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The FA Premier League Manager 2002 Review
Chris Leyton
00/12/0000
Is this Premier League or Conference material...
EA must know a thing about timing, knowing full well that the next update in the Championship Manager 3 franchise is nearly upon us and that the new season is still fresh, they have released their latest update in their football management series, FA Premier League Manager 2002. This alone should ensure good sales for the title, however the purists amongst us will be waiting for Eidos' aforementioned title.
FAPLM2002 allows you to pick any club in Europe's 21 leagues, including; The Premiership, Germany's Bundisligia, the Italian Serie A and Spain's La Liga. Being a branch from the popular FIFA series, means every thing is as it should be, every club, team, kit, player stadium are faithfully recreated reight down to the type of pies on offer (that's not entirely true). Having chosen your club you'll then have to set yourself an objective, taking charge of a top-flight team will obviously have higher criteria, whilst the chairmen and the board will be quite happy with a mid-table performance if you take control of a smaller team. One nice introduction is the inclusion of the budgets that they give you at the start, choose an ambitious season objective and you can ensure a healthy cash flow, choose an easier one and you'll find the cash coming in severely cut. It almost works like difficulty levels, and allows you to set your own challenge for the upcoming season.
Once control has been taken you'll advance to the front-end which is where you'll make those crucial decisions. The presentation throughout apes the FIFA series, and is both slick and efficient. The EAMail alerts you to all of the day-to-day decisions that you're going to have to make, interfacing between your players, coaches, chairman and other managers. Access to training, tactics, squad and various other elements is all easily linked from here too. One major problem I have with the title is it seems you're restricted in what you can do, you have a limited affect on vital areas such as tactics and training, it never feels like you're truly in control.
Unlike the CM series, EA's offering allows you to take charge of such areas as ground development, merchandise opportunities, and finance. Personally speaking I find this very obtrusive and gimmicky, I prefer just to concentrate on the team and preparing for the next game. However EA's effort lacks the depth and refinement of the CM series, so this it feels has been put in to add some extra depth to the game. That is the major stumbling block for me, the CM series prides itself on that depth, essentially as a good friend assures me it's just a spreadsheet, however it's the most addictive spreadsheet I've come across in a long time. Fans of the series can back me on this one, CM will literally suck away the hours until the mere concept of time goes out the window, unfortunately there just isn't that immersive element to FAPLM 2002.
When it comes to the all important match day, FAPLM 2002 uses a variant of the FIFA engine to display the game. One up over the text-style mach report you get with CM you would have thought, but alas no. Watching a game looks extremely scripted, as the exact same moves, build-ups, goals, etc... are constantly played out in front of you. Want to see how your star buy performs, forget it, he's just a clone in a pre-determined script. You can almost see on the pitch how EA have determined the results of matches, this attribute beats that so he wins ball, etc... It's painful at times and had me longing for the variety found in CM text approach. Sports Interactive are promising a 3D match engine for CM4, take note this is not how to do it.
