Be Excellent To Each Other

Tomorrow, it comes out.

I'm not getting it from fucking steam. Register an account to download the demo, indeed. Fuck off, Valve.

So, same again, tweaked for my new massive screen and with a 3D engine for those big games? Sweet!

Should have it running and be a few gmes in by mid-evening, so I'll post impressions thenabouts. Anyone else love this game?

Football Manager lost its charm after Kevin lost the beard:



Yes that really is Kevin Toms! I feel like I should draw a beard on the monitor or something. He just looks naked!

Ive wasted many many many days playing these games

I love searching for players that are absolute bargins, usually really young guys aswell.

Great game, great way to waste all your time

i loved champ man, but am universally shit at it. terrible, awful. the worst. so I dont play. i sad

Digital crack, that is what it is.

Going to avoid this version as my computer probably can't run the 3d bits :/

May well pick up the PSP version, though I hardly played last year's one on the PSP.

And I expect the new 2D engine they've introduced into the PSP version will be shite.

I used to love Championship Manager back in the mid-to-late nineties, I spent many an hour playing it. I haven't played one for a long time.

Is there going to be an iphone version? Because I've been tempted to get one for ages, I think a portable champ-man or similar would easily tip me into buying one. Would be quite a good game to play on the boring commute.

I hate football, which is just as well, as otherwise the mix of numbers and strategy would grip me and never let go, like hooker rigor mortis following a mid-handjob heart attack.

Bad memories doc?

More-or-less this. For all the time I spent playing CM (I can still name the first-choice XI of my Quadruple-winning Chelsea team from CM01/02 off the top of my head), the games just haven't gripped me since the jump to dancing dots (though I did have a fun few seasons dicking about the Scottish lower divisions with Raith in FM2007).

Plus, new match engine = SI needing at least one more iteration to get it working properly. FM2011 will probably be worth a look.

I done reviews of these this week:

PC: http://www.snappygamer.com/2008/11/10/f ... review-pc/ (too fucking complicated but still good)

PSP: http://www.snappygamer.com/2008/11/14/f ... eview-psp/ (awesome but a little too un-complicated...)

DO NOT BUY THIS

I got it this morning, been trying for over an hour now to activate it. They have spent the last couple of months explaining that they 'have to' protect their profits by using DRM, Miles Jacobsen this is, not Sega... and I can't play the cunting thing I've just bought. I have paiud my fucking money and I have got fuck all.

You install it, click the icon, you get some request forthe 'keycode' - a massive number off the back of the manual. So there are figures on there that could be zeros or the letter 'o' - there is no way to tell. Plus the thing is prnted so badly others could be a 1 or a T or an I. Fuck knows. Then I find a link apparently from SI where if you gve the code your best shot it will give you the real one, with instructions to cut and paste. I do so, and the activation thing munges for five minutes then tells me my computer can't access the internet, and that I should visit their website for help. FUCKING CUNTS. The sega line is engaged, the SI website is offline and the Football Manager community websites are all reporting no-one can run the thing - those who are 'in' to the SI website are reporting no help whatsoever.

Apparently from somewhere someone said updating windows sometimes helps - WTF? I'm doing it anyway. Might as well, I'm sat here for the afternoon with fuck all to do otherwise.

We told them, over and over we did not want DRM. We had a poll on the SI forums, 22% said they would not buy the game with DRM.

The pirates are sat at home now, playing this, having fun.

Last time. Last time ever for me with this fucking bullshit. Fifteen years loyal custom and I am expected to pay thirty quid and not play the cunting fucking bastard thing while the guy next door is halfway through his season already?

Fucking pricks.

DRM = Doesn't Really Make goatboy happy

My DRM code worked fine...

*runs*

If... IF you can get this page to load, tae a look at the thread titles -

http://community.sigames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=24

what a fucking shambles.

I've posted a bit of news about it on my site.

And talking of DRM -

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11 ... vs-piracy/

http://digg.com/pc_games/Lots_of_people ... 09_DRM/who

can everyone do me a favour and digg this?

I want it to be as big a news story as possible.

Fuckers.

Oooh, yeah do what he says!

Indeed, just like EA protected their profits by making me not pay them £40 for the RA3 collector's edition.

I won't buy this.

Not a footy person and no pixies.

Lol I've just been given a dressing down on the EG news comments...

#justposted">http://www.eurogamer.net/article_discus ... justposted

You know full well that not cutting off your nose to spite your face won't be tolerated.

Still I can't believe anyone still sells PC games. I gave up years ago. Total resource hoggers, slow to load and a total pain.

Although I could imagine playing a Flight Sim on the Mac. If one were available. But that's only because I have a huge penis screen now.

If FM wasn't a platform which requires patches by nature (you simply can't have an un-buggy release of such a thing, no matter how long you beta it for) and didn't need mouse control, I'd have it for Wii or 360. Actually, bollocks to having it on Wii.

FM only survives because of the playability of the instances that do work... it really is up there with Tetris, solitaire and so on in the addictiveness stakes, plus it taps into a fundamental urge to manage one's team that no other software has ever managed to do.

Which is why, faced with no alternative game to go for instead, people are putting up with the DRM rather than take it straight back. FM has a monopoly on its market, same as Nintendo have one on folks who are afraid of joypads, hi-def, online gaming and value for money at present.

On my PC I've elite variants, for tradition... and I'll tend to have an RT as I am a C&C nut of old - got drm-free sins of a solar empire off impulse, works immediately, plays lovely, will dip into it whenever I need to command fleets through space.

But no, aside from the above, games happen on consoles for me now and always will.

I'm with Rev Stu on this, if someone you've liked previously proceeds to deal out crap to their paying customers, pissing in the face of those most loyal to them then you should absolutely stop paying them £2 a month.

Wait, what were we talking about again?

You know, I'd not even considered that...

I had a bad feeling about this version which is why I'm almost glad it won't run on my PC. I have, however, taken a big risk and taken out a Football Manager Live subscription. So far it's been very enjoyable, full of decent folk and probably only 2/3 versions behind FM08 in terms of the playability. It's a tad dear but it just might be worth it, in the short term anyway.

I can see why this one needs a high end rig to get the best from it. It can be arsed to work now, all of a sudden. The new match engine is quaint in one way and sublime in others, stuff like the press conferences and that are excellent, you can add your own comments to the stock types of comment and while this adds no effect in-game so far as I can gather, looking back over your history it looks cool as fuck - have your say on those historic moments! And pre-season signings almost make sense now in terms of who comes and who does not and why.

The assistant manager feedback is pretty awesome, you feel a whole new level of insight into your players on the day, even if sometimes they do talk shite.

That's all very well, but could it predict a 1990's throw back of Hodgeson v Kinnear like Fulham v Newcaslte without human assistance?

*realises he has lost the interest of anyone who thing football is a bunch of pretty boys kicking a round thing*

Is Carlos Vela still any good?

I am playing the demo now, I quite like it, but having read that, I shall not be buying it.
One thing I found though, was that Steam is shit, it actually kills the game, but if after loading, you go and kill the Steam application using task manager, the game runs fine!

Got the PSP version.

I've entered my name, the game randomly choose Cambridge United as my team...

...but I can't seem to bring myself to start it, because I fear its power.

It's good! Just don't expect to sign any foreign players. For some reason they can never get a work permit Oh, and Arsenal are SHIT. I couldn't get anything right with them last night at all. Time to go back to my beloved Middlesbrough file.

Ok, so for maximum realism I've started a game where I'm a nobody and I don't have a job (in football). After being rejected by such luminaries as Coleraine, Carl Zeiss Jena and Farsley Celtic, I've been offered a job by two of Northern Ireland's second division teams: Brantwood and Harland & Wolff Welders.

The Welders have the silliest name, so I think I'm going to plump for them.

I'm playing the PSP version and have won every game I've played so far as Oxford. Go me!

Guys, guys, don't buy this. Seriously, DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.


I live with someone who's working on it. They're still working on HUGE problems loads of people have been having getting it to work at all, to the point where even people who have no idea what the hell's going on are being made to take calls asking about it, because they simply don't have enough staff to cover that many complaints.

When it calms down, I'll retract this advice, but seriously, don't buy it for a while yet.

And you know what's caused it?

The copy protection.

Bravo.

Doubly silly really, since all you need to do to pirate Football Manager 2009 (and seriously, what a deeply tedious name that is, eh?) is secure a copy of Football Manager 2008 and sellotape a slightly different picture to the box.

I've just been sent Football Director for the DS, comes out on Friday I think. Very similar to FM, but on the DS obv. Stylus works well. Not sure if it's gonna be any good, though. Only played it for an hour or so.

Oh is that how the move to 3d is coded these days?

I'm sure the change of perspective from which you view the game happily playing itself without you will alter everything.

Do Bournemouth start with -17 points in League 2 in FM2008? It's a shame you don't know what you're talking about, agent. No offence intended.

Indeed, Fifa on the Megadrive is identical to Fifa 09.

Or slightly less flippantly, if you have any interest in the subject matter the differences are pretty fundamental.

FAMOUS. LAST. WORDS.

I love the way you all asume I've never played them for some reason. Come off it, they're marginally different every year, pretending otherwise is just silly.

In ways that are vitally important if you give the slightest stuff.

Plus this years is massively more different than most, meaning it was a really stupid time to post that.

Now, 93---> 94. THAT was "just" a database update. (More work than most full games)