But why would you ever want to make it that dull? Also, if it was really life like, wouldn't you need to play a real time (ie 90 minutes) just to get a couple of goals in a game? Sounds boring to me.

Not been sacked yet but as I said in an earlier post, manager mode is not very clever at all. Accoriding to Fifa 06, being top, having won the league cup and in the quarters of the FA Cup obviously means that your players morale is shot to pieces and they all hate the club. Not very good programming. Still better than PES5's management mode!

Well it's been out a couple of days now and no ones said too much about it so far. I've got to say that I'm not overly impressed and actually preferred PES4. And without applying any option files, the half way house of some teams being fully kitted out and others not just looks plain stupid. I played as "Lancashire" Vs Chelsea and our kit just looked comical next to Chelseas. Very poor presentation. Just hope I get into the game otherwise it's £29.97 down the drain.

I really don't get the management mode. It strikes me of the half arsed attempts of football manager in the early ninety's. For a case in point, I beat Liverpool 6-0 in the quarter final of the FA Cup and the next thing that pops up is that my team are upset and their moral has hit an all time low. I was top of the league at the time as well! No pleasing some folk.

Or perhaps he was talking about the PC version here. Would make sense as I have exactally the same problem with the Fifa Demo on the PC.

Aye, try it on world class and see how boring the game becomes then. Anyone tried it online yet? Is every team you come across still Arsenal with a few Real Madrids thrown in for good measure?

Free kicks are fairly simple now, just change the aim (left or right) and then hold the shoot button. As the bar grows, about 3/4 of the way up it turns to a different shade of blue which is pretty much the sweet spot. This will makes it a decent shot rather than and chip to the keeper which seems to be the norm.

I'm really enjoying Fifa 06 myself. They've made free kicks and corners a lot easier to control. The one thing that still annoys me is that the players still stand around acting like they've been shot if they get tackled. Very frustrating when you just want them to tackle back but I suppose they've modelled it on Emerton.

And there are plenty of console games that have been rushed and could do with patching. One prime example being Wrestlemania 21 on the XBOX. It was so bad they actually withdrew it from the shelves to patch it. Generally, the XBOX allows for patching due to XBOX live and the hard drive (didn't help with Wrestlemania 21 as one of it's bugs was that it couldn't use XBOX live!). There have been numerous other games on all consoles that could have done with patching but generally they are let go due to the fact they can't be patched. I think it is a very good thing that a developer is willing to take time to get a game right after it has shipped. Granted, maybe they shouldn't be told to ship to a date and actually get the game right first time. Also, in today's PC's, Microsoft has done an excellent job of making everything go through DirectX so that game developers are not having to work with 1000+ drivers. I remember the time when I bought a game and then had to spend 5 hours trying to tweak the drivers and then configure it to use Soundblaster effects with adlib music on IRQ's 5 and 7 etc etc etc and then try and find new executables to get my Voodoo card working in glorious 3D. I think you'll find most problems are now down to sloppy game coding rather than driver issues.

lol, just what I was thinking. And Rolf Harris!

Of course if he was a university graduate then I'd be very worried.

i take all that back. Kuqi couldn't hit a barn door if he tried all day!

Just played this game on PES4 and we won 2-0. Kuqi in the 39th and 74th minutes. I'm confident this is going to be correct, put money on it.

That was actually a pretty good read, although I will admit that I was nearly falling asleep in the middle. I blame the work though. I do like the T-Shirt on play.com.

I'm sure I read somewhere (or was it a documentary on Microsoft) that one of the only reasons Apple survived one of it's worst periods was due to Microsoft porting Office to the Mac. Of course Bill Gates may have commissioned the book/program And I agree with you American, the Mac was aimed at the buisness market with the Graphical display being the thing that set it apart for desk top publishing and design work. It was far too expensive for the average person (or even business) to afford.

The XBOX right now has support for HDTV but only in America. Look here and you will see the adapater that supports 480, 720 and 1080 modes. Of course this is limited to the game supporting it and like I say, only the US firmwares have this switched on as we don't have much HDTV in this country. Of course chipped XBOX's can turn this on quite easily but still little point without the TV and if the XBOX can do it, I can't see why the 360 would drop it.

But it would have been a nice added feature to make a season ticket that little bit more worth while. On PTV, I'm not sure why they couldn't come to an agreement with Rovers for the season tickets seen as how they gave away access to anyone with an ntl account a while ago. I signed up nearly a year and a half ago and it's still working. Surely that's not great business sense, especially as I am quite happy to subscribe (when I can't get it for free)

Something is going to crash sooner or later within football and it could be a toss up between premiership clubs and Sky (Sky Sports). We are already witnessing the trend of falling attendances on the terraces but I believe that Sky's viewing figures could follow suit. Some of the blame has already been put at Sky's door for putting too much money into the game as a reason for the falling attendances (hikes in players wages thus higher ticket prices and lack of passion from the players for the clubs). However I believe a similar reaction will take place with televised football. Already on here I've seen comments that TV coverage is too saturated and people can't even be bothered to watch most games (myslef included). Just like myself, I have not been able to justify getting the whole sky package since it broke the £40 barrier. I have since dropped Sky Sports 2 so that I still get Premiership football but don't get Champions League, FA Cup and lower league football. If prices continue to rise then I will drop Sky Sports altogether. What will Sky's reaction be if a lot of subscribers start taking the same stance? More price hikes or paying less during the next round of tv rights? Either option will have a knock on effect. Hopefully, the upshot will be that all football settles back to a respectable level of tv prices, ticket prices and most importantly, no prima donna players earning more than most of us can dream in one week alone. Still, if we continue to play like we did against Fulham then I'll probably forget all this very quickly.

Kamy, HDTV is purely a new Higher Definition for the screen. Just like PC monitors can do higher resolutions, HDTV's can show higher resolutions compared to standard TV's. Currently, PAL DVD has a can have a resolution of 720x576. The HDTV standards can be 1280x720 or 1920x1080 so effectively twice the resolution of a standard DVD so pictures should be significantly better. So HDTV is just a standard that TV should be able to display. Watch out for some that brag "HDTV Ready" TV's as most of these are hybrids and will not be true HDTV. More Info Here With regards to the TV's and the Tube issue you asked about, it looks like there will be three main types with large screen HDTV. LCD, Plasma and Projection all have their plus points and minus points. I believe the "tube" issue you are talking about is with people's belief that Plasma's need maintenance after a short period. This has been talked about as 32,000 hrs on some models. This actually equates to 6 hours veiwing per day for 16 years. Something most TV's never aspire to. There was quite a good discussion on the three types (but mainly Plasma and LCD) at digital spy here

I think it's all going to be very subjective, just like it is now with the xbox and PS2. Technically the XBOX is superior (and because of the hard drive can do far far more than the PS2 if chipped) but the PS2 challenges very well and has a hard core following who wouldn't touch the XBOX. Both of the new machines will have amazing power (assuming Sony settle on a final specification) that will be initially limited by the developers who will need time to get to grips with the new technology to get the most out of it. Also we will be limitated by our TV's themselves. It's all very well have the best graphics chips in the world offering the best resolutions, but if no one on this country has HDTV's, then you won't get the full benefit. Just like the current consoles, we probably won't see the best from them for a couple of years.

There may be no high up resignations but it looks like there may be some criminal proceedings against the police that did the shooting.

I'll be buying one, but I'll probably wait a year or so for more games to come out and the price to fall under £200 (for the hard drive version)

But the trip up's a bit pricey, especially on a week night.

If you'd have said that this time last year, I would have laughed so hard. The fact we can say it now is a great achievement and probably the main reason why we feel so optimistic this year. I can't wait to go to this one. It'll be tough to win but I can't see us losing. 2-1 to us.

You run out of bubble wrap too Ste? You must have been spending too much time with Glenn recently? I know that women synchronise their cycling but I've never seen it in blokes! Think happy thoughts. ps this board would be godawfully boring if everyone held the same positive opinions only. Isn't this 'exorcising' of feelings and pent up frustrations partly its purpose? (I'm sure Scotty thinks it is.) 337665[/snapback] I'm sure I've seen that quote somewhere else and it wasn't written by Ste. Ah yes, the "Problems with New Home Kit" thread, originally written by Hughesy @ 14:07. I think Ste was simply noting a bit of hypocracy in what Hughesy was writing. Nice of you to jump in with both feet though.