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Ever
since Sports Interactive’s first Championship Manager title
arrived on the Commodore Amiga and
ATARI ST
back in 1992 the series has gripped football fans and gamers  alike
with its superb attention to detail, realism and criminally
addictive gameplay. Despite never even attempting a remote level of
graphical flair, the series has frequently drawn in the unwary gamer
and refused to let go until the early hours of the morning. Many a
woman has been rejected in favour of “just one more match” and
the sheer amount of productivity lost due to these games probably
rivals several Eastern European countries Gross National Product
(GNP). The Championship Manager games and their spiritual
successor, Football Manager, have always been primarily PC
oriented, with console gamers having to deal with playing the
critically-deemed inferior LMA Manager and Premier Manager
series’ to sate their managerial desires. Alongside the launch of
the Xbox360 version of Football
Manager 2006 comes Football Manager Handheld for the
PSP. You can have Football Manager in your pocket.  For some
this review is already over, they have already consigned themselves
to the purchase of Sports Interactive’s first portable console
game, but wait just a second and think, not every port to SONY’s
portable console has been a total success, has it?
The
game is set out very similarly to the current PC release. You start
by selecting a team and from then on it’s your job to direct them
toward glory through the use of many text-heavy screens displaying
everything you need to know. Football Manager Handheld is
turn-based and as a team’s manager it is up to you to govern the
day-to-day needs of your team, mainly on the field, but also in
other area’s such as the transfer market and media speculation.
The Xbox360 version of Football Manager 2006 allows the
player to do almost anything that the manager of a professional
football club could; this however is not the same for the PSP
version. Perhaps in an attempt to make the game simpler for the
average console gamer or maybe due to the technical constraints of
the PSP, Football Manager Handheld is significantly less
in-depth than the original edition. For example, there is no option
to manage a team’s reserve side, none of the media options seen in
Football Manager 2006 are present and the ability to move the
players  around the tactics board has been removed. In-fact Football
Manager Handheld has more in common with the earlier Championship
Manager and 16-Bit console releases of Premier Manager games
than the Football Manager franchise.
It
is, however, far more streamlined than any other Football Manager
or Championship Manager release. L and R act as forward and
back much like with an Internet Browser, and the Face Buttons are
used for each page’s available options. This, in-conjunction with
the Home Menu, means that most screens can be accessed within
seconds. An appreciated improvement that was neglected in the
Xbox360 version and shows that Sports Interactive have genuinely
attempted to make a console release, as opposed to an all to common
copy-and-paste port. Being a title under the hand of Sports
Interactive Games, Football Manager Handheld features the
Sports Interactive database and as such any virtual manager has
access to thousands of different players, although strangely, only
while in the  Premier League as managers in the lower leagues can
only search for players in their country. However Football
Manager 2006 can cripple all but the most powerful home
computers, making the PSP’s versions nippy Load Times a come as
somewhat of a shock.
Football
Manager Handheld is a text-based game, so no prizes for guessing
that graphically it’s not going to blow you away. The text is
clearly visible at all times despite the size of the screen, thanks
in-part to the PSP’s high resolution display. One of the most
unfortunate casualties of the transition from Xbox360 is the 2D
Match Engine. This obviously makes visualising the games harder
despite the decent on-screen commentary’s best efforts and is
likely to offend the Football Manager faithful, with the
offering ending-up on par with the earliest Championship Manager
releases on the PlayStation. As for sound, well, movement of the
cursor is celebrated with a nice click… possibly in stereo.
Football
Manager Handheld is a decent attempt at bringing the franchise
to a portable console, however the journey has not been without
incident, and the game does lack the depth of its Xbox360 and PC
counterparts. Thankfully this has resulted in Football Manager
Handheld having incredibly short Loading Times and may possibly
shock many PSP gamers familiar with the frequent “Now
Loading…” screen. The game works without hitch and provides an
incredibly re-playable experience. Football Manager Handheld is
Football Manager in your pocket. Expect insomnia.
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