LMA Manager 2005 review

If you like football games there is a very high chance that last Saturday you sat in a freezing cold football stadium. There is also a very high chance you shelled out some of your hard earned cash to watch your team play or more importantly to see your team win.

The main problem is that more often than not your team doesn’t win and you leave the ground feeling angry, desolate and broken-hearted, your face now turning red from the harsh winters cold, you wonder why you drove all those miles to watch that sickening display you just saw. You toss the scarf into the car’s back seat and you begin the long drive home.

Ten minutes into you trip a familiar voice emerges from you car radio and the football results begin. Before you can reach the off button you hear the result that you just witnessed first hand minutes before. Then you mutter those words every fan does at least once every season, "I could have done better than that......"

Bouncebackability

Yes footie fans, LMA manager is back, the game that puts all our pride and trash talking to the test. If you ever uttered those word "I could have done better than that" then lets face it football management games are going to be the closest most of us get to be in that in that dressing room and in that dugout tying to turn those players into a winning team.

Football management sims run like clockwork, season after season, year after year a new title will always hit store shelves and will always boast all new up to date stats. If the title doesn't include all those 11th hour transfer dealings and reliable up to date stats then the game won’t even make it out of that metaphorical tunnel. Luckily LMA does not lapse in the stats and transfer department. The question is how good is this year's game? And if you bought LMA Manager 2004, does minor changes in the game justify you spending cash on this year's offerings?

Stats It

When you begin LMA you get to opportunity to choose a team from the 21 leagues from the eight countries available. This is one of the few updates and improvement from last year's version, which hope to make buyers of LMA 2004 fork out there cash again. One of the major updates is that Holland and Portugal are welcomed into the fold.

The transfers that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago are all up to date all with 99 percent of the teams being at their correct clubs at the time of writing. For the one percent of players that escaped there is the promise of downloadable updates to come after the transfer window closes at the end of January.

But now onto what really matter, how does the game play?

Like all good footie manager games, you have the ability to scout players to check their skills to see if they are worth the cash your board as given you. Then you have the ability the choose you own tactics and training schemes, if you are tired of your team using the ol' 4-4-2 all the time well here is you chance to change it.

You can also hire staff and get feedback from them to see how you players are getting on. Also some of your more egomaniacal player won't hesitate to tell you what they think of your management style, even if you are first in the league expect a few cry babies that want their place in the team.

All these options means lots of jumping from menu to menu sorting out your daily chores at the club. Codemasters understands you will probably be spending more time shuffling through menus than you will be in the dugout and it has created a nice clean crisp easy-to-use menu to navigate though. So whether you want to sign that new top star or rebuild the stadium each will only take seconds to get to.

Once you have your team sorted out and all your unbeatable tactics developed it is then time jump into the dugout and watch the fruits of you labour and see your stars play.

Never An Easy Game

Sadly the on pitch action element of the game is sorely lacking, while the management side excelled beyond my expectation the matches themselves were a huge let down. It is the gaming equivalent off your friends buying you a £100 birthday cake for you and then tossing it straight in your face just as you were contemplating how good it will taste when eating it.

While other games in the in this genre such as Football Manager 2005 by Sports Interactive use a 2D top-down perspective to let you view your games to great effect LMA throws the action at you in full 3D and the result is anything but an exciting game of football. This is disappointing as another of LMA's much vaunted features is dugout commands. These let you change your teams focus at the touch of a button. But due to matches being so bland and boring even if you select all out attack you won't notice much off a difference in you team's mentality. Maybe you will see a full back make a run up the wing once every now and then but that’s it.

Once you have enough of the 3D match engine, my patience was able to last to about 10 games; you can then choose to watch the highlights reel containing analysis from Barry Davies, Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen. Their analysis consists of choice nuggets such as "The team had more shots on goal Gary" and "They were the better team on the day". Someone may consider these as new tactical revelations which will improve you team but I certainly don’t.

Final Whistle

The holy grail of any manager sim is realism. The closer it gets the player to actually feeling like they're sitting in a dugout making decisions that really matter the better the gaming experience will be. Whether you choose to manage the high flyers of Manchester United or slightly less skilled Torquay United you should be impressed by LMA as far as off pitch action goes but the on pitch action may disappoint some.

LMA may not be up there with the Championship Managers (now Football Manager) of this world but is does try very hard and at times succeeds to hold its own against them. There is no denying LMA is a respectable and at times high-quality manager sim and it does feel like you're managing your favourite footy team.

If you had to pick one management game to invest your money in this season then there is no doubt you should opt for undisputed king of management games FM 2005. But if you aren’t a PC gamer and hunger to jump into the dugout and take your team through the highs and lows that a season of football brings, then you could do worse than pick up a copy of LMA Manager 2005.