It’s a proven fact: football management games can take over your life. However, everything must be in exactly the right place for this to happen. The planets must be aligned, the game engine must run as smoothly as possible and there shouldn’t be so many options that you are overwhelmed, rather just enough so that you feel as if you’re in control. Last year’s LMA Manager 2004 pulled this off with good effect, but are a couple of new features and updated team rosters honestly enough to warrant another purchase’
Well, to answer than question, lets look at those new features. For Manchester United fans, a branded version of the game (Manchester United FC Manager) is available. Not much good to fans of other teams, but if Old Trafford is where your eyes are fixed for the majority of the season, then you’re well served. To the main game, the Portuguese and Dutch leagues have been added to the roster, bringing the country count up to twenty-one.
Of course, all of the transfers are in place for this season, with the promise of downloadable updates to come after the English transfer window closes in January. Also, your greatest teams can be used for exhibition matches over Xbox Live, and also be able to download new challenge scenarios which although not as compelling a reason to buy as say, Pro Evolution Soccer 4’s Live compatibility, is a nice touch that will extend the life of the game nonetheless. In addition to all this, the match engine has apparently been tidied up a bit, although you couldn’t really tell unless you had both the 2004 and 2005 versions running side-by-side.
But, this still doesn’t answer the question, does it’ Should you buy LMA Manager 2005 if you already own LMA Manager 2004‘ This reviewer has to err to the side that says ‘No’, unfortunately. It isn’t that LMA Manager 2005 is a bad game, far from it. It’s just that there isn’t enough in the way of new attractions to warrant shelling out another forty pounds for. A solid managerial game is there to be had, and should you take the time to learn the interfaces (which won’t take long at all, thanks to the well tested frontend that the game possesses), addiction surely won’t be far away. You’ll be more than happy to waste hour after hour looking after your team, wheeling and dealing on the transfer market, trying to pull a rabbit from a hat as your lowly conference team (Exeter City, of course) gets drawn against one of the big boys from the National League in the first round of the FA Cup.
The inclusion of the ‘Expert’ mode is a nice one, since this mode removes the ‘Overall’ rating for each player, meaning that you have to use your brain to work out which player will fit best into the empty gap in your side, rather than just looking through the list of available players and picking the highest rated one. This makes things a lot tougher (like the game needed to be any more difficult) and will make Championship Manager fans feel a little more at home, since they never had an overall rating to make things easier.
Players who are new to the game will undoubtedly find that LMA Manager 2005 really is the finest console based football management simulation available on any console format today. Whether or not EA’s Total Club Manager 2005 may run it closer than in previous years remains to be seen, but for new players at least, LMA Manager 2005 is pretty much as good as joypad-controlled football management gets.
