Well, another year starts... another season starts and alas a new installment of Football Manager arrives. Usually this is met by a frenzy of pre-ordering the game and hyping the game among your friends. However, this year is different, at least for me that is.

Last year I gave a 9/10 review out of FM07 and I loved that game and have played it endlessly, truly endlessly. Sadly I can't say the same for FM08...

To me, the FM series seems to be on a decline and it's something I hope SIGames fix A.S.A.P! Football Manager 2008 has a dreadful skin, it's aimed at making the game more user-friendly but it does quite the opposite and the whole aura of it has actually caused 23 epileptic fits and four elderly men who played the demo to go blind. A sad tale indeed... :( Honestly though, who on Earth had a look at that and said to themselves; “that is one beautiful skin!” Hopefully the scene can make some worthy skins and perhaps some that aren't as bright as the one being used...

Then there's the new features... well they're hardly making me want to spend 20 quid on a game. The FM2008 blog on the SIGames.com website boasts “weather forecasts”, I'm sorry but hasn't that been around since CM days? Boasting old features as new is cheap and marks trouble for the FM series in my opinion. There is of course the advisor which is highly beneficial for the new user but for the old ones it truly is a pain. Why would a die-hard gamer enjoy that new feature? Why not expand the lower leagues more, improve the youth system, start taking suggestions from the users like you used to? Then there's the match-day interaction which honestly gets furiously tedious after three matches and you just ask yourself; “why can't you customize what you want to see?” [wait to see that in FM09...].

Then of course there are the new small cosmetic features such as choosing your captain, the improved board interaction and what not which I agree are quite a good addition to the game but hardly fundamental.

Nonetheless, the scouting has greatly improved in this version in my opinion and I'm glad to see that at least they've done one thing right...

In short? I'm far from impressed, they boast about fundamental new features such as a new skin (zzz) and manage to screw that one up. I have played a preview edition of it (means there's no season limit) and I only managed to play one season before being bored and going back to FM2007. That speaks volumes seeing as I've NEVER returned to an old game before once I had access to the newer version. I for one will not be buying FM2008 and will be waiting for a third-party data update for FM2007 and will thereby be saving myself a nice 20 quid to go drinking.

FM2008 = A disappointment.

My score? 6/10. -- I'm being generous.

-Rehashing of old features = not impressive.

-Scouting is a strong point of the game.

-Skin is crap, sounds are still neglected.

-Facegen is just a daft idea.

There are other features and elements I didn't mention, and there's a reason for that... not worthy. (Also the huge PR campaign by the folks behind FM2008 just kind of show that they're worried themselves.)

Discuss your opinions and views on the game here!