Soccer Manager

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Football manager 2022 review

Football Manager 2022 brings me back to one of my most beloved genres. Having spent the best part of 40 years playing these games. All the way from Kevin Toms’ 1987 Football Manager, through my love affair with CM97/98 to here and today. Sports Interactive are way ahead in this game and it shows.

Yes.It’s make believe and even the best of them look like a spreadsheet, a keen eye soon learns where to look. But, once you’re under and engaged with these players it all starts to become important, to you, personally.

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Book RelatedFeature ArticleiOSPC / Mac

Championship Manager 97/98 (CM97/98) – in 2020

Championship Manager 97/98 is an evergreen to me.

I can’t say exactly why, but like many of the converted it really is the equivalent of pulling an old sweater on. Born in a time where it strained an Intel 486, the game now runs like Ryan Giggs used to.

Whenever somebody Tweets up a best game ever poll or which game would you take to a desert island. Yep, I’m in like Flint with a quick and subtle CM97/98.

Maybe it was the time of my life that etched the game so deeply into my brain. This was my late twenties, and probably the period when I was most interested in football. Attending Premier League games over the years, feeling the joy of Aston Villa lifting the League Cup and more likely just needed a fantasy world.

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GamingByte Size ReviewiOSPS4Switch Console

New Star Manager, PS4 Review

There will always be room for more takes on soccer manager genre, at least there is if you’ve ever let one get its hooks into you.

For me the Holy Grail has always been CM97/98, many wasted weekends as nights turned to mornings and you’d catch an hour of sleep while a creaky 386 PC ground out the close season update. There have been all sorts of attempts to capture that lightning, sometimes they have just been too complex for their own good.

New Star Manager brings a fresh take and more importantly for consoles a better user interface than suits the medium. No more snapping to and fro between far too many icons, no more floaty cursors relying on your thumbstick that wished it was a mouse, you have to appreciate the design path going from mobile to Switch before PS4 being one of the core drivers here.

New Star is a relaxed and enjoyable take on the manager sim, the pace is fairly pedestrian which makes it a top-corner chill-out game and the mini games along with the in-match controls have raised more than a few smiles in my dugout.

If you are looking for something different that tickles your soccer fantasies, I’d be giving New Star a run out, new signings, fresh legs and all that.

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