Previous Next

When the menu screen first appears your immediate inclination is to leap out of your chair and shout "Hurrah, an icon-ed menu system!" This would be a big mistake. Partly because you might bump your head on the ceiling, thereby sustaining injury - Zeppelin are not liable for any medical costs incurred as a result of such an accident - but mainly because this isn't really an icon-driven menu system type game state of affairs. In fact, it's something altogether more innovative, which soon becomes quite irritating.

You don't click on the icons to enter the different sub-menus, instead you heave to drag the icons over to the holes in your diary. There's an awful lot of selecting and dragging of icons to be done, and while this might be quite realistic (allowing you to build your plan for a week in advance) it's pointless. 99.93% of the time you're only going to be pulling over an icon for what you want to do next. That means selecting the icon, dragging the icon, placing the icon, then clicking on the 'next appointment' arrow. Instead of just clicking straight on the icon like you would in most other management games.

This sounds like a lot of moaning about very little, but the worst sin a footie management game can commit is having a user interface that gets on your nerves. And speaking of getting on your nerves, the game features Jimmy Hill in a 'Match Of The Day studio' graphic interlude with inane half-time waffle. They're not doing themselves any favours here, are they?

What else? A transfer market so stagnant that you'll be looking at lists of no-one for ages, straining at the leash with loads of money in the bank. A 'training' facility so fiddly that you're better off fielding a team of donkeys and losing than even bothering with it. Match highlights that are too fast, predictable, unrealistic and, well, crap (like, every single team appears to play in a vertically-striped strip in colours chosen by a colour-blind sadist) to build up much excitement. Oh dear, it's not going very well, is it?!

Match Of The Day isn't as bad as footy management games can be, but neither is it fit to grace the same pitch as, say, Graham Taylor's Soccer Manager. It's simply too fiddly and lacking in action, and you need to work far too hard to actually get anywhere.

And of course, any feelings of 'fun' that might start to emerge soon vanish when Jimmy Hill's infamous mug returns to the screen. Yeuch.

A mediocre management sim, with a few good ideas and a whole lot of bad ones. If you're the sort of person who automatically doesn't trust full price releases from budget houses, this game could surprise you a little bit. But not much.