Absolute Gadget

Review: Football Director DS

Written by Rene Millman Monday, 15 December 2008 11:44

Football management games should work well for handheld games consoles where you don't need the latest blisteringly fast graphics and physics other games require. Not only that this is the sort of thing that whiles away those long boring train journeys. Football Director DS should appeal to football-mad commuters but needs some work.

The most surprising thing is that both Sega and EA haven't ported their successful games onto the DS and so it has been left to Pinnacle to do the honours.

The game allows you to pick a club from any of the top four English leagues (perhaps not so good if you are Scottish) and it is good to see that the company has managed to get full naming rights (i.e. no Stephen Jerrard' in this game). The ratings of the players are pretty much on the nose too.

And while you can't lead any national squads or European ones, you can certainly have your club compete in the Champions league.

The squads are up to date as well as can be expected. Some players seem to be missing though. While there is an edit mode in the game, this only applies to player's names, you can't create a new player from scratch or modify existing player stats.

{mospagebreak}The tutorial that comes wiht the game is good to run through to get a good idea of what you can do and what the game is capable of.

The dashboard is where you get a good overview of what's happening in your team and in the league you compete in. Here you will get daily bulletins on transfer news, cup draws, etc.

It's then up to you to make your team selection, formation and tactics against your rivals.

Where were we slightly disappointed was with the matches. It seems a bit old-fashioned to have the details as text-only. Heck, even Football Manager on the Spectrum had some stick figures. That aside the match reports are detailed enough to give you a reasonable idea of how things went and pictures are better in your own head, so my doctor tells me.

The only drawback of details is the limited volcabulary. Players score from corners but you don't know if they have headed the ball or the opposing teams defending was at fault.

After a while, you begin to notice that the match desriptions seem a bit random at times and seem too much so trust them enough to make judgements on what you should do with your team.

{mospagebreak}The sounds on the game are also a bit on the disappointing side. There are a few and that's about it. Some crowd cheering and whistle and that's about your lot.

In the transfer market an air of unreality seeped in. Many top-nothch players suddenly emerged and some of them with wildly underpriced. OK so it's only a game but there is only so much suspension of disbelief you can make before you question how the game is going about its business.

Sometimes you get prompts about a player wishing to discuss their contract (i.e. ask for more money or just want to quit) but other times you only find out about one of your players when you hear he is playing for another team.

{mospagebreak}It is quite easy to win the league and we thought that the event would be marked by something more than a dull grey screen telling you the happy news.

It is hard to evulate if your team is doing well as only high-level details seem to be available. Nothing you can drill down to find out a bit more about how players are doing, just the basics.

The game feels too random at times to place trust in the game's dynamics, it just feel hit and miss most of the time. And if you are used to PC-based games you may find it all a little too frustrating. It barely stays above the relegation zone.

Rating: 6/10