Football Manager Handheld 2009 review

With its long load times, and noisy UMD drive, Gamestyle were not expecting FMH 2009 to be a pleasant experience on the PSP. Setting up a game on its PC bigger brother can take several minutes, with extensive waiting times whilst the match results are processed. Gamestyle anticipated either longer periods of waiting, or an extremely reduced version of the game to counter this. It is with great relief (and amazement), that FMH 2009 is a faithful recreation of Football Manager, with even faster processing times than the full version, and little loss in detail. Although team's squads are limited to 36 players, the database of players and teams is very comprehensive. You can choose to manage teams from over 10 nations, covering 27 leagues, and it's clear that Sports Interactive have not taken the handheld version lightly. Even when a game is started with the maximum number of leagues allowed (four top tier divisions), a game is set up in seconds, and weeks progress almost instantly. You can customise training, albeit in a more simplified manner, and you can utilise scouts to assist in searching for players. You can lose yourself in this game for hours, and it has the potential to dominant your free time for several weeks to come. This, again, is due to depth and level of tinkering available to you.This does come at a cost, however. Player's attributes are streamlined, with only basic information being displayed. "Basic" is perhaps an unfair description, as there are still 18 categories on display, although you will miss knowing a player's free-kick or corner-taking ability when trying to make these important tactical decisions. There is no option to give pre-match or half-time team talks, and interaction between players and other managers is severely limited. This is not a huge price to pay, and Gamestyle would even go so far as to say that the removal of these features is welcome. It's far too easy to get bogged down in perfecting training routines and playing mind games with your opponent, and removing these aspects puts the focus back onto the actual game of football.One of the game's biggest sacrifice, however, comes in the ability to change tactics in real-time during the match. Although there are a great number of formations to choose from, each with editable positions and runs, changing formations during a game is a clumsy and frustrating process. You can save up to 10 custom formations, and switching between these is easy enough, but you cannot quickly make simple changes in reaction to how the match is progressing. Each formation change resets your team and player instructions, and Gamestlye found themselves just not bothering to make tactical changes due to the long-winded process, unless absolutely necessary. Whilst this obviously does have a drastic impact on the match itself, the ability to save so many custom formations means that you should be able to have most tactical situation covered, and making substitutions and changing player positions within a formation is quick and easy.The game's interface is simple, and whilst the PC version relies heavily on the mouse, navigating using the PSP's buttons is effective. The shoulder buttons are used to go back and forth between pages, and the analogue stick scrolls quickly through lists. The game's presentation is simple, with clear menus, different skins to select, and an impressive 2D match display. Highlights of your matches are shown in either a full pitch, or a close-up view of the action. Whilst there is a little delay between the text updates and the action on the pitch, it does make the match more entertaining. You can change the speed and detail of the match coverage, but even on the highest settings, the games are perfect for on-the-go play.With an impressive level of detail, and all the key aspects of the full version of Football Manager present, Football Manager Handheld 2009 is a superb addition to the series. Whilst it does have its faults, the ability to play such an in-depth and versatile management game on the go is impressive. It may have some secondary aspects of Football Manager trimmed in order to condense the game into the portable format, but you will not find a better management sim away from the PC.