| TOTAL CLUB MANAGER 2003 |
| Review |
| Here is my review of Total Club Manager 2003. Sorry its a bit later than i wanted. I've just been playing it a lot! If you have the game i hope you enjoy it. |
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| As soon as you've installed this game and you go to play on it for the first time you will notice the ridiculous amount of options open to you from when you start putting your name in and selecting your club. Previously you would just put your name in and you'd be playing the game but now you have to put in your D.O.B and other details. Also you have to choose your stats in 4 different areas. These are Coaching Skills, Motivation, Goalkeeper Training and Negotiating Skills. As you gain manager points throughout your career you can increase these stats. You can access the many different screens by clicking on the menu button at the top of the screen. You will also notice that the skill levels of old have gone. Instead you now have something called Level to determine how good your player is. It may all seem very complicated at first but after a while you will get used to it. For example if a player is a right midfielder and has a basic level of 4 in midfield and has speed +1, acceleration +1 and crossing +2. That gives him the bonus Master of Crosses which is +1.5. His experience is Proven Player which gets him +1 and he has Great international experience which gets him +1. His overall level is 11.5. If players are particularly weak in any area then they can lose points as they do if they are inexperienced. This all adds to the realism of the game. Players also have something called an Actual Level (AL). This takes into account match practice in that position, form, fitness and other things. If a player has been out injured for a long while he will need a few games to get back to top form again. Again this makes the game a lot more realistic. The thing that can halt a players development is Talent. Talent has 5 different levels which are indicated on a star. If a player has just 1 point of the star in gold then he can only learn 2 skills. If he has 2-4 points on the star filled in then he can learn 3 skills. The only way for a player to be able to learn 4 skills is if he has all 5 points on the star filled in. You must give players the necessary abilities depending on their position though. It is no good giving a defender Shooting Accuracy as it won't be much use to him and it won't increase his overall level as much as Tackling would. Before in the Football Manager series the Youth Team section was very poor with hardly any youngsters really making an impression to become first team regulars. This time though you can train players as young as 9 years old so by the time they become 18 or 19 and are ready for the first team squad you can have trained them up to an acceptable level. You should concentrate on the players with the highest Talent level because they are the most promising ones. You can also give a Youth player a Mentor from the first team squad. They will speed up their development in Individual Skills as they teach them the ones that they have. You can also set up Youth Camps in 10 different locations around the world. This means that you can have a scouting system in that country that will try and find the best youngsters in that area. This means that investing in Youth Development is actually worth it on this game. The only problem with Youth Camps is that sometimes you hardly get any young players coming from them but then another time you'll get a few every season. On this game there is also a range of different Club Facilities you can build to help your club. These range from Training Centres and Youth Academies to Club centres and Research Centres. There is also a range of miscellanious things to build, such as car parks. One interesting thing i noticed was that you could build a Girl's Boarding School. At first i was thinking what is the point in that. It does though mean that none of your Youth Team Players will drop out. That means you can concentrate better on training them, knowing there isn't a risk of them suddenly going. Every Building has its own advantage to your club. The better the building though, the more expensive it is. There are 6 different levels for the main sets of buildings. You also need certain buildings to get some types of staff. Talking of staff that section has also been improved in this game. Last time there would hardly ever be any new staf members available. This time though there is loads available every week. If you are in England quality staff members come around in each department all the time. When i'm in Turkey with Galatasary i have found it slightly harder to get quality staff. It probably depends on the quality of the league. There are many different areas to hire staff. There are things like Assistant Managers, Goalkeeper Coaches, Talent Scouts, Marketing Managers, Youth Team Coaches, Doctors, Specialists and more. Each staff member also has a rating and a specific ability. Some though don't appear to work to that ability at times. Another completely revamped area is the Database Editor. Now you can add Leagues, players, teams, managers and practically anything else you can think of. With leagues like Serie B in Italy missing this is a good thing as you can just create the remaining teams and then make the league. You can also change the rules of the league and change how many teams each country gets in europe. If you like you could make San Marino the top league in Europe! One problem is that it is very complicated to use. It has taken me a while to get used to everything there, but if you fiddle around with it a bit you should eventually find out how to do everything. One last thing is the new Match Modes. The 3d match engin is now Fifa 2002. That one i find quite unrealistic though. It looks nice but like on previous versions your players do some pretty stupid things like running down the pitch about 50 yards and then passing back to the half way line. Having said that i don't think anything will ever beat my moment on FM2002 when Fulham scored a goal against me despite their player being 50 yards offside. It is better though. Text Mode is the one is use 99% of the time. You can receive details of other games and also the games seem more realistic in that view. You can also give half time team talks to motivate your players. It does look a lot like the view on Championship Manager. You can also just advance to the final result. Overall this game is a big improvement on FM2002. It has had a major revamp and is a lot more realistic. There are still errors that need to be sorted out but i still give this game 90%. |
| If you want more information go to www.totalclubmanager.com. If you go on the forums there i am again called Sir FM2002 Master. |
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