Evolution, not revolution. It's a clich้, but you'd think it would be a sensible strategy in the world of football.
Build a talented squad of players, add a few new signings every season to bolster them, evolve a training regime that suits the squad and its style of play, and gradually hone your tactics until the trophies are raining in. Simple, eh?
Sadly, most clubs who aren't Manchester United or Arsenal prefer the revolution approach, sacking managers every few seasons, who then implement completely new training and tactics, buy a shedload of new players, and try to make it all work. It might be paying off for Sven Goran Eriksson at Man City this season, but more often it goes wrong. And thus the cycle begins again.
Developer Sports Interactive clearly has its head screwed on straight, as it's taken the stability approach with
Football Manager Handheld.
Last year's edition was the second PSP version of the game, and built on the strengths of the first one, adding in enough new features to make it feel like a step onwards.
Now it's done it again with
Football Manager Handheld 2008. It feels reassuringly familiar to anyone who played the game's predecessor, and while many of its new features are tweaks rather than major changes, the sum of them result in a game that's another kick on for the series.
If you're reading this, chances are you've already played at least one of the previous
FM Handheld games, so we'll run through the basic details quickly before getting to the new stuff.
At its core you have a suitably stat-happy management game with a wide selection of leagues, teams and players, shown by the way that if you choose to play in England mode, it extends down to Blue Square Premier level (but not below so no taking mighty Bishop's Stortford to the top for this writer, sadly).
It's been stripped down from the PC version to work on PSP, obviously, so the player database is smaller, and you have less freedom to tweak tactics and training although both are by no means simplistic in this version.
Meanwhile, the best thing about all three
FM Handheld games is the superbly crafted interface, which makes it easy to navigate around what's still a fairly complex game. It truly is a handheld football management game, rather than a PC title unsatisfyingly reduced down for PSP which, let's face it, could have easily been the case.
If you liked the last game, you'll probably buy this one purely for the latest team and player data, but thankfully there are other improvements making it worth another wodge of your cash. Some are cosmetic, such as a new skin (you'll distrust it at first, but grow to live with it after a few days' play).
Others have more of an impact. For instance, you now have a reserve team, instantly doubling the size of your squad and giving you somewhere to stick transfer-listed players so they don't clog up your first-team squad while waiting for an offer.
It's useful, although our inner Wenger wishes it was more of a dedicated youth team set-up, enabling us to poach youngsters and oversee their development into stars. You kind of can use it that way, but more could be done on that front.
SI's team has clearly been crunching its code, because the in-between elements of the game calculating results and so on are noticeably faster. The speed was one of
FM Handheld's strengths last year too, so this is just icing on top of an already tasty cake, but a welcome addition all the same.
Something that
FM nerds (and we count ourselves in this group) will love is the new ability to properly tweak your formations, moving players to different positions manually, and setting their runs. In the past, you've simply been able to choose from a list of preset formations, so you're now able to create your own killer tactics at will, and then save them and even share them with friends, thanks to the 'Import' option.
There are other small but significant changes too, such as two new screens for each player. 'Positions' shows how they'll perform in the positions available to them so you might have a player who's a 'Defender (Left/Centre)', but the Positions screen will specify further that he's a natural centre back, accomplished when playing left back or as defensive midfield, but merely competent as a left wing back, and awkward as a right back.
It's good for when the chips are down, and you're having to play people out of position without making them perform like idiots. Which reminds us: another nice new feature is the ability to speak to players publicly
or privately, with praise or criticism.
Plus, when the tension's mounting at the end of the season, there's a Live Table screen within the match options, so you can keep checking on your rivals' progress, and how it'll affect your position. Having been in a couple of nail-biting final stretches already, we can testify to how much you'll use this feature.
As we said, it's evolution rather than revolution, but the results are even more playable than last year's accomplished game. You'll be gripped:
FM Handheld 2008 hits that sweet handheld spot of suiting bite-sized pick-up-and-play sessions, but at the same time being suitably engrossing that you'll find yourself doing that pick-up-and-playing whenever you can.
In short, it's excellent. We're keen to see where SI takes the game in the future and, in particular, whether they can squeeze a 2D match engine in. But even without that, this year's 'season' is simply riveting.
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