Football Manager 2006 Xbox 360 review

In the genre of football management games, one game has ruled them all for the past decade: Football Manager (previously known as Championship Manager). With the arrival of the Xbox 360 console, Sports Interactive has moved away from its traditional home pitch – the PC - and question is: Can one substitute a mouse and a keyboard with a controller without being overrun? Fear not, dear Sports Interactive devotee, the London-based team did not let a single counter-attack get through its defences with this game.

In fact Football Manager 2006 is the first complete port of a Football Manager game, we’re not talking about a watered down version. All the features and all the data are included and the game even comes with additional goodies such as Xbox Live multiplayer support and Xbox Live achievements.

‘The first 90 minutes are the most important’

Bobby Robson (former manager of the English national football team) is quoted for the statement above, but Mr. Robson couldn’t be more wrong when it comes to Football Manager 2006 on the Xbox 360. This is because of the way Sports Interactive has decided to use the Xbox controller. Instead of the near-industry standard of having the green “a” button confirm choices, it’s usually the “x” button or sometimes the “y” button. This is highly unusual and even after playing the game for hours you’ll find yourself having to check the text descriptions at the bottom of your screen to see find out which button to press.

The two shoulder buttons are context sensitive and grant you access to all the menus you’re used to such as training, player search or financials, while the left and right trigger buttons allow you to jump back and forth through the screens, you’ve accessed. The control scheme is actually not bad at all after some getting used to, but it’s definitely not one of the most intuitive I’ve encountered, either. Thus you’ll spend the first 90 minutes coming to terms with the game and then the fun begins.

‘Home advantage gives you an advantage’

Xbox 360

Mr. Robson may not have been right about the time usage, but he’s right about the home advantage. Think carefully before you select the team you want to manage. Football Manager is huge. Comparing it to other management games on the market is like comparing the Himalayas to the Peak District. A staggering total of 280,000 football players and 5,000 staff members are spread over the leagues of 50 countries. This gives you total freedom in selection what kind of game you want to play. You could choose to start with a tiny club in some half-forgotten league and take it to fame and glory over the course of 20-30 seasons, or you could go for a top club like Barcelona or Chelsea and humiliate the opposition week after week (well, you’d better or the chairman is probably going to fire you). In terms of home advantage you should use any knowledge of real-life football that you possess, chances are that the game reflects the data very accurately.

The management part is extremely complex as Sports Interactive adds more and more layers every year. It’s a delicate balance, though, since the core (and extremely fun) game of managing a bunch of football players can get too cumbersome if not handled with care. However, with FM2006 the developer chose to improve the user interface so you have all the information, you need, at a glance. This really makes it a lot easier to get a good overview and you can even use a split-screen during matches to continuously monitor information such as player ratings while following the match. Additionally some screens have been revamped in the Xbox 360 version with numbers being replaced by graphics (you can still access the numbers though) and this is working so well that I hope it will make its way into future PC versions, too.

‘Anything from 1-0 to 2-0 would be a nice result’

Xbox 360

Results like that are indeed satisfactory once you get into the matches. Mr. Robson’s quote really illustrates that you often have to fight hard for your wins in Football Manager 2006. The setup of tactics is very deep and while most people can set up basic football formations, it gets rather difficult when it comes to fine-tuning aspects such as passing style or creativity. I can heartedly recommend the excellent expert articles on www.footballmanager.net, which contain an abundance of tips.

But the highlight is really the resulting matches themselves. Football Manager 2006’s match engine is simply incredible. The variety, the depth, the surprises, the sudden shifts of balance and not least the commentary makes every match exciting. Granted – I do run them at high speeds, but that’s just to make some progress, not because of boring football matches. The artificial intelligence is also a tough nut to crack, as it will adjust to your tactics making sure that you’ll have to work long hours to come up with anything better than a one-season-hit tactic.

‘In a year's time, he's a year older’

Xbox 360

The PC version’s new features such as team talks, expanded media relations and the revamped training module have all made the transition to the Xbox 360 and add to the long-term fun. But of course nothing beats the excitement of battling other players and Football Manager 2006 provides amble opportunities for that… at least in theory. Sadly I never managed to find another online game, cup or league – no matter how often I searched. It’s a real shame as you can even export your teams for online matches and I’d love to build up a killer Liverpool team and humiliate all those wannabe Chelsea managers out there. But alas…

A vital aspect is of course the graphics, which may concern fans of the PC versions. The game is extremely text heavy and needs to be clearly readable on a TV. In fact the game has been optimised for viewing on rubbish 14” sets and I had no problems at all on my 28” 16:9 TV. However, if you have a HDTV or maybe a good PC monitor, the visibility is greatly enhanced and screens automatically provide more info (for example by adding extra columns of information).

‘We didn't underestimate them. They were a lot better than we thought’

Besides the steep learning curve in terms of controls the Xbox 360 version is nearly flawless. I’m a bit surprised that the game shows noticeable slowdowns mainly when exiting the tactics screen during matches as FM2006 is supposed to use the 360 processor’s multiple cores. It’s not a problem, just a slight nuisance, though. There has only been one major incident and that was the loss of my save game after 8 days of gaming. It’s unforgivable that save games can get corrupted in a game like FM2006, which requires so much time to play – and I never noticed anything of the auto-save feature mentioned in the options screen. But as Mr. Robsons ‘wise’ quote about age illustrates, these things will improve, and I’m sure that reliability and controls will be fine-tuned to perfection by the ever-busy Sports Interactive team. Until then I’ll just have to create a few extra save games.

Football Manager 2006 for the Xbox 360 is a brilliant game and even better than we had expected on the Xbox 360. If you already have it on your PC there’s little reason to buy the 360 version, but if your PC is struggling running the game or if you just prefer to manage your team from your couch rather than your chair, Football Manager 2006 will shine as one of the best titles in your collection.