| TOTAL CLUB MANAGER 2003 |
| PREVIEW |
| For those of you who don't know, Total Club Manager 2003 is the brand new football management game from EA Sports. It is the sequel of Football Manager 2002 and if you ask me it looks as though it could challenge Championship Manager to be the king of Managing Games. See what you think in this preview. I will review the game shortly after I buy it. |
| I may not have played the game but just by reading the information on the website I am very excited by the release of Total Club Manager. With dosens of new features and a brand new match engine this game looks and sounds the part. Firstly the youth system has had a major revamp. Before you had a list of players all no younger than 15 and most of them were no good. Even the ones who did show promise didn't make it. Only the odd few were to become stars. Now however that looks about to change. The feature to sign up players as young as 9 to put into your academy means that you can start training a player from a very young age. Also there is no limit to how good your players can get. It all depends on your training and managerment skills. Also you have the ability to place Youth team training camps in 10 different places around the world. These places include Brazil, Japan and Ukraine. I presume that players from the surrounding countries will go to your youth camps as well, because they are all spread out. This means you can get the best young players from around the world as well. This is in addition to your Youth Team in England, or wherever you are managing. Also the training has been radically changed, as has the skill setting. You can now give your players up to 4 different training sessions a day. During pre-season you can also take your players to a number of different training camps around the world. Each one offers a different affect on your players. One might improve fitness, while another might improve technique. You can also take your players out for celebratory meals and play pre-season tournaments, and i think you can also play youth team tournaments. Also there is the ability to fine players for misbehaving. For example they might turn up late for training. Thsi will help you keep discipline within the squad and let the playeres know what to and what not to do. As for the skill setting it is now very different. On Football Manager 2002 each player would just have a number for skill ranging between 1 and 99. Now though each player has a rating known as a level. This is again a number that ranges between 0.0 and 20.0. The number though could be something like 9.5 instead of being a whole number. To determine that level it takes into account the skills needed for the position the player is playing in. e.g. if a player was playing on the wing it is likely to use things like speed, acceleration and crossing and not something like heading. That also mainly determines the transfer value. Then there is something called and Actual Level. This takes into account things like form, morale and fitness. This is the players playing level on that perticular day. Players can also gain thing calles special skills. These will give a players actual level a boost. It might be something like they won an award or if they have certain skills they may be given the nickname "master of crossing" which they need good speed and crossing for or soemthing like "Diego" which improves ball control skills. Obviously after Diego Maradona. There is also a talent star. If the star is filled in completely then the player will learn new things a lot quicker than a player who only has 1 point of the star filled in. The better players obviously have more. The transfer market is also different. Negotiations aren't going to be as easy as before as you battle with other clubs to try to snatch a players signature. As well as a player having a valuation the club will have a sum of money that they will demand for the player. For example Real Madrid might demand �130m for Raul. But don't worry as not every player will be that expensive. The staff members are also a lot more useful than before. Before you would hire a staff member that wasn't really doing much but now there is more and they are better. You can hire 2 different Assistant Managers to train your players. They will be specialised in different ares. One might be specialised in Strikers while another in training Defenders. You can also hire a number of specialists that can bring your players back 10% quicker from knee injuries or something like that. Also you can have many different scouts. You might have a youth team one that has a speciality of discovering youngsters in South America, or you might have one that is very accurate at rating a players potential. Also special staff members will become available every once in a while. They will be superb at the job they do but you will be fighting with other top clubs to sign them up. The database editor has also had a revamp. Before you could only change things like player details and the clubs kit and things. Now though you can change practically anything in the game. As well as the things from the old games you can change things ranging from the prize money in the FA Cup to the Uefa country rankings. Also you can create brand new leagues to put into the game. You could make up your own fantasy league or something. You can also delete teams and make completely new ones in the league. This truly is a database editor. As well as all of that I forgot to mention the fact that you can now manage in over 20 different countires. As well as the top leagues like England, Italy and Spain there is leagues of lesser quality such as the Irish league, Israel and Finland. Depending on your computer though you can only select a certain amount of leagues. Also the game has a branned new match engine. It has the Fifa 2002 one so instead of the rubbish EA normally put on the matches should be much more exciting to watch. Overall I would say this is shaping up to be a top quality game. Hopefully the erros of previous versions have been erased. It may sound complicated but I think EA could have a winner here. |
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| Why don't you visit the offical website to find out more. Just log onto www.totalclubmanager.com |
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