I may not have been playing this game as long as some people that have been here, but playing it hands-on everyday since I joined a little over a month ago I have been able to see how this game plays. Team management games have been something that I have fallen in love with in the past few months and it is easy to see why. Who out there doesn't want to run their own team and take it to the top of the ladder in the league. Who doesn't like making the great deal to get an underrated player who will put you over the top, or selling the overrated player for big bucks when you feel his best days are behind him? Team management games allow us to show that we could possibly run the team that we root for and have fun along the way. ManagerLeague has been one of these games that I have been playing over the past few months. How does it stack up to other games of the same type? Let's get to the ratings and find out.
Appearance: (1.8/3.0) Most of the pages on the site are black background, and in my opinion a little bland and dreary. Two of the most important pages have color however which salvages an average rating, the team selection page and the active transfers page. Team selection page allows people to quickly see what format the team is it and what players are starting. Maybe it is obvious that the top guys are starters, but that is not the way all sites do it so it's not as obvious as you'd think. However, you do have to watch to not put a defender at midfield or goalie because the color does not change to show you put a person out of position. Simple reading takes care of this so it is not a real problem in my opinion.
The transfer page is color coded by the four positions. Red for attackers, yellow for midfielders, green for defensemen, and blue for goalies. It shows you the values for the guy whether the bid is really high, really low, or in between. Personally I think that there should be more of a color coded system for that just for a passing glance, but again it's something a little reading would do the same thing for.
Introduction/Learning Curve: (2.7/3.0) As long as a player is willing to look for the information, a player should have no trouble mastering the basics of the game. The user manual will tell a player mostly everything from what training the team stats will do to what the various coaches and staff for your team do. I'm going to give a tip that the manual does give, but not as strongly as I believe it should be. Build up your stadium capacity up to 15,000 before tinkering with any of the other stadium options. Money does not grow on trees in this game and every little bit you can get from your stadium helps.
Gameplay: (2.1/3.0) As with most games of this genre, gameplay is in two areas. The first one is making a team that will win games for you now so you can move up to the next league where more money and more active teams.will be. The second one is the building a team for the future so you can stay where you are in seasons to come. Everyone joining will be given a pretty good team for the lowest tier, so with proper management they can move up to the next division in a year or two. As i mentioned before, money will be tight considering how highly price talent is in this game. This is like real life soccer however, and does not detract at all from the gaming experience.
The only flaw with the gameplay is that in my opinion seasons go by too fast. A normal season will last 3 weeks with cup games and playoffs taking up the fourth week of the season. If they made it so there was only one game a day, the game would not feel quite as rushed like it does now. The administrators of the site have been considering this change, which is good considering it could cause less credits to be bought overall, but that probably is a few seasons away at minimum.
Fun (2.7/3.0) As rushed as the gameplay is, it doesn't hamper the fun factor at all. Yes, you probably have to buy a lot of credits to get a team up into the top tier of your league, but the site needs to make money. Even if you don't get up to the premier leagues, you'll still have fun managing your team to the best possible results that you can humanly get. Different formations can cause a team to have different advantages when they play each other on the pitch. Choosing what stadium improvements you should get after you get to 15,000 capacity can change the way your team operates. What stats you trains players individually and as a team can also affect what strategy will work best for you. Fun is not perfect because your first few seasons will be either in leagues where most teams are bots or pretty inactive, but once you get into 3rd or 4th division, depending on what league you join, at least half the league will be active and you can use the department forum to talk to each other.
Approval Stamp (1.0/1.0)
Total Score (10.3/13) This is one of the better football/soccer, sorry world but it will always be called soccer here in the States, manager games out there. If you want to manage your favorite team from 3rd or 4th division to the top of the European top leagues, this game is not for you. If you want to manage a bunch of players and have hard work and ingenuity bring them and yourself as high as you want to go with them, then this is the perfect game for you. No other multiple season managerial football/soccer game allows you to put so much of a stamp on your team like this game does. It allows you to control every aspect of a team without it being tedious, while not being picky with things that would rarely be used. In summary, anyone out there who has ever wanted to take a team and is willing to be active enough to make sure all the correct moves are made should play this game. |
