4th November 2004 marks a history in the making, and a brand new football management era has been born. If you do not know what I am talking about, you may have miss out a hell lot. Sports Interactive, the makers of the past Championship Manager series, has released a new game – Football Manager 2005. The difference between the previous CM series and FM2005 is that the latter has faster loading speeds and the ability to play mind games with other club managers. For those who yearn to follow the footsteps of Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger, they will be able to issue comments on their opposition number before or after a match (most significant in derby matches) so as to taunt their title hopes or affect the morales of the opposition players.
Apart from what I mentioned earlier, the game is made from improvements of CM0304 with excellent 2D match engines highlighting the player’s preferred moves (e.g. Cristiano Ronaldo likes to dribble all the way into the penalty box). 2D match engines also gives you the ability to monitor how your players perform on the pitch and gives you the opportunity to discover a talent in the opposition team which you may want to swoop. All these can be attributed to the 2500 Sports Interactive researchers from all over the globe scouting and gathering information on players and clubs for the past one year. A lot of effort has been put in to make football management as realistic as possible.
I have started playing this game ever since my exams ended, and I can tell you that I cannot stop playing it. Even though I could have won numerous titles ranging from the League Cup title to the Champions League title, or discover great football geniuses like Alessio Cerci, Giampaolo Pazzini, Daniel Braaten and Fredy William Thompson in the past CM series, Football Manager 2005 offers a whole new experience to football management with more controls and response from your team. If you like watching football and you like the idea of visualizing yourself as a manager of a football club, this is no doubt the game for you. ;)
