Football Director DS (DS Review)

Author: Vince | Date: November 25, 2008

It’s hard to believe that after 4 years and a mountain of shovelware there is still a genre of game yet to make its way to the Nintendo DS, especially a genre as popular as football management games, but luckily Football Director DS has come along to fill that gap.

Officially licensed by the UK Football League, Football Director gives you the opportunity to take full control of the club of your choice from over 92 teams from the English & Welsh football leagues and with over 3,800 real players there is no shortage of talent to help take your team to league, cup and European glory.

Before I go any further I think it’s pretty important to get it straight that this game is not trying to be a Football Manager or Championship Manager on the DS, the limitations of the hardware prevent that level of depth, instead the game goes for a much more casual feel that is far easier to just pick up and play that its heavyweight PC brothers, making it ideal for the Alex Ferguson on the go.

The interface is well laid out and easy to navigate with a quick tutorial popping up the first time you visit each page explaining all of the options available from that screen, and if your forgetful then you can always bring the tutorial back with a tap of the stylus. This makes the massive amount of data at your fingertips easy to sift through and finding that hidden gem of a player much easier. Sadly not everything about the interface is perfect though as I often found it very difficult to get the sliders where I wanted them, especially when there is a large amount of players to scroll through, but that problem can at least be remedied by effective use of the filters.

The tactical side of Football Director is probably the weak point of the game, with players having no versatility on positions as each player is designated as either a goalie, defender, midfielder or striker with no crossovers and your team formation has to be chosen from a predefined list, so no custom formations here. That does not mean you have no control on team tactics though, as you can set your teams style of play, the style of marking, your teams overall level of aggression as well as whether your squad employ counter attack tactics or offside traps. It would have been nice to be able to set individual player tactics but sadly that is not an option, the nearest you can get to that is assigning your captain and penalty, free kick and corner takers.

Any fan of football management games will know that player training is a key part of squad development and Football Director is no different giving you the opportunity to train each player individually to improve their on pitch skills. Personally I found that the training was not as in depth as I would have liked, as you can only choose from a limited amount of different training schedules for each player. Perhaps that is something to work on for next years release.

The match engine is a hark back to the pre-Pentium era of Championship Manager with match updates popping up in text form as they happen, but thankfully ‘champ vision’ is no longer required to keep up with what is going on as the screen displays more than one line of text at any time.

Just like the rest of the game the match display is cleanly laid out, displaying the current score and notable events (goals, cards, etc.) on the top screen while you can have the match update, current player performance and tactics on the bottom screen. This allows for easy substitutions and tactical changes without missing out on goals. Of course if you would rather not sit through every match then you also have the option to jump straight to the result and let the AI decide the outcome of the match, a risky strategy that sometimes produces freak results either way. How else could Leicester City beat Liverpool 4-0?

If football management games are you thing then Football Director DS is bound to hit the spot despite its flaws, and if your new to the genre then it’s a great way to dip your toe in the water without going into the depth of FM or CM. The overall speed and ease of play make it a perfect game for journeys long and short, or even just a quick game in your lunch break at the office.

With a bit more depth to the training and tactics options and a few fixes to the match engine Football Director could have been the perfect example of how to bring a football management game to the DS, instead it has set itself a lofty but doable target to beat next year.

8/10

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