FourFourTwo Touchline Passion

Football magazines come and go. but over the last eight years FourFourTwo has consistently offered an intelligent insight into the national sport, remaining at the top of the league through a combination of dramatic photography and quality journalism. And that's got nothing to do with the fact that I write for it. Yep. when I'm not boring you lot with my largely objectionable views on the world of games. I am occasionally to be found on another shelf banging on about the minutiae of football. So, imagine my surprise on learning that FourFourTwo is to be made into a PC game.

It's certainly a unique concept - the game of the magazine - but in real terms it's little more than a shrewd marketing exercise, and an attempt to lure unsuspecting readers into the wonderful and frightening world of PC football management. That world is of course dominated by the peerless Championship Manager, and much of the press material for FourFourTwo would appear to be little more than a thinly veiled dig at it, with cheap jibes about spreadsheets, and an invitation to become 'a footballing managing legend not a statistician.' By all means try and come up with some new ideas, but don't bite the hand that feeds the football management genre.

Junior product manager Ray Livingstone is at least gracious enough to concede: "We wouldn't want to go head to head against Championship Manager because, you know, we'd lose, quite frankly. Championship Manager is Championship Manager and it's the best at what it does. We're trying to do something else, and we think we're going to be the best at what we do."

Show Us Something New

What they're going to do involves the option to view games via a 3D engine. As Ray says: "Instead of watching a screen where you've got a load of statistics, you actually watch the game. If you think your left back is having a bad game - say he's given the ball away three times and got skinned and was out of position for the goal - then you take him off. So that's why we think our game's going to be more like genuine football management."

As is the wont of modern managers, you can also bellow instructions from the touchline, with the option to tell individual players to tackle, pass, cross, or shoot. You'll even be subjected to press conferences, with your response affecting the opinions of the fans, players and board. And tactics-wise, set pieces can be planned beforehand and employed within the match, something that was touched upon in UEFA Manager 2000 by the same developer.

FourFourTwo: Touchline Passion is due out in September, or at least some time before Championship Manager 4.