Premier Manager 09 - last in the line of classic soccer manager games

 

Premier Manager games that started in 1992 and all throughout its lifetime concentrated solely on English professional divisions simulating and in pretty much the same scenario - you take club from lowest division and work your way up to the Premier Division. Premier Manager 09 was the last game of the series (well, almost, there was Premier Manager 12) created after Gremlin Interactive (creators of original games) closed their studio and development of the games in the series were moved elsewhere.

Zoo Digital Publishing, which took over the title, changed the basics of the game in rather questionable move - instead of concentrating on PC, they adapted a PC Fútbol game and presented it as the next title in Premier Manager series. On one hand it was move towards making the game available on Playstation consoles, but at the same time the new game lacked the depth of original titles.

Apart from interface, which had to be simplified to allow Playstation users to operate the game, also the player and club parameters were changed. But there were also positive parts in Premier Manager 09 - you could choose any team and start in any division, you could give staff orders, you would get reports from staff members, news from media and feedback from players. At the same time there were some limitations, for example none of the foreign clubs was fully simulated, most of the foreign leagues were limited to just handful of team, player parameters were a bit too simple. Match engine offered top-down view on the pitch, but it is hard to actually call it inspired form of watching the match.

While on surface very rough and riggit Premier Manager 09 was in fact not that bad - the interaction via e-mails and notes with the staff members work quite well, players interaction can build quite immersive feeling, but all of it was spoiled by a very simple interface that looked like quite old Playstation production, not to mention that some of the elements lacked the hover explanation.

 Overall a pretty good game that was dragged down by Playstation style interface almost useless on PC, over-simplified match engine view and limited player database.