are willing to sign for you.

I still think they should ramp up the difficulty for any non traditional premier club that makes it to the top flight, as once you are in you can pretty much buy your way to safety....but then again maybe that is a fair reflection on real life?

I'll give your tips a go and see how that plays - thanks maq

[duke o' york]

Originally posted by El_Cid

Imho it should be incredibly hard to bring a low league team(with a small following(20,000 ish), into the top flight.

Playing FM2005 I found that getting there wasn't too bad, but it became a huge headache just having any money, because although the board would give you some money to buy players, they never used to cut the transfer budget in order to improve the ground, which I'd have preferred, because then the benefits will be much longer-term and you can start to have realistic-sized crowds at your home games. You shouldn't have a team fighting for the top of the league in front of 20,000 crowds (only for big games mind!) - have the designers never heard of glory hunters?

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
The last Premier Manager I played was PM96 on the Mega Drive, great game but very easy, like most PM's. You can speed through the seasons though.

Well, I don't know how easy or difficult PM2008 is compared to other games. I'm doing OK with Barnet in the first season, but you can't buy players above your station, and the manual says very little about how the game works, which is the biggest challenge so far.

The game engine seems a bit wierd as well. Strikers don't seem to have a clue about the offside rule, and when they are through one-on-one they always pass backwards instead of shooting. Another quirk is that the front two players always go back to defensive positions in the centre circle when their team has a corner.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

Another quirk is that the front two players always go back to defensive positions in the centre circle when their team has a corner.

Can you not modify that somehow? You can in FM08 at least.

Played the original Football Manager on a Speccy emu on Dreamcast yesterday. Apparently I came across a bug where 3 of my players were #10 and I couldn't sell/pick/unpick any of them but apart from that it was great. FM2 took ages to load and asked to use stupid keys (I was using a virtual KB so it was hard enough), FM3 had a weird animated office and not much to do, glad I never played it back then. Also played Beach-Head, Bomb Fusion, Dizzy and Barbarian, top games

[El_Cid]

Beach-head was a genius game at the time.

On the football theme I loaded up SWOS(amiga) the other day - it's still a damn good management game, with a great match engine(plenty of atmosphere).

Andy Johnson is a brilliant buy if you can get him
his little ginger headed sprite is a goal machine at all levels(I think the real Andy Johnson is bald though - or he is now/recently when i last saw him on tv).

Classic gaming can be like the best fine wine.....and sometimes the worst

[DrSpike]

SWOS is coming out on XBL soon.

[El_Cid]

How much is that per month?

I made a mistake about the identity of that excellent striker in SWOS. The ginger headed sprite is Tommy Mooney - I don't know why I was getting him confused with Andy Johnson, maybe because they are both underated players?
Anyway if you play SWOS look to get this guy as soon as possible, especialy if you are lower league as he is very cheap and very prolific

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by El_Cid
How much is that per month?

0.

The game itself will likely cost 800 points, or about £6-£7.

If you want to play online it's about £30 a year, for all games. So all very reasonable really.

[Maquiladora]

Just finished the Eredivisie top with Ajax, 31w/1d/2l all corner+2million deflections goals by the AI

Final game of season scored this cracker though

[Maquiladora]

Anyone playing Football Manager 08? The first patch was just released, I won't post the entire list of changes (as it won't fit anyway...) but the thread is here.

Looks like they've finally fixed the closing down problem at least so I can finally start playing seriously.

[Agathon]

OK, so I've been playing FIFA 08 on and off for a couple of weeks, and I have to say it is a much improved game. There are minor annoyances, but I have not had one goal that is the same yet. Still haven't got the hang of some of the tricks, but I've moved up one difficulty level and seem to have no problem winning.

Anyway, I made a movie of some of my goals. Mainly goals by players I like, rather than spectacular stuff (damn EA caused me to lose a replay of a Ronaldinho screamer, and a Blanco jumping bean run and goal).

What impresses me is that it looks much more like real football than WE/PE does (although I haven't picked up the new version of that yet).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHu51STlI_I

[Maquiladora]

Passing and moving looks more realistic in FIFA08, but I don't like the bar around the bottom of the net. I think the net physics are better in PES08 too. 2nd Blanco goal the net doesn't move and the ball goes through the net.

The keepers on PES08 are really **** though, so I've stopped playing it.