It's autumn.
Football Manager 2008 is in the stores.
Yesterday I installed Championship Manager 03/04.

This might not make sense to everyone. It doesn't even makes sense to me. I liked FM07 a lot, so why am I not playing the new FM08? Well, that's what this article is about. A good old rant you might say, which is correct. This is my personal opinion about this game. I "get" people that enjoy Football Manager 2008, 'cause it's not actually a bad game. Not even the creators of CM08 and FIFA Manager 08 can say that. It's actually the best game in the series of FM. It's actually the best football manager game out there.

But FM07 was also the best manager-game when it was new. You can say the same about FM06 in 2005. And all the previous versions, perhaps apart from CM4.
The clue is though, that the distance between the best footy manager game and the rivals has only gotten smaller. FIFA and the CM-dudes are catching up. And if something doesn't happen soon, we will probably see a new game rise the throne in 2009. And it won't be FM09. Maybe it won't be FML either. Maybe it's for the better.

"One step forward and two steps back"

To be fair for a second, it's not easy being the creator of the FM-series. People want different things. Some guys want to be a chairman, while some people would like less options and some don't want any major changes. It's hard to make everyone happy, and I am one of those fucktards who are unhappy with the new game, although the SI-dudes probably spent alot of time creating it. I didn't want more team-talks. I didn't ask for fan-days. I don't want a new skin which fucks up my vision. But the guys added it. Because someone else wanted it in the new game. Okay, so they made a wish come through for some bloke who is probably very happy right now. His favourite game got just a bit better. But what about us who wants to simplify the game. To play several season a week and win loads of trophies. What about us.

Since the CM 01/02 days and even before that, the games have got slower and more demanding. In FM07 it took me 3 days to play a whole Premier League season. I might be slow, but in in CM 01/02 it took me a day to do the same, on the computers of that time. The newer generation of FM is so full of features now that the game time seems to go 2 days backwards instead of 1 day forward. The season never seems to end. You have teamtalks to take care of, rumours to answer, players to keep happy and lots of other features which are more advanced in FM07 and especially FM08. It's fun for a couple of games but then it just gets annoying when things repeats themselves.

Even though FM2007 never was my favourite manager game, I played it a lot. Even though seasons took 3 days to finish, and I often got bored half-way through the season. If I did crap in the first 15 matches and had no chance of winning the championship, I just wanted to move on to the next season and to the next transfer window. But because of the painful slowness of the game, it often took weeks to complete that awful season. Because I got so tired of waiting... and waiting... and waiting. I just took a time off FM to do other things. This was never a problem on CM 03/04, which makes me wonder if I am just tired of manager-games.

Same shit, different wrapping

Maybe I am tired. FM never suprises me anymore. Well, apart from the skin in FM08 which is like a flash-grenade explosion to my eyes, which always gives me a shock. I never seem to remember how bright it actually is. I can remember legendary seasons in older FM/CM games like in example a 6-4 CL final victory and weird situations with players, but there is one thing in the newer FMs which really takes a lot of the excitement away from it, and that is players. It's not hard to find quality cheap players anymore. "Everyone" knows about Dalla Valle, Eddie Johnson, Enyeama and Aguero. All of them have been quality in the last versions of FM. So why should anyone scout for players when there's already a lot of stars that you know about? It seems like a waste of time, the "best" players are already discovered.  Sadly, there's not much SI can do about it, it tries to be realistic and therefore it is natural that the promising stars and awesome players in real life are just as awesome in FM. That's how I feel about it anyways. Only when playing LLM you really have to look for players. However, you don't always want to manage small teams.

Not even bugs surprise me anymore. I see the same bugs come and go over again, and the number of bugs doesn't seem to have decreased since CM4. Of course, a game like this can never be 100% bug-free, but it could be a lot better. but right now it takes a lot of work and effort to report each small bug, even if it's just a spelling error. It doesn't make it better that the creators seem to only release 2-3 patches before starting on a new one, leaving the previous one incomplete. The 2-3 patches shouldn't have been necessary really, but that's how things have been since the beginning. I can only hope that we won't get the same "situation" in FMLive.

What now?

The grass does seem greener on the other side this year. FIFA manager 08 has a lot of nice features, and although it is way too complex and "chairman"-like for my likes, it is a change at least. FM08 is basically FM07 with a new skin and a updated database. So why should I play the same game I didn't like all that much over again? I honestly don't know. The tiny changes doesn't add anything to the game, they are only annoying. They slow the game down. They slow me down. It just isn't worth all those waiting hours.

Yesterday I installed Championship Manager 03/04, in a tiny hope of regaining my FM-addictiveness. While I am waiting for FMLive to reach the stores.

Hopefully that game will be worth the waiting time.