Star Wars Republic Commando

A Blast from the Past review

FBT goes back to a more civilised time

The Past

Funny how things come full circle. Dark Forces was Star Wars’ answer to Doom, and the most common complaint was it lacked Lightsabers and force powers. A decade on, Dark Forces’ Lightsaber and Force-heavy sequels had run their course. What followed was Republic Commando, a run n’ gun FPS aiming to join the ranks of Call of Duty and Medal of Honor.

There’s only two things I can remember about Republic Commando; Droids and those crappy Aphids from Attack of the Clones. I do remember it was interesting playing a Clonetrooper and then being disappointed when I realised it was pre-Order 66, so I was a good guy. But I do recall liking it. Time to get my Clone on.

Still a Blast?

The mid-noughties were a more elegant, civilised time. 2004 had been a watershed in gaming – Far Cry, GTA SA, World of Warcraft, Manhunt, Doom 3 and of course, Half-Life 2. They set a very high bar but 2005 met the challenge with FEAR, Gun, Battlefield 2, Quake 4, two Brothers in Arms and Call of Duty 2; I guess it’s easy to understand why I can barely remember anything about Republic Commando in amongst all that lot. But then again, it’s Star Wars, and it’s from LucasArts. You’d think some of it would stick. But I don’t really recall any of it.

Beginning on Geonosis at the start of the Clone Wars, I’m clone ‘1138’, aka Boss, assigned to command Delta group – ‘Scorch’, the wiseacre, ‘Fixer’ the quiet one and ‘Sev’, who loves his job a bit too much. This group, by virtue of their additional training, aren’t just mindless clones. They’re exceptional soldiers but also individuals, having personal opinions and unique markings on their uniforms (Sev has a bloody hand-print on his helmet, pre-dating Finn’s image at the start of Force Awakens). As the Boss, I can control Delta with the standard commands, but there’s also specialist elements like hacking, while actions like breaching doors can be done stealthily or explosively. I still don’t remember any of this. I didn’t get my memory wiped at the end to preserve hokey continuity did I?

It’s odd I wouldn’t have a better memory of RC, simply via repetitive training. Spanning three deployments, each is a never-changing environment and Delta trudging along a strictly linear path; mindless it becomes. There’s no great game-changer or thrill, no standouts or changes in approach; it’s purely clear the same room, complete an objective, loading screen, repeat and the only thing between you and those objectives is endless Geonosians and those grasshopper-looking droids from the prequels. It’s hard to take them seriously as combatants and you’re only in danger because of their huge numbers, not threat – completely un-intimidating, the droids mutter in that high-pitched gabble, run around after their heads have been shot off or just do the robot before exploding, while the Geonosians are annoying bugs flapping about. The larger Battle droids get a look in (referencing their behaviour in Phantom Menace, shoving aside the wimpy droids to get a better shot) and those roller-droids, but you just whittle them down, and when you combine the forgettable firefights with the same location, look and level design it’s no wonder the game starts to slip your mind. Even while you’re playing it. I’ve not had to remind myself of mission objectives this often since Skyrim.

Your camaraderie with the Deltas is minimal too so they don’t even stand out; their AI is passable although it’s not uncommon to see one staring at a wall, miles away as a dozen droids run around behind him; guess he forgot why he’s here too – Although once I caught Sev teabagging a Droid. Although you can direct them you rarely do because it’s so linear there’s nowhere to send them apart from highlighted cover spots which they use automatically anyway. You do have to wonder what they think of Boss; they all sensibly take up defendable positions and I run in blindly into everything. The good thing is if Boss or another clone dies they can be revived, which keeps the pressure on rather than a checkpoint system (although I did get caught in an infinite loop of me and Sev reviving each other then getting killed by the same Battle Droid over and over) and for once, having replacements drop in would underline the disposable nature of the clones. If you can’t be reached it’s reload time though and there were a few times where I watched each Clone try to revive me only to go down before I could get up, until all four of us were lying in a heap.

In later levels there’s equally annoying, chubby little slavers to deal with and Bossk’s species the Trandoshans, but they don’t last – soon you’re literally fighting vending machines as they spit out those bloody droids until you shut them down. In the final mission, we’re on Chewie’s homeworld of Kashyyk; aside from a few amusing Wookie moments, it’s the same environment and the same fights again; Trandoshans, Slavers and droids – Most shooters stick to two or three adversaries to be fair, but this was prime military/tactical FPS era, which RC is trying to emulate, where a combo of clever AI scripting and inspired level design kept you on edge and in the game no matter how many times you seemed to shoot the same bad guy – RC doesn’t have either, and it exposes how plain a shooter can be without some flair; it’s literally and figuratively flat and just isn’t up there with the heavy hitters – it’s more 1995 than 2005. When you consider something like FEAR or Max Payne and how they kept the same environment/baddies interesting, RC really starts to drag.

The biggest problem though is the universe it’s set in; no matter how many hands get cut off, Star Wars just isn’t brutal; there’s some attempts – blood splatters on your visor trigger a great little laser window-wiper across your screen, Boss is indifferent to the deaths of standard Clones betraying his completely compliant nature, and the Deltas all have cool little finishing moves but it’s still a Star Wars game and by not replicating the realism, the harshness that other military shooters dealt out, it feels a little like a kid’s game. Especially with those clown droids for opponents. Even the Trandoshans are a bit boo-hiss panto, only the Wookies show any characterisation; when a sidekick has more personality than your lead, it’s a worry.

For a while I thought the reason I forgot RC wasn’t bigger, better shooters, but bigger, better Star Wars games – Knights of the Old Republic II was released Dec 2004 and Battlefront II in Dec 2005; maybe it was just too much Star Wars for one year. But really, it’s just not a very memorable game. And of course, there’s Order 66; or rather, no Order 66 – throughout, we get our orders from a bland clonetrooper via a hologram – if instead we’d been a detachment assigned to a Jedi on the ground, worked with them, built up a relationship with them (as the TV series explored), then one Order 66 later RC might have become something – or maybe Boss didn’t turn on them, depending on moral choices; a key element in Star Wars as a whole. Imagine choosing to disobey and being turned on by the Deltas, whom you’d grown fond of as pals. Boss becomes part of the Rebellion! Becomes a tragic character, or just a straight baddie, it could have gone so many ways. Without anything to set it apart, RC is just a clone. Amongst the many Easter Eggs, Boss finds a Lightsaber and it’s a nice, ominous reference that should have been the coda to the entire game, not an in-joke – I am the bad guy, I just don’t know it yet. That would have been memorable.

2005 Developer LucasArts | Publisher LucasArts/Activison

Platforms; Win | Xbox

Just Cause 3

a second wind review

FBT plays the video game adaption of Cool Guys Don’t Look at Explosions

Just Cause 3 is not only a retread of the previous JC games, it ticks every open-world box that’s been ticked before – Far Cry meets GTA meets Borderlands meets Saints Row. Yet for all its seen-it-all-before, meet a really good game.

The Just Cause series has always been the underdog. Constantly overshadowed by bigger Open-World experiences, it didn’t help itself stand out by dropping Rico, a Che Guevara meets El Mariachi gun-for-hire, into the same situation over and over; in JC he helped rebels overthrow a dictator who’s taken over a peaceful island to produce WMD, in JC2 he helped rebels over throw a dictator controlling a peaceful island’s oil wells; but this time he’s going home. To help rebels overthrow Di Ravello, a dictator mining his peaceful island’s natural reserves. Rico heads home in style – from the top of a plane while firing rockets. This is not a subtle game; JC3 is a shower not a grower.

The place is huge, and calls to mind Far Cry 3 if Jase had lasted long enough to westernise it. Made up of several islands, each has multiple areas Rico must disrupt to weaken Di Ravello’s hold, allowing the rebels to move in and flush out his troops. Although the islands are generally similar there’s a lot to them, and it has a really beautiful, detailed and realistic feel to it; open roads, quaint little villages, you can see why Rico wants it returned to its former glory – by destroying all the concrete checkpoints and military installations. Not sure wanton destruction adds to the beauty, and maybe the rebels could have used the infrastructure but hey, let’s not sweat it.

Rico, much like the plot, hasn’t changed a great deal, we’re an adrenaline junkie, too-cool-for-school Antonio Banderas dude. With a saviour-like reputation amongst his fellow Medicians (they’re often excited when he jacks their car or ask for autographs when he swaggers by) Rico is the islander’s poster-boy and rallying call. And the game makes damn sure you live up to that legend. Heath replenishes as you’d expect from someone this heroic and while he can manage a sidearm, main weapon and explosive weapon, if he’s caught short, unlocked weapons or vehicles can be airdropped – a shipping container will fall out of the sky and open (with confetti) to reveal whatever insane thing he’s requested. While every open-world game nowadays features a delivery service, it works well in JC3; getting a helicopter dropped in a container doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but at least it arrives intact unlike Saints Row or Sleeping Dogs where you’d watch an overzealous NCP destroy your vehicle on-route, leave it somewhere inaccessible then get run over.

In order to drive Di Ravello’s army off, Rico has a bunch of insane tricks up his double-denim outfit. The wingsuit and parachute make a return and they’re a lot easier to use, calling to mind Saint Row 4’s flying dynamics and it’s great to have a game that wants you to fling yourself off buildings and cliffs. All the vehicles can be stolen including tanks, boats, helicopters and planes, and when you’re not making like it’s GTA you’re making like Batman – Rico has his trusty grappling hook and this thing never gets a rest once you get the ‘hang’ of it. It’s so handy, using it to grapple along the streets to get somewhere quicker, leaping onto or off cars, from ground to roofs and up the side of buildings, hang upside down, latch onto passing helicopters, make your way up cliffs, just about everything is traversable, including gravity itself; fall out of a plane or off a high-rise and just before hitting the ground a quick grapple onto the pavement will leave Rico unscathed somehow. The grapple gun can also let you tether things together and once you nail that, there’s nothing left standing. Gas canisters are conveniently everywhere and latching one to people or passing cars provides hours of sky-high fun as do later explosive upgrades while tethering cars to cars, or people to cars or boats or helicopters or anything to anything brings out the ridiculous in you. Not unlike Red Faction or Stranglehold, absolutely everything is destructible, and you will destroy it. In fact it’s a mystery how the island is still standing. It’s one of those games were you emerge from the rubble and think ‘Am I actually helping or making things worse?’

Taking out the army strongholds calls to mind Far Cry (again) but instead of outposts we liberate suppressed villages, army-controlled infrastructures and utilities by destroying various items; propaganda in the villages or supply dumps in the installations. The outposts also include SAMs – if you attempt to attack via the air they’ll make short work of your whirly-bird unless you reprogrammed them. While every liberation is great fun, including the troops calling in increasingly powerful support that can force you to retreat (Rico retreat? Never! Vive Medici!) the liberation missions are all the same; it’s usually fatigue or boredom that pushes you back to the main mission. But that’s a little boring too.

As is often the case in Open-World games, the biggest failing in JC3 is reason we’re there; the main mission. You should be constantly torn between a gripping main mission and the fun stuff, but JC3 doesn’t pull it off; this being Rico’s homeland isn’t really a compelling enough reason to get stuck in and the dictator is the same confidently evil guy we’re always facing; the missions while bombastic aren’t that whoa to play, and Rico himself doesn’t seem that invested; he’s too cool for that, he just smoulders and cracks Arnie one-liners as he destroys everything in sight. Medici itself can get a bit disorientating, leaving you struggling to recognise one place from another, and it doesn’t come across as a place that really needs saving; it’s lovely looking, with the rolling fields full of sunflowers, coastal roads, clear warm water and winding villages – I’d be quite happy to be oppressed here. But it does heat up; it ends in a helicopter fight over a volcano.

There are niggles; the ground vehicles are easy to crash compared to GTA V or Saints Row’s smooth, intuitive rides – you never keep a car for long – while battling in the choppers or boats means you’ll not be in them for long due to the lack of free-look, so you can’t anticipate attacks and the aiming is impossible – and everyone is a better shot than Rico is. One of the biggest annoyances is Chaos rewards you get – rather than XP unlocking upgrades, it’s adds to a pointless leaderboard score; who cares if I’m blowing up more crap than some kid halfway around the world? Upgrades are gained via a score system tied to challenges, which is another annoyance – Rico, hero of Medici can’t even precision aim until he’s unlocked it by winning a few races. Huh? And there is an argument that Medici is beautifully generic; if you’ve seen one island you’ve seen them all, it looks like the kind of thing Crysis aced a decade ago and what you do on one, you explode on another so nothing really changes. But grumbles aside, and despite feeling like it should be dismissed as derivative, JC3 works. It throws so much freedom and possibility at you, the sense of fun saves it. The challenge isn’t in saving the island, it’s finding hilarious ways to muck about in it. There’s so much of everything you’ve done before it’s like a Best Of compilation but somehow, it’s not a cash-in, it’s fun.

We’ve still not had a good guerrilla game; Boiling Point tried and failed while Homefront The Revolution just failed. One day they’ll get it right but JC3 isn’t aiming for that; it has a rideable pogo-stick, that’s what it’s aiming for and it aces it.

in 2017 Jason Momoa was announced as Rico in a JC film. But personally, and nothing against the mighty Momoa, I think only Dwayne Johnson could carry off the straight-faced insanity of Just Cause; JC3 is Dwayne Johnson The Video Game. That’s how good it is.

2015 | Developer Avalanche Studios | Publisher Square Enix

Platform Win | PS4 | XO

The 11th Hour

A Blast from the Past review

Little FBT visits uncle Stauf’s mansion, and has a tantrum.

The Past

What I remember best about The 11th Hour was that it stomped on everything that made The 7Th Guest awesome – none of the classic horror tone or style, it was a mini-movie with puzzles, set in present-day melodrama instead of goth camp. It was smutty, sleazy and a bit unpleasant – it had more in common with the other infamous FMV game from the nineties, Night Trap instead of The 7th Guest’s classic House on Haunted Hill groove – that drew from the best of horror literature and film; tragedy, regret and ghosties. The 11th Hour is prime Tommy Wiseau.

When T11H was released, it was long overdue and past it’s prime. Gaming had already moved on and the dodgy plotting, am-dram movie and bizarre ending turned T11H into a curiosity rather than classic. Briefly though, developers Trilobyte were the intellectual id; they helped PC gaming shift from Floppy Disks to CD-Rom, popularised FMV and the interactive movie genre. T11H can’t be as bad as I remember. I loved The 7th Guest. I can love The 11th Hour.

Still a Blast?

It’s now the 90s, and unlike The 7th Guest, we know who we’re playing – TV Presenter, Idiot and Bad Actor Carl Denning, who hosts an unexplained mysteries tv show.

Robin, his producer and lover, loses both jobs when Carl decides on an unexplained whim to dump her. Robin, seeing something in Carl that we can’t, decides to prove both her love and professional worth by solving the biggest unexplained case yet; Stauf Mansion. And promptly disappears. Carl moodily moods about until her PDA turns up containing a video of Robin begging for help, trapped in the Mansion. Oh-ho. Carl moods some more then moodily rocks up to the mansion and becomes trapped inside, forced to solve puzzles to unlock the secret of Robin’s fate and what Stauf’s been up to in the intervening years.

At first, the old mansion is a welcoming sight. It’s the same layout but past it’s prime, decrepit and falling apart. As we wander, there’s various nods to the original’s puzzles and moments and that old 7th Guest magic starts to creep in. And then creeps back out, apologising for what’s about to happen.

T11H is shockingly bad. Worse than I remembered. First, the house has lost that subtle eerie charm in favour of a dark, dank, rotten look; that could be good, but it’s so dingy and dull it’s no fun to click around and while T7G kept the interaction to a minimum, in T11H almost everything can be clicked on which reveals nothing but a chance for Stauf to make some terrible joke. Here we go.

In T7G Stauf was always a test of the gamer’s patience, but at least he had a good line in black humour. This time, Stauf is just an end-of-the-pier comedian. Zingers like ‘I took a picture of your brain … but it hasn’t developed yet’ might be good but it’s not exactly a creepy, disembodied voice drawing you to your doom – It’s like being followed about by the ghost of Groucho Marx. It stops you clicking on anything because the game freezes, like it’s pausing for laughter, while you listen to his stupid puns. It’s not scary and this is supposed to be scary, right? He’s evil isn’t he? It just gets worse and worse, and he repeats them endlessly, ruining the moment until … You know the film Clue, where Madeline Khan attempts to explain why she murdered someone but is so frustrated she can’t properly express the rage; “I hated her so much, it … flames, flames, on the sides of my face, breathing … breathless, heaping …” that’s how I feel about Stauf. I just can’t properly explain how much it annoys me, how ruinous it is, how moment spoiling, aggravating … Flames, flames at the side of my face.

But, much of Stauf’s idiocy is drowned out by our old friend, the score. The Fatman’s music is fine in moderation but it’s relentless and becomes a trainers-on-gym-floor, fork-across-plate, nails-down-blackboard, screaming-baby, Go-Compare, pro-Brexit-argument in synth form. It’s so insistent you can’t block it out, refusing to let you concentrate as it fights for space with Stauf; shut up, just shut up the both of you and let me enjoy the atmosphere.

Except there is no atmosphere. The house is lit mostly by Carl’s torch and very little happens as you explore, it’s as scary as fumbling around the attic looking for the Christmas decorations. T7G didn’t demand you hunt around, but you did anyway because you wanted to find cutscenes that explored the history, you wanted to find the ghostly moments and new puzzles. That house was bright but oddly silent like the Marie Celeste; food and drinks, cigars still lit. Creepy. I have to remind myself T11H is creepy. There’s nothing scary about it and when we do find a puzzle, while they’re suitability macabre and gothy (and insanely difficult) they’re made insufferable by the Cannon & Ball jokes of Stauf (who comments after every move and taunts after every mistake) and The Fatman’s infuriating Richard Stilgoe impression.

T11H can’t let us have nice things, and it even mucks up the satisfaction of beating a puzzle. Carl solves a puzzle, but that then provides a riddle. Solve that, then go looking for the relevant object and that unlocks a cutscene. That means dragging Carl around the house looking for the object, and each click triggers a Stauf joke you’ve heard a million times, and you can’t start another puzzle until it’s found. The entire game is padding, nothing happens in the house, you’re just unlocking cutscenes but rather than have them appear as ghostly shapes like in T7G, you go to the PDA and watch a mini-movie from Robin’s investigation. And then things get really bad.

The cutscenes reveal the backstory that led us here; Starting with Robin investigating two girls who were raped by Stauf when they ventured into the house. Nice. One had her hand ripped off while escaping for no reason other than gore, and because two girls being raped isn’t enough horror, one girl gave birth and the child grew into a murderer – or so Robin thinks. We’re basically watching a terrible soap opera trying to be Twin Peaks as Robin uncovers the town’s secrets, and at over an hour long, it’s a slog to sit through something this cheap and cheesy, especially when it could have been wrapped up in a single cutscene like T7G’s original opener. A criticism of T7G was we do puzzles to unlock a story we have no involvement in, but that’s turned all the way up to 12 in The 11th Hour ruining the horror-coolness of the puzzles and most of it takes place outside the house in brightly lit locations; it’s completely removed from the house.

When Carl does find an in-house cutscene, he’s often there too, ruining it by pulling gurning reaction faces to events he clearly can’t see or imagine; T7G worked well by keeping the in-game cutscenes POV and voyeuristic – adding Carl into the set for them to react to ruins the mood, especially when he just blunders about asking ghosts if they’ve seen Robin.

Eventually, Carl runs out of puzzles and Stauf pops up to end this. It’s as distasteful as it is disjointed; We know that Stauf’s power is his Faustian promise to provide your greatest desire – I should be worried; Robin’s desire was Carl and here we are, trapped – are we part of Stauf’s biggest puzzle yet? Naa not even close. That would have been something but instead we get that ending.

The 7th Guest featured babies being sacrificed, children’s souls trapped in dolls and murders all over the place and it still worked – it took Shirley Jackson as inspiration but T11H aspires to nothing and it’s deeply misogynistic – it’s rape (and mutilation) recalls the worst of exploitation films, as does the uneasy idea that the product of rape grows to be a murderer – The other victim suffers a backstreet abortion that leaves her wheelchair-bound. But the ending tops all that by having Carl choose which woman he saves; ex-lover, murderess or victim, based on what Carl’s learned from the cutscenes, but he’s learnt nothing so it’s largely pot-luck; only one ending is the ‘good’ ending which makes no sense at all, and we don’t even get to avenge the girls or punish Stauf at all. There’s no resolution, just a one in three chance Carl survives as if he’s all that matters. The 11th Hour’s ending always appears on those ‘top ten weirdest endings’ lists, but it’s not weird it’s unforgivably offensive and crass.

The puzzles are great looking and mind-crackingly difficult, but they’re ruined by Stauf’s dad-jokes and the game’s slow pauses to trigger them. It’s like form of torture. If I hadn’t finished it out of some sort of sadomasochistic fury, I would have Rage Quit T11H but I wanted to see how far it would go. It went there. I hoped my rediscovered love for T7G would carry into T11H and allow me to forgive its eccentricities. But it’s not eccentric it’s despicable. Flames, flames at the side of my face.

1995 | Developer Trilobyte | Publisher Virgin Interactive Entertainment / Night Dive

platforms; PC, iOS/Android

Championship Manager 01/02: Part 6 – The Business End

Fresh off the back of his League Cup win TheMorty entered the business end of the season.

A place in the FA Cup final and a Champions League spot were up for grabs. To get there he’d need to get one over on the best team in the league – Arsenal.

RED CARD! Mark Kerr is sent off.

How did I get here? 36 minutes into an FA Cup semi-final against the runaway leaders of the league and I’m down to 10-men with nearly an hour left to play! I was way out of my depth. Henry, Bergkamp and Ljungberg would no doubt tear me apart. I felt like I was no longer playing a football management simulator and instead was deep into The Evil Within or Dead Space. As I feared for my life with each kick of the ball, I’d see the on-screen commentary read “van Bronckhorst beats his man” and fall to pieces. I’d been cock-sure of late, experimenting with match tactics, formations and line-ups but within 36 minutes I’d become a nervous mess that was one flashing light away from a full-on breakdown.

Maybe it was a mistake getting back into this game and I should have just ended my play-through when lifting the League Cup. I’d become accustomed to the FM 2018 3D match engine, the mid-match team talks and the modern day Arsenal who get beaten by bloody everyone! Maybe I should just quit and imagine this never happened… end the review on part 5 and try and finally finish Mafia III…

A week ago everything had been rosy. I’d won the first ever piece of silverware in the clubs modern history and I was excited to load up the game and crack on with the rest of the season. I was eagerly anticipating taking on a Leeds United outfit who had arguably one of the best squads in the game. A young Harry Kewell and a prime Mark Viduka were fearsome, but little more than puppies in comparison to my strike force of Shearer and Madeira that would leave even Vinnie Jones filling his pants.

Squad vs Leeds (Home)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Risp, Yepes, Crainey, Dyer, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Kallstrom, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Solano, Selakovic, Barsom, West.

My confidence last week was at an all time high and beating Leeds was nothing more than a formality. 2 goals to the good before half time – we were strolling.

Yepes opened the scoring with a header from a Dyer cross and Madeira got in on the act just before the stroke of half time, finishing a neat 1-on-1. Even when Viduka reduced the deficit with a tap-in midway through the second half, Newcastle never looked like conceding another and it was another three points for the mags that would almost certainly confirm our Champions League place for next season. Stephen Crainey made his full debut and played a solid 7 rated game as the defence played a blinder in keeping the Whites’ attack firmly on a leash.

There was a slight piece of bad news after the game and it was on a personal note for my players with none of them making the official Team of the year. Shearer had made the bench but there was no place for Madeira (who had scored more goals than Henry this season) and there was no place for Kieron Dyer who had been fantastic all term. Instead it was the big clubs that dominated, with Aresnal and Manchester United taking over half of the starting berths between them.

While the omissions were frustrating, we had a more pressing matter at hand…

The last time Newcastle and Arsenal had met in the FA Cup was in May 1998, when both teams contested a fantastic final at the old Wembley stadium. Newcastle were unlucky in that game, having more possession and hitting the woodwork twice, but Arsenal’s class shone through and after a Marc Overmars opener, Nicolas Anelka sealed the win finishing well past Shay Given.

Now CM0102 is renowned for many of the great players in its database and Nicolas Anelka is undoubtedly the most infamous player in the game. He can be playing the best football of his career, scoring goals for fun and playing 90mins every week – but will always find something to be unhappy with:

If you’re not top of the league – “Worries that the club’s poor league position will affect his reputation”

Lose 2 games in a row – “Has lost confidence in his managers ability”

As soon as ANY club on the game is interested in him – “wants to be transfer listed”

If you transfer list ANY of his team mates – “Believes the manager’s treatment of players is affecting the team morale”

Drop him at any point – “Unhappy with his manager”

Playing well and scoring goals for fun? – “is having trouble motivating himself”

Sign ANY striker, regardless of their ability – “Worried about his future at the club”

To be fair to Sports Interactive, they got this one pretty much spot on. Anelka played for 12 different clubs in his 19-year playing career and had a reputation of being a trouble maker. So even if he comes available on the game – sign this player at your peril!

You could say Newcastle had some unfinished FA Cup business with Arsenal and even though Anelka had moved on to PSG, the remaining French contingent were just as dangerous. I approached the game with a level of nervousness. Sure, I’d beaten Man Utd to lift the League Cup but I felt lucky. Manchester United a man down for an hour certainly helped me and I’d wondered if I’d have taken to trophy over an evenly matched 90mins. I needed some redemption and an unlikely win against Arsenal might just be it.

The FA CUP Semi-Final

Arsenal vs Newcastle

Pride Park, Derby

Saturday 7th April, 2002

As Wenger and I prepared to go toe-to-toe, I decided to approach the game cautiously. I knew Henry and Bergkamp would be dangerous and wanted to make sure they were man-marked at all times. I went for a 5-3-2 formation, with three centre-backs – Risp and Yepes instructed to mark, while Said was free to pick up the spare man zonally.

Formation: 5-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Risp, Yepes, Said, West, Dyer, Kerr, Shearer ©, Kallstrom, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Crainey (on 62), Selakovic (on 36), Speed, Bakircioglu (on 27).

I’d really thought this one through. I had my tactics spot on. I gave myself every chance of progressing to the final and just 6 minutes into the game I had the lead…

GOAL! Madeira is the Scorer !!!

YES! We’ve taken the lead and it was an expert finish. Counter attacking from a defensive clearance saw Shearer and Madeira 2-on-1, the former squaring for the latter to tap into an empty net. However, the good news didn’t last and we picked up an unfortunate injury 29 minutes in. Kallstrom landing awkwardly after competing for a header and having to leave the field. Bakircioglu came on in a like-for-like swap, but just 7 minutes later – disaster struck.

RED CARD! Mark Kerr is sent off.

How did I get here? 36 minutes into an FA Cup semi-final against the runaway leaders of the league and I’m down to 10-men with nearly an hour left to play. I had to react, and I had to react quickly. I moved for a defensive approach. Pushing Dyer into a deep-lying DM role and brought on Selakovic for Shearer. It was a tough call, Alan is a much better target man and would hold up the ball but Madeira had the legs and could run the ball on the counter. I opted for the latter as my tactic and even though I’m sure Alan was inertly furious at being subbed, he was ever the professional and knew it was for the good of the win. We got to half time 1-0 up, but I knew the worst was yet to come…

As the game resumed for the second period, Arsenal came racing out of the traps. It was like Normandy Beach on D-Day, as shots were firing from all angles and whizzing inches wide of the target. Newcastle defended resolutely, but Arsenal weren’t letting up. 60 minutes in and their last 5-minute possession was at 95%. Henry had 2 goals chalked off for offsides and Taribo West and Freddy Risp were both on yellows for dangerous tackles. We couldn’t risk another sending off but I only had one sub left. I had to use it wisely. If they score once, it’s extra time and I might need the fresh legs for that… so much was going through my mind.

In the end, I rolled the dice. I’ve got the lead, lets defend it. I took off the cautioned West and brought on Crainey for his FA Cup debut. It was a tough game to come on in but he managed it well keeping Jermain Pennant quiet. Arsenal through everything at us and thought they’d snatched the draw in the 86th minute when substitute Nwankwo Kanu was fouled in the box by Risp, but the referee waved play on.

THE FINAL WHISTLE BLOWS – NEWCASTLE HAVE REACHED THE FA CUP FINAL

Incredible scenes. Had I genuinely just out-managed Arsenal? I had the complete reverse scenario as I had against Manchester United but still managed to get the same result. My confidence and my love of all things Champ Man had been restored.

Thanks to a Matt Jansen Hat-trick, Blackburn had beaten Everton and would be our opponents in the season ending showpiece – I couldn’t wait!

It was now 11pm on a Monday, I had work the next day… but come on… I was loving it! Just one more game…

In the aftermath of the game I was faced with an action point – what to do about Mark Kerr. I could discipline him, he did nearly cost us a place in the final – or I could shift the blame to the ref and appeal it. I figured my luck had been in so far – so what not chance it. The FA oddly agreed and decided to revoke Kerr’s 3-match ban. Result!

As you may remember from last week, the Arsenal Premier League game had been shifted to accommodate the Arsenal FA Cup game, so within 4 days of that epic victory – The Gunners had their chance for revenge…

Squad vs Arsenal (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Risp, Yepes, Crainey, Dyer, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Selakovic, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Solano, Lee, Barsom (on 79), West (on 66).

…And bloody hell did they take it. Arsenal swept aside Newcastle with ease. Henry with the goal on 37 minutes as Arsenal dominated from start to finish. Not even Martin Keown’s red card in the 78th minute could take the gloss off their performance as they bossed almost every category in the stats. This is what I love about CM 01/02, you just couldn’t make up some of the results. I beat Arsenal 1-0 with 10 men, then Arsenal beat me 1-0 with 10 men.

To be honest, I wasn’t bothered. I had a 7-point cushion from Liverpool in 5th with a trip to Anfield still to come. I had already secured a UEFA Cup spot from my merits in the League Cup and satisfied all the boards ambitions – but I still had a professional job to do on my way to the FA Cup final. Games against Chelsea, Liverpool, Sunderland, Derby, Blackburn & West Ham were next up and I needed 3 wins and a draw from 6 games to be certain of bringing Champions League football to Tyneside next season. Easy, right?

Squad vs Chelsea (Home)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Said, Yepes, West, Dyer, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Selakovic, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Robert (on 82), Solano, Barsom (on 82), Risp (on 91).

Well it certainly seemed that way. Before Abramovic’s billions rolled into West London, Chelsea were a walkover! Madeira getting the first half goal and Newcastle cruising to a 1-0 victory at St. James Park.

So now just 2 wins and a draw needed for Champions League football… next up were our closest rivals – Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool. Win this and pretty much one more win would seal the deal. But we’d be up against a Red’s outfit fighting for the chance to play against Europe’s elite and up for it they were indeed.

Squad vs Liverpool (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Said, Yepes, West, Dyer, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Selakovic, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Robert (on 72), Solano (on 72), Barsom (on 45), Risp.

Okay… So that didn’t go to plan. Michael Owen scored twice and Igor Biscan got the third as Liverpool ran riot at Anfield. Shearer pulled one back from the spot but the whole team had underperformed. It was almost like they were already on the beach. Madeira was disgraceful and was hooked at half time after a well below par 4/10 game. Barsom didn’t do much better and the game ended in a humiliating defeat. The board were furious. This was Newcastle’s reputation on the line…!

Results elsewhere meant that Southampton, after their 3-2 loss to Chelsea, had been relegated with 4 games to go.

The battle to avoid relegation was getting fierce and Sunderland had almost certainly moved away from danger after a fantastic 2-0 victory over Everton at the Stadium of Plight. Steve Stone and Daniele Dichio getting the goals as the Mackems mathematically avoided relegation.

What followed was very odd, but all too familiar…. After their 2-0 WIN, Chairman Bob Murray had sensationally SACKED Peter Reid Monkey’s Heed. It was a very odd move, but then it dawned on me. Who are they playing next – NEWCASTLE.

See that’s how realistic CM 01/02 is, it’s even wise to the old enemy’s devious tricks. Sunderland have a knack of changing their manager just to get a little rise before the derby games. In reality, they’re so obsessed they don’t care how bad they perform all season as long as they beat their arch rivals. IRL, the mackems had sacked 5 managers on the eve of the Tyne-Wear derby to try and get a lift out of their Team. O’Neill, Di Canio, Poyet and Advocaat were all given the boot before the Newcastle match and it seemed even in 01/02, the chairman was sticking to the plan.

I’d spoken of the importance previous of this game. My teachers, my classmates… this game meant everything to both sets of supporters and to lose would be unthinkable. After the success I’d had in the last game it was the chance to do the first double over Sunderland in decades and I was bang up for the challenge. After the lacklustre performance against Liverpool, I made wholesale changes to the squad and brought in a few familiar faces. Anyone that had scored against the mackems previously – was in!

Squad vs Sunderland (Home)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Given, Dyer, Said, Yepes, West, Lee, Kerr, Solano, Speed, Shearer ©, Ameobi.

Subs: Chiotis, Barsom, Risp, Madeira, Bakircioglu (on 78).

I bloody went for it. The Mackem Slayer and Shearer up top. Speed, Lee and Solano in the middle and bringing in Shay Given for his first game in god knows how long.

What a performance it was too. Shearer getting us off to the perfect start, crashing home a header 17 minutes into the game. Ameobi was pulling the strings and was having a 9/10 MOM performance. We were cruising… that was, until the 77th minute when Kevin Phillips got an equaliser firmly against the run of play. Unbelievable. I reacted and switched up the tactics bringing on a Bakircioglu in behind the strikers in place of Kerr. It was an inspired move.

GOAL! BAKIRCIOGLU HAS SCORED !!!

90th minute and Kennedy pops up with the goods. A draw would have been okay, but a win had me ecstatic. That will do nicely…

So there we were. League Cup Winners, FA Cup Finalists, 3rd in the league and had beaten Sunderland twice. Could this season get any better? Next up was the FA Cup Final…

Toon in next week to find out

The 7th Guest

A Blast from the Past review

FBT revisits Stauf’s mansion and relives his greatest fear – game music you can’t turn off.

The Past

I intensely disliked Myst. It was a vacant slideshow of a game. But Myst had an evil twin; The 7th Guest – it was weird, messed up, with a disembodied villain who taunted you, soul-sucking dolls and dead children all within a house straight out of The Haunting filled with insane puzzles made out of gravestone-decorated cakes, skulls, blood and spiders, while you got to the bottom of a disturbing story that nicked it’s subplot from House on Haunted Hill before going batshit crazy at the end – Who was Tad, what are all those folks up to, where are they now, why am I here? I’m still not sure, but T7G was a macabre, goth-great.

T7G was also watershed moment in gaming; besides being set in a realistic, pre-rendered 3D world, it was one of the first to be released on CD-Rom (a what?) and one of the few games of 1993 not be eclipsed by Doom. It’s the polar opposite of Doom; slow, considered, out of your control. But to me it was a perfect companion – just as dark and innovative, and filled with adult content as its plots unfolded through awesomely cheesy FMV drama while we figured out the kind of puzzles critics like to call ‘fiendish’.

I played it loads but only finished it once. Those puzzles were murder, especially that goddamn microscope. But I just enjoyed being in the house, soaking up the atmosphere and style of it – There was no other game that so perfectly captured the old Hollywood horror feel. It should have been in B&W and narrated by Vincent Price. I’m looking forward to playing T7G again, especially as it’s my retro fave in my bio. I hope it stays there, given my shocking lack of patience and complete idiocy when it comes to even the most basic puzzles – this Blast from the Past may become a Rage Quit…

Still a Blast?

Man that cutscene was long. A drifter called Stauf sees a vision of a doll and is compelled to carve it. He gains a reputation as a toymaker and continues to make his visions, eventually becoming rich and famous until the kids who begged for a Stauf Toy start to get ill and die.

Years later, various folks get invitations to his home and told the puzzles he’s left will lead one of them to their greatest desire.

While it was retro-great to watch, less great to listen to; the music by renowned game composer The Fatman plays consistently through the game, and just hearing it brings back conflicted memories. I suddenly remember staring at puzzles for hours while it played repeatedly, slowly wearing me down like the Barney theme being played endlessly to break terrorists. I still have my original T7G disc and the entire soundtrack is on it.

Continuing the audio torture is our antagonist. Stauf, the now disembodied botherer, is constantly on at you as you explore the mansion. Goading, teasing, mumbling some dad joke every time you do something – anything. He only has one or two comments per puzzle or event so they lose their charm very quickly, and “We’ll all be dead by the time you solve this” every time you get a puzzle wrong becomes a wish not a threat. At first his ghostly voice gives the house an ominous personality but his constant jeering, commenting, cackling as you try to make sense of things gets infuriating. Meanwhile, you’ve got The Fatman going do-do-do, do-do-doddododo do … do do do do. This isn’t a puzzler it’s a test of my patience. I ended up, via some clever chap’s mod, managing to disable the music but Stauf just got louder. ‘feeeeeeeeeling lonelyyyyyyyyyyyyy?’ No, but I wish I was; even I won’t shut up, my character also has some glib comments on the state of play – it’s sometimes a hint but every time I or Stauf crack wise, I lose control until the quote is over – and some aren’t exactly pithy. I thought haunted houses were supposed to be silent and whispery, this is like an episode of Loose Women.

Audio mood spoilers aside, The 7th Guest looks really good – not just good for it’s age, it’s a great looking game, period. The CGI is 90s MTV but it’s solid and shadowy, and the mansion’s layout is great – it’s not a haunted house at the end of the pier, it’s just creepy, eerie and while there’s standard spider webs, blood and ghosts, it’s clear of scare-jumps and rug-pulls, relying instead on corner of the eye movement and interactions with warping pictures and things moving. It’s a classic ghost story as much in the tradition of Blithe Spirit or Dead of Night as The Haunting, almost a love poem to the classic era before CGI and jittery editors forced you to jump. But it’s not all warm and cuddly. You know the folks trapped here turned on each other, is that what’s in store for us? Are we alone? There’s one scene where a Guest picks up a doll and it starts crying for it’s mum … but not in that Chatty Cathy way, it’s a real girl’s voice, really crying for her mother. Shivers. This is a house filled with restless spirits and unease and it has an oppressiveness, you’re trapped there and being toyed with – the game doesn’t pull you out of the moment with a typical cut scene; instead, you wander into a Stone Tape style replay of some horror or event that the house never forgot; FMV fades in over the CGI room and while it’s not very well rendered, it’s effective and a great little story unfolds as each of Stauf’s guests fall victim to their desires and each other. It’s a little ham-acted but that just adds to the ghost-story charm.

While it’s easy to get lost in the game and the story, you’re rarely lost in the house; the layout isn’t maze-like (apart from a maze puzzle) and there’s a map, and unlike most puzzle games, there’s no inventory or random things that become critical later; you’re purely solving Stauf’s conundrums to unlock the secrets. It could be disconnecting, like you’re unlocking a straight-to-video movie, but you never know what’ll happen when the shot glides around and it feels like you’re being drawn further in and become part of it. As a puzzle game, it’s clean and effective; you’re not missing a tiny clue because your character is standing on it or stuck trying to get past a goat. The cursor changes to flag cinematics or puzzles which keeps you focused as you walk the corridors and discover previously locked doors now open … The mansion is split across two main floors for the most part, with a brief journey into the cellar before ascending to the attic for the finale, discovering your own connection to the house and who the 7th Guest is before it all goes FMV-meets-WTF crazy.

The 7th Guest is a real accomplishment; many critics complained it was either a puzzle game with cut-scene filler or a ghost story constantly interrupted by puzzles, but I see it as the puzzles -like Stauf’s toys- were possessed and as the guests played they became corrupted, and lost themselves to the games, so unlocking them revealed the character’s fate and in turn, revealed our own. One, the toy bricks in the playroom, reveals Stauf’s plan – I thought it worked perfectly then, and still do now. It feels aged but not old and just like Doom, playing it now, decades later you feel a sense of achievement, that this is something special – it’s not a flash in the pan or of its time, The 7th Guest is a classic and still packs a punch (to the ear).

For all of T7G’s innovations and progress, its inventors Trilobyte never capitalised. The sequel, 11th Hour was as overdue as it was bad, and they closed in 1999. Good old Night Dive helped Trilobyte resurrect Stauf and his bants though, including an iOS release – which is great and works even better than on PC; mostly because the microscope puzzle is missing – not even Apple could solve it.

Over the years various reboots and second sequels have been rumoured, but nothing’s come of them. It’s a shame but then, a modern-day 7th Guest wouldn’t have the original’s charm or invention. It would be like a crappy modern day shlock-scare, missing the class of a good old horror movie. Sure they’re old, a bit silly in places, but they’re great and The 7th Guest is the gamer’s equivalent. The end …

What? Oh yeah, the puzzles. Okay, I admit I might have, on occasion, used YouTube and The Book Of Secrets, a hint app released alongside the iOS version to beat the puzzles. But I had a lot of fun trying. The puzzles work well, you know they’re beatable if you could just concentrate and the Horror-Halloween design makes them interesting, as does the 3D CGI rendering. Once you figure them out they’re satisfying to beat, while others I just blundered into the solution and quickly saved before the game realised I’d got lucky. The cake puzzle, one of the first you encounter is a great warm-up brain-tickler, while others (the Coffins) nearly caused a rage quit. But I stuck with it. There is a cheat; in the sitting room a book will give hints and if used enough the puzzle will be solved although you’ll be denied the cut scene. I never knew what cut-scene happens after solving the Microscope puzzle, and I don’t care. No cutscene is worth that horror but overall I think I did myself proud. It’s a testament to the game that the puzzles rarely drag; infuriate yes (I’m looking at you, piano puzzle, like we needed more noise in this game) but they follow a logic and you know the answer’s there. Do-do-do, do-do-doddododo do … do do do damnit.

1993 | Developer Trilobyte | Publisher Virgin Interactive / Night Dive

platforms; PC | iOS/Android

Championship Manager 01/02 – Part 5: Jesus Saves… Shearer Scores

After the high of winning in the League Cup Semi-Final, TheMorty is brought back down to Earth with a bang – facing off against England’s toughest opponents in a tense battle for silverware

Performance-based incentives are the norm throughout life. It’s drilled into you since childhood. When you finished all your tea, you got a dessert. When you got a good report card at school, your parents bought you a toy. Tidy room? Go out and play… Extrinsic motivation is a big factor in life – and as a 30-something man who’d grown up on the parental reward scheme, I was no different. I’d just qualified for the League Cup Final in my first season as Newcastle United manager – I deserved a treat! So off I went shopping to spend my hard-earned cash, not on jewellery, cars or clothes. No, I was browsing for something much more valuable – I was in the market for a left back.

I’d been putting off the acquisition of a left-footed fullback for a while now, insisting I could get by playing square pegs in round holes. As much as the Speed/Bernard rotation was working, it wasn’t going to be good enough long term. Taribo West had been a fantastic signing, but he was making a habit of getting himself injured. I set out to find a long-term replacement that was under 21, had future potential but also hit the ground running and bolster my options.

My scouts came back with a couple of candidates close to home. Top of the pile was a player from across the tyne-wear divide, Julio Arca. A fantastic full-back that loved the North-East and after 150+ apps for Sunderland, would go on to play a similar amount of games for Middlesbrough and eventually find himself the captain of non-league northern outfit South Shields. His attacking and defensive stats were incredible and he fit the age requirement but sadly, there were two major obstacles standing in the way of his acquisition.

First, his nationality. My attacking options were already restricted thanks to the 3 non-EU player ruling, I had a Nigerian, an Egyptian and a Columbian making up three quarters of my defence – meaning poor old Costa Rican Ronald Gomez couldn’t even make the squad! Secondly, Sunderland would never sell in a million years.

Seldom does a player cross the rivalry-border. Sure, there’s been a few in the past, Paul Bracewell was went from Sunderland to Newcastle and back to Sunderland again and it was relatively low key, but when a bigger name makes the move like Jack Colback or Lee Clark, it stokes a fire that’s not easily extinguished. In the latter’s case, it had taken a club record fee to bring Clark to Wearside and after just two seasons he was dumped by the club – for the controversial act of appearing at Newcastle’s 1999 FA Cup final wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a mocked up Newcastle logo saying “SMB – Sad Mackem B*stards”. It’s instances like this that instantly jack up the price of any player transferred between the clubs, so I’d be looking at a £15m+ price tag to sign Arca and, while he was good, he wasn’t THAT good.

The second name in the frame was Stephen Crainey, a Celtic youth team player with blistering pace and equally high defensive stats. He was available for £2m, I thought that would be the best option so proceeded to close the deal. A nice little reward ahead of the League Cup Final. Although the confirmation of my opponents soon turned my mood…

Manchester United. Are you kidding me? The team standing in my way of silverware were the only team to beat me twice. The current league champions that had an £80m war chest in the summer, spending £30m on Veron from Lazio and nearly £20 on Dutch International Ruud van Nistelrooy from PSV. In fact, those two players alone cost more than my entire squad!

Before I could even start thinking about Manchester United, I had the distraction of 4 domestic games against Boro, Bolton, Derby and Leicester. I decided to use these match-ups as a vehicle for change, to try new things in a relaxed environment. They were all beatable opponents and it was a good chance to try out formations and tactics ahead of the biggest showdown of my short CM 01/02 managerial career.

The first of my experiments was a CM classic; man-marking the keeper.

Squad vs Boro (Away)

Formation: 4-3-3

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Risp, Yepes, Speed, Dyer, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Gomez, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Barsom (on 88), Selakovic (on 74) Solano (on 88), Lee.

I brought in Ronald Gomez as a third striker to play alongside Shearer and Madeira and I set his individual status as Playmaker – meaning he’d get the ball more. I then proceeded to give him the defensive duty of man marking Mark Schwarzer – which meant he’d play very, very high up the pitch. The downside to this tactic is that you’ll see a lot of off-sides, but the plus is that he’ll get a truck load of chances.

The first half didn’t go quite as planned, with Mark Summerbell opening the scoring for the home side after just 17 minutes. However, we were soon level when Alan Shearer headed home in the 24th. It didn’t stop there for Shearer as he buried his (and our) second on the stroke of half time to send us in at the break with a slender advantage.

I was starting to doubt my tactics. Gomez was consistently offside and didn’t really seem to have many chances, but I was determined to give him 90mins and not panic by changing the tactics. My persistence paid off with the Costa Rican scoring a second-half brace, both 1-on-1s and neat finishes past the Aussie custodian.

4-1 flattered us and while Gomez had scored goals, I felt the number of off-sides caused by the individual tactic might cost us against better sides. That said, it was a successful experiment and we did get the win.

My next match welcomed Sam Allardyce’s Bolton Wanderers to Tyneside. Just before the game, we found out congratulations were in order. Kim Kallstrom had picked up the Young Player of the Month Award for February after some fantastic performances and important goals against Aston Villa, Everton and in the FA Cup against Leicester – although clearly the awards panel must have forgotten about his early bath in that one!

Kim made it two-in-two for Newcastle, after Mark Kerr had picked up the award for January.

Kallstrom’s reward for his personal accolade was a place on the bench as I tried yet again another tactic in preparation for Manchester United. This time it was a containment approach to the game, playing 2 defensive midfielders and just one striker. Goal-scoring Gomez retained his place in the side with Madeira making way for an extra midfielder.

Squad vs Bolton (Home)

Formation: 4-2-2-1-1

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Risp, Yepes, Speed, Dyer, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Gomez, Selakovic.

Subs: Given, Barsom, Madeira (on 68), Kallstrom (on 68), Lee.

The defensive approach didn’t seem to make much difference to how we played, controlling possession quite comfortably. We scored two goals in the first half, with Selakovic and then Kerr finishing smart moves to make it 2-0 to the Toon.

We had most of the possession but only 2 shots on target in the entire game and when Per Frandsen pulled one back in the 80th minute, there were fears we might throw the lead away. Fortunately for us, it ended there and we held on for all three points.

My two defensive midfielders, Dyer and Kerr had played very well – one picking up a goal and the other the MoM award. However, I still wasn’t convinced about this approach. Just two shots on target in the entire match wouldn’t cut it against a side that scored goals for fun. My next match was against basement side Derby County and I had to attack.

Squad vs Derby (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Risp, Yepes, Speed, Dyer, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Gomez, Selakovic.

Subs: Given, Barsom, Madeira (on 45), Kallstrom (on 69), Lee.

This wasn’t just another nothing Premier League game, this was an FA Cup Quarter Final. While I wanted to experiment, nothing was more important than victory. I reverted to the classic 4-1-3-2 for this one, but with an extra instruction for the team to attack.

First Gomez opened the scoring after 5 minutes then Shearer doubled the lead 26’ into the game. It was a stroll in the park for Newcastle as County rarely got out of their own half. Substitute Kim Kallstrom marked his brief appearance with a goal late on to confirm Newcastle’s status in the Semi-Final of the competition.

Results elsewhere had been fantastic, Blackburn, Reading/Everton and Arsenal were the remaining teams… A game against Reading or Everton would be preferred, but obviously, lady luck was not my friend…

I mean come on. Seriously. There’s two sides to this, positively if we were to win the Semi then it’s a very good draw in the final but conversely if we were to lose the Semi it would almost certainly hand Arsenal a domestic double – something we did in 1998 when they beat NUFC in the same competition. The semi was a way off and with a bird in the hand, I shouldn’t be worrying about another in the bush. There was now just one game between me and the League Cup final – Leicester Away.

Championship Manager does often throw up a little bit of comedy, so imagine my amusement when I got the following notification:

Okay, So I was due to play Arsenal on that day anyway… okay… now I feel a little bit better 😊

Squad vs Leicester (Away)

Formation: 4-4-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Duff, Risp, Yepes, West, Dyer, Kerr, Quaresma, Shearer ©, Solano, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Barsom, Gomez, Kallstrom (on 55), Lee.

It was the final game before the League Cup Final and I had one last trick I wanted to test. I opted for the traditional Mike Bassett formation of 4-4-2 with attacking wingers and fullbacks. Bringing in Quaresma on the right and Solano on the left to drive up and down the wings.

I must admit, it did not go to plan. Matty Elliott AGAIN scoring against me, making it 2-in-2 against my team. We were 1-0 down for 80 minutes, until we scored from an unlikely source – Mike Duff grabbing a late equaliser to give us a share of the spoils.

My experiments had worked so far, giving us 7 points from a possible 9 and steering us into the Semi’s of yet another cup but, the time for experimenting was over. The main event was here.

As I prepared for the game, I had a notification that the transfer window was closing. It had been a relatively good window and while I hadn’t managed to shift all the deadwood from the previous regime, I had managed to recoup quite a lot of money…

My OUTs had seen 11 players depart for a combined total of £21m. Elena Marcelino and Christian Bassedas bringing in more than half of that amount with their slightly inflated transfer fees.

The INs had been equally impressive, 17 players joining for a total of £22.5m, defensive gladiator “Super” Mario Yepes being my most expensive signing and eclipsing the £3m I’d paid for Frederik Risp.

With a net spend of just £1.5m, I was delighted with my first transfer window in charge of the club and still had a significant amount in the kitty for a marquee summer signing.

THE LEAGUE CUP FINAL

Newcastle United vs Manchester United.

Sunday 31st March 2002.

It was time, my first cup final in charge of Newcastle United. 33 years of trophy-less hurt could all be ended on this day, if David could only beat Goliath.

I was taking this seriously, so seriously that I went upstairs and got changed into my suit. Including my lucky black and white striped tie, fit for the occasion. I came down and played the national anthem as I put a hand on my heart and belted out the lyrics like Psycho Stuey Pearce at Euro ’96. The team news was in:

Starting XI

GK – Dionisis Chiotis

RB – Mike Duff
LB – Taribo West

CB – Ibrahim Said

CB – Mario Yepes

DM – Kieron Dyer

CM – Mark Kerr

CM – Kim Kallstrom

CM – Stefan Selakovic

CF – Tó Madeira

CF – Alan Shearer ©

Subs

Shay Given (GK)

Kennedy Bakircioglu

Frederik Risp

Stephen Crainey

Abgar Barsom

All my preparation for this game had been on trying new things, in the event that the game could change. I wanted to be prepared for every eventuality and have plans B, C and D in my back bag. I started with the 4-1-3-2 formation that had worked so well in the past, but with the added instruction of a defensive approach.

The game kicked off and within 8 minutes of play, it wasn’t the start I’d dreamed of….

GOAL! VAN NILSTELROOY SCORES!

Goddamn it. My head was in my hands as I’d seen this twice before. The Man Utd man was a thorn in our side again and proved himself just too good. We couldn’t get anywhere near him as he turned and shot low from inside the box to give his side the advantage in Cardiff. I was deflated as my whole game plan was out the window. What do I do now? Attack and risk conceding again? Go defensive and try and get to half-time just a goal down? Or do I keep things as they are and hope for the best? I opted for the latter, not panicking, making no changes and hoping we could claw it back. Soon, everything changed.

In the 34th minute Manchester United had a corner, David Beckham stepped up and drifted it in but Yepes was on hand to clear the ball. It landed at the feet of Shearer on the half-way line. Big Al, jinked past Ronny Johnsen when the Norwegian defender tripped him. Since he was the last defender, referee Paul Taylor had no choice but to send him off!

RED CARD – RONNY JOHNSEN!

I could just imagine it, Roy Keane going absolutely mad and screaming in the face of the official as Johnsen left the field in tears for an early bath. This was it, my lucky break. Dwight Yorke made way for Phil Neville as Alex Ferguson changed to a 4-4-1 formation and this was it, the cup final catalyst – no more Mr. Cautious.

I changed my focus to Attack.

GOAL! KALLSTROM SCORES!

44 minutes played and we were level. The balance had shifted and we had the ascendency. It was frustrating that the goal came just before half time, I didn’t want the half to end. We’d come close twice previously before Kallstrom finished a nice move, assisted by Madeira who’d pulled wide and crossed for the on-coming Swede to steer home from 12 yards.

HALF TIME

I took the lads to one side and fired a cliché-laden speech their way. “This was it, it was our time, just one more goal standing in the way of greatness”. I mean despite this being just the ramblings of a gamer on his laptop, it was kind of true…. virtually at least. Newcastle hadn’t won a trophy in 33 years and had never won the League Cup trophy in their entire 100+ year history. We had a man advantage for 45 minutes… all we had to do is score.

The break had been welcome for Manchester United and, after taking the 15 minute break to regroup, they came out all guns blazing. Van Nistelrooy had two goals ruled out for offside… we were up against it. I don’t even know how this was happening, we had an extra man – how were under the cosh?

82 minutes were on the clock and I thought back to the warm-up games against Boro and Bolton. It was my plan B, C and D all combined. I had to roll the dice in a last-ditch effort to break the deadlock.

Madeira and Selakovic made way for Bakircioglu and Risp. Against Bolton I’d contained the ball successfully playing 4-2-2-1-1. I tried the same thing bringing on Risp at the back and pushing Said into defensive midfield to hold the ball. Up front, I left Shearer on his own and gave him the individual instruction of man marking Edwin van der Sar. It was a risky move, but with a strategically placed midfield behind him, the offsides might not be much of an issue and using someone as clinical as Alan, all he needed was one chance and I knew he’d score.

As the clock ticked toward extra time I could feel my tactics change was working, Manchester were losing the battle of the United’s as Newcastle turned the screw. The last 5-minute possession bar was all black, we were going at them and with just 3 minutes left – the game was won.

GOAL! SHEARER HAS SCORED !!!

Arise Sir Alan Shearer. The man to finally bring silverware back to St. James. 87 minutes of the game had been played when Kallstrom knocked the ball upfield to Bakircioglu. Kennedy pulled wide, beat Phil Neville and squared the ball across the box where Alan was on hand to smash the ball home from 6 yards. Right-hand raised (both Alan on the pitch and I in the lounge) racing away in jubilation.

The screen flashed

“THEY’VE DONE IT.”

“Newcastle United Have Won the League Cup.”

March had ended, we’d won our first piece of silverware and, no matter what would happen, the playthrough had been a success. However, I wasn’t done there. I wanted to end the season with as many points as possible but, more importantly, I wanted to win the FA Cup.

While I was happy with winning the League Cup, something didn’t sit right with me. I won because Man Utd got a red card. I felt like I still had something to prove and the FA Cup was my only chance to prove it.

Could I do it? Win Newcastle’s second trophy of the season and become the first manager in the history of the football club to do so? It was all down to one game and against one team, the league’s best. Arsenal…

…Toon in next week to find out

Medal of Honor 2010

a second wind review

FBT earns his Medal of Honor; by doing what he’s told

Every generation makes a choice; The Stones or the Beatles, Blur or Oasis, Beethoven or Salieri, Coke or Pepsi, Marmite or … not. In gaming, it was Medal of Honor or Call of Duty. For me, it was the MoH series. Unfortunately, that didn’t last. MoH got more outlandish as the series tried to keep up with CoD and when they went all modern in 2007, MoH followed with this 2010 contemporary reimagining – did it overtake CoD or chase it over a cliff?

Immediately calling CoD to mind, MoH 2010 has three different characters we bounce between; “Rabbit”, an ‘operator’ collecting intelligence; “Deuce” a Delta Force commando disrupting enemy movements and “Adams” an Army Ranger, part of the US’s invasion of Afghanistan; those guys directly and indirectly affect each other as they carry out missions in the months following 9/11. Split across two days, MoH aims for a serious and realistic look at the war on terror and it seems like an epic story; the Operators discover a Taliban force the Rangers are on-route to mop up, has been grossly under-estimated. The power-that-be demand some good old-fashioned American Shock & Awe and force the unprepared Rangers into a shooting gallery. Thrilling stuff, as we cut between the Deltas disrupting Al Qaeda while the Operators thin out the Taliban and Adams and his team get cut to ribbons except … that doesn’t really happen.

Every game ever has objectives, mission markers and parameters, but in Medal of Honor you’re so locked down to specific orders and actions you never feel like it gets past tutorial stage; ‘move over there’, ‘shoot him’, ‘do that’ – constantly nagged by your teammates, you’re just their assistant; ‘snipe that guy then go get me a latté.’ I’m the sidekick? But HoM is also flat because the three characters have no character; they’re silent heroes of course, but based on the way they’re barked orders at, I’m guessing they can’t be trusted to do anything. Doesn’t feel very heroic. That might be realistic, wars aren’t won by Duke Nukem-types, it’s teamwork and precise objectives, but some investment in what’s unravelling around them, some personality, grit, ingenuity … excitement would go a long way. It’s a war-sim game. Rabbit’s missions tend to be close-quarter fights and Deuce’s are sniper and stealth based, but they are interchangeable and if it wasn’t for the NCPs round you, you’d never tell which squad you’re in. Adams’ missions are much more exciting, since he’s been deployed directly into FUBAR but it’s just agonising to never be let off the leash.

There are some great set-pieces, trying to secure an airfield (ending on the quote from Generation Kill; “that was pretty fucking Ninja”), Adams’ overrun and out of ammo moment, and a running firefight towards a Chinook that’s about to leave, but you’re never free – even running for your life is tightly controlled. Adding to that frustration, there’s moments where no one moves until you perform an action. Sometimes it’s easy to miss under the gunfire or because you’ve tuned-out the nagging, but often the game just doesn’t trigger the next action. They just keep telling you to do the thing you’re doing. So its restart at the checkpoint time and hope it works. Great, more nagging. As a shooter it’s unforgiving and realistic once the bullets start flying but it takes a lot of orders to get there.

The game does try to maintain some consistency, to show it’s all happening at once; there’s a great sequence with Adams’ team suddenly saved by an Apache Helicopter; we switch to the chopper’s gunner (since we’re not the pilot we don’t even get to choose where we go, literally a Rail-Shooter). After the chopper has cut through some enemy lines, it’s saved from AA guns by a sniper – Deuce, of course, and we slide into his mission. That’s cool, and although we see the effects of what each team is doing, since we have to complete a mission objective before it moves on, it’s not like we can fail or exceed and make this better or worst for the next lot.

Our on-the-ground CO is forced by a back-in-Washington General to get ‘boots on the ground’ and that should be our cue to get to work, Deuce and Rabbit desperately trying to even the odds while the clock ticks down to Adams’ deployment – even make it Non-Linear; if it had cut between Adams’ mission, then back to Deuce or Rabbit’s impact on it earlier in the day making it about what it took to get him there it could have been incredible; make Adams’ missions easier or harder depending on how well we did as the support teams. In fact, we don’t really get to play any hero – it’s actually Dusty, Deuce’s nagger on the box art and he, along with Adams and Rabbit’s bosses are the heroes. We just do what they tell us to.

Nagging and script trigger-issues aside, MoH does have some great moments – rushing out of a chopper into blinding sun and sand unable to see anything is an unnerving moment as is a cut-scene inside a crashing Chinook where Adams’ team goes zero-g as it spins out. Those aren’t just good game moments, those are throwbacks to prime MoH; perfectly balanced gamer experience with true depictions of war.

In the end, the three characters do converge, with Deuce providing one final support act as the Operators draw away Al Qaeda and Adams’ winds up helping them recover a captured Operator; but it’s misjudged to end on a personal mission, a ‘we never leave a man behind’ finale undoes much of what came before. Until now, it was about how small actions have huge consequences elsewhere, now everyone’s up for saving that guy no one knows? It should have stuck to its original promise, ended with Deuce and Rabbit, the unknown soldiers, watching from afar as the Rangers take the hill then report for their next assignments, our actions forever unknown and disavowed.

It’s not that MoH couldn’t step out of CoD:MW’s atomic shadow, but it didn’t want to. MoH seems to invite comparison to Modern Warfare; there are the multiple characters, the satellite images during load screens, the occasional extra character to play, taking control of drones, directing air-strikes and slow-mo kill-shots. Most of those are necessary in a military shooter, and would be fine if there was more to it; what’s maddening is MoH 2010 is dedicated to not sensationalising or trivialising war but it’s so flat and unfinished, like a beta-test. And you can’t help but feel it’s all about the Multiplayer – and that caused a ruckus because you could play as the Taliban. Cue lots of point-scoring politicians and media outrage that a game lets you ‘shoot our brave boys’. It does seem like EA was inviting controversy; they tried to argue ‘someone has to be the cops and someone has to be the robbers’ but that doesn’t ring true as half the time you’re fighting Chechen mercenaries; and reducing the war on terror to school playtime is insulting and as an explanation of the multiplayer it undermines the tone of the story-mission; does anyone in EA’s marketing team game?

EA followed MoH with Warfighter, which was so bad it caused the cancellation of the franchise. Which is a shame. I have very fond memories of arguing MoH was better than CoD (It is. Was.) Playing the D-Day mission it struck me that this really happened, and the game was respectful about it. My opinion of military shooters was forever influenced by Allied Assault, and MoH 2010 had the opportunity to do the same, pitting us against Al-Qaeda but it seems to get caught up in its own politics and by refusing to sensationalise the events, it ironically ends up hollow; maybe there is something to said for CoD’s bombastic heroics. Yet it does come close to commentating on the War on Terror; towards the end, Rabbit’s team happens across a village they’d captured the previous day, only to see it full of Taliban again. That’s the War on Terror in a microcosm; shame we don’t get to play in it.

2010| Developers; Danger Close / DICE | Publisher; Electronic Arts
Platform Win, PS3, X360

Championship Manager 01/02: Part 4 – Fighting for a Final

After the excitement of Christmas, TheMorty was about to enter the most boring part of the season. Could he keep his head and reach their first League Cup Final since 1976?

2002 was a World Cup year and, with the finals in Japan & South Korea fast approaching, many European nations had decided to have a winter break in a bid to keep players fresh for the quadrennial summer showpiece. While the FA and the Premier League had opted out of this, I decided to impose my own hiatus from the game. It was starting to take over my life. I was finding myself scouting players at work, checking out their real-life history over the last 15 years and finding out how their careers had progressed. I met up with FBT for a beer and for almost a whole hour talked exclusively about my dismay that David Blunkett had blocked my work permit for Maxim Tsigalko. I needed my winter break, but more so, I needed my CM 01/02 break.

Alas, I took it. A whole week away from the game. The first few hours were easy, but after a couple days of the cold turkey treatment, I found myself craving a match. Seldom has there been a game that’s had this level of addictive-ness but I knew if I didn’t give myself a break soon, I’d become a danger to my saved game – I’d end up over thinking match-ups and over complicating tactics.

My FA Cup success against West Ham had been rewarded with a winnable 4th round game against Crewe (result!) and I also had the small matter of a League Cup Semi to prepare for. The road to Cardiff was long (316miles to be exact) and I felt the best way to prepare was to come back a week later, fresh and ready for an epic 2-legged battle. Standing in my way were Tottenham Hotspur.. Two very beatable opponents and the latter was a chance for a trip to Cardiff and be a game away from lifting the League Cup for the first time in Newcastle’s illustrious history.

However, before I could get to my Part 4 showpiece and learn my cup final fate, I had the small matter of the Premier League to contend with. As the reigning Manager of the Month, I could imagine all eyes would be on my Newcastle United team. Especially Alex Ferguson’s, as his Red Devils team made their way to Tyneside looking to do the double over the Geordies and inflict my first defeat since November.

Squad vs Man Utd (Home)

Formation: 4-2-2-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Dyer, Said, Yepes, Bernard, Lee, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Selakovic, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Barsom (on 83), Risp, Kallstrom (on 83), Queresma.

I approached the game cautiously – lining up with 2 Defensive Mids in Kerr and Lee, with Dyer moving over to Right Back in place of the injured Duff. Olivier Bernard came into the starting line-up in place of Gary Speed to add a little more pace to the left-hand side and try to stop the in-form David Beckham. That didn’t exactly go to plan… David ending the match the highest rated player on the pitch!

I know what you’re thinking, how the hell was he the highest rated player and NOT get the Man of the Match award? Well, that’s CM for you! Randomly, the game would glitch from time to time denied sarong wearing metrosexuals their star award. Instead, goal machine Ruud van Nistelrooy collected it for scoring a first half brace – despite having quite the modest 8-rated game. Alan Shearer did manage to pull one back late on, but it proved little more than a consolation as Manchester deservedly ran out 2-1 winners.

In previous games I’d been battered by the top sides, but there were positives to take from this encounter. I’d matched Man Utd in almost every category, they’d only been superior in tackles and headers. I decided to change my tactics and push tackling from “Normal” to “Hard” to see if it made a difference.

While defensively we’d been poor, our attack had been outstanding. Against one of the leagues best defences we’d had 9 shots on target – with 7 of those coming from Madeira. Despite not scoring, a leading Journalist asked me about our pal after the game – fishing for a comment on whether I’d describe him as a “goal machine”… Naturally, I obliged…

Manchester United had inflicted my first defeat in over 2 months and the title was out of reach. I was entering a very boring point of the season where most league games almost didn’t matter. I needed to get back on the horse and bounce back in the best way possible to renew my love of the league and there was no better way to do that than with a convincing win against the Cottagers.

Squad vs Fulham (Home)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Dyer, Risp, Yepes, Speed, Selakovic, Kerr, Kallstrom, Shearer ©, Bakircioglu, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Quaresma (on 70), Solano (on 70), Barsom (on 70), Lee.

It didn’t look like it was going to be my day when former Mag Louis Saha struck 30 minutes into the game to break the deadlock. What is it about players scoring against their former clubs? It’s almost an unwritten rule of the sport. Just as I started to regret coming back to this play-through, my luck shifted just moments later when Steed Malbranque pulled up injured and had to be replaced. Already missing one of their best players, Fulham soon lost two more. Madeira was through on goal and fouled by van der Sar. The referee pointed to the spot and gave Edwin his marching orders. The penalty decision was great, but the red card to the Dutch ‘keeper meant Fulham had to bring on a replacement and bizarrely it was Saha that made way for substitute Maik Taylor. So we already had a man advantage but Fulham had lost their best keeper, best striker and best midfielder in the space of 10 first half minutes, surely there was no stopping us from getting the three points now?

Shearer converted and we went in at half time 1-1. I gave the lads the obligatory pep-talk in my head and out we went for what proved to be a riot of a second half.

First Kerr bagged a screamer from distance before Kim Kallstrom slotted home from close range to make it 3-1. Bakircioglu made it 4 before Kerr sealed the win with aplomb, lobbing Taylor from the edge of the box. What a win.

I was starting to fall in love with this play-through again and while I was bored with the monotony of the Premier League games, i was given respite with the FA Cup. After the fantastic victory against West Ham in the third round, we were given a favourable draw against Crewe. They had a decent squad, peaking with wanted man and teen prodigy Dean Ashton up front, but I wanted to give myself a challenge and opted for a mix of youth and experience to give the senior lads a well-deserved rest.

Squad vs Crewe Alexandra (Home)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Pinheiro, Gavilan, O’Brien, Risp, Bernard, Robert, Solano, Quaresma, Lee ©, Ameobi, Barsom.

Subs: Paiva (on 77), Gomez, Kallstrom (on 64), Bellamy (on 77), Speed.

What did I do…!? 0-2 down within 30 minutes at St James’ Park to side two divisions below us! I had such an easy draw and I was on the verge of mucking it up. Ashton getting the first with his head on the 14-minute mark and then defender Jason Gavin getting the second 10 minutes later. I had to do something, so I went 4-4-2. We slowly started winning the possession and as Crewe sat off trying to defend their lead we started turning the screw. We pulled one back on the stroke of half-time, Barsom reducing the arrears just before the midway whistle. We weren’t there yet though – there was still a long way to go.

We came close a few times but I had a genuine fear my 01/02 side would be the latest in a long line of Newcastle “giant killings”, adding Crewe to the embarrassments at Hereford and Stevenage. 15 minutes to go and I’d made a couple of changes, Paiva, Bellamy and Kallstrom coming on to try and bolster the attack. 10 minutes to go and my blushes were spared. Not by a striker, but by an unlikely goal hero…

Last season, in 2001, Newcastle had been 0-1 down to bitter rivals Sunderland after a goal from French right back Patrice Carteron. There were only 12 minutes left of the game when none other than Andy O’Brien popped up with an equaliser to send the away crowd into madness at the Stadium of (P)light.

It spawned a chant still bellowed on the terraces to this day and I had the pleasure of repeating it not once, but TWICE as first O’Brien headed home a fantastic equaliser on the 80th minute and then scored AGAIN nodding in an incredible WINNER in the 90th.

“…Who put the ball in The Alex net? O’BRIEN, O’BRIEN”

I bloody love that man!

My gamble had paid off. Sure, my blood pressure was through the roof and I was a sweaty mess, but I was into the next round of the FA Cup! There’d been a couple of upsets in the round to thin out the competition – most notably Middlesbrough being dumped out 4-1 away to Barnsley. Our reward for the last minute win was a trip to Leicester, who had breezed past Grimsby 2-0.

With one cup out of the way, it was time to focus on another. Game 1 of the two legged tie against Spurs for a place in the League cup final. This was what I’d gotten back into the game for. I just couldn’t wait…

Squad vs Spurs (Home)

Formation: 5-2-1-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Risp, Said, Yepes, Speed, Kerr, Bakircioglu, Shearer ©, Dyer, Kallstrom, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Barsom (on 82), Gomez (on 82), Solano (on 82), Lee.

I approached the game cautiously with a defence-minded 5-2-1-2 formation employing 3 centre-backs to try and stop the inform Sergei Rebrov, however, in reality the game was a bit of an anti-climax.

We eased to a 2-0 victory courtesy of a To Madeira strike and a Gus Poyet own goal. We dominated possession and we never looked like conceding. All a bit disappointing really…

As January ended, there was a nice surprise for my pal Mark Kerr, who walked away with the Young Player of the Month award. Hopefully this would prove the first of many pieces of silverware for the Scotsman…

Squad vs Everton (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Risp, Said, Yepes, Speed, Dyer, Kerr, Kallstrom, Shearer ©, Bakircioglu, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Barsom (on 87), Gomez (on 87), Solano (on 82), Lee.

My defeat to Manchester United had seen them leapfrog me into 2nd and my side were down to 3rd in the table. After this Everton result, I was beginning to realise I wouldn’t catch them.

It all looked great when Alan Stubbs was sent off in the 7th minute for a reckless foul and Kim Kallstrom scored from the resulting free-kick. We had 82 minutes to play with a man advantage… easy, you’d think… right?

Nope. What was I saying earlier about players scoring against their former clubs? Big Duncan Ferguson popped up with a goal in the 50th minute to equalise and dash our hopes. There was a hint of offside, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. After all, this is a man that once came home to find two burglars in his home and battered them both. This was a man who spent 3 months in jail after headbutting a player on the pitch while playing for Rangers. I figured best let him have this one…

A disappointing draw and, sadly, one soon repeated…

Squad vs Aston Villa (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Starting 11: Chiotis, Dyer, Said, Yepes, Bernard, Lee, Kerr, Selakovic, Shearer ©, Bakircioglu, Madeira.

Subs: Given, Kallstrom (on 83), Gomez, Risp (on 60), Quaresma.

My team was behind twice away from home and were lucky to rescue a draw after Villa had taken the lead through Bosko Balaban and again through Mustafa Hadji. They were playing us off the park and both Kallstrom and Kerr’s equalisers had come firmly against the run of play.

Any hope of catching Arsenal was well and truly over. Man Utd had pulled away and now it looked like I was in a race with Liverpool and Chelsea for third place. The Chairman’s goal of Champions League football was still alive but I had to step it up a gear and quickly…

I had a look at my squad to see what I could do. Who was under-performing in the first team and who are the in-form fresh faces I can I bring in from the stiffs to bolster the starting XI. As I checked out the form on my squad page, I noticed that Robert Lee was unhappy. He was out of contract in the summer and wanted a new deal. The problem I had was, his expectations for this deal were as a player/coach and his coaching stats were awful. Rob was a fantastic player and a wonderful servant to the club in his time at the Toon, but there’s a reason he didn’t get in to management and now presents podcasts – I wasn’t about to change that trend!

As I looked at how he compared to some of my other coaches, it did highlight one thing to me; my coaching staff was thin. I now had a lot of youth players and while my coaches were decent there wasn’t enough of them to help this team reach it’s potential. I started looking around at possibilities to fill a position.

I wanted a former player with a recognisable name. Someone who had international experience with minimum stats as 15/20 for coaching youngsters. Two former players sprung to mind. One a Geordie, the other a legend…

“Pelanty” taker and mullet-man Chris Waddle had just announced his retirement from playing after an illustrious career ended down at non-league side Worksop Town. His non-playing stats looked decent so I decided to chance my arm and offer him a contract with his hometown club. The other coach I had my eye on was a bit more special… England luminary and current CM 01/02 Watford Coach Ray Wilkins.

Ray’s stats were fantastic and he was interested to come. I was ready to make him part of the backroom staff but decided not to pursue his signature. Sadly, Ray passed away in real life during my playthrough. It’s always horrible when someone so influential in the sport passes. You feel like you’ve lost a chunk of your childhood – particularly when they’re an international great from your lifetime. Everyone talked about Ray as an incredible playmaker and he was probably the one player I could do with in my team – a prime Ray Wilkins would leave Mark Kerr firmly in the reserves. From what I read in his various tributes and obituaries, he was fantastic and wonderful man. After news of his Death broke, a few of my players (IRL) had some lovely things to say about him:

Alan Shearer: “He lived for and loved football. I was lucky enough to have worked with him and he was always a true gentleman. He will be sorely missed by so many.”

Robert Lee: “RIP Ray Wilkins, a true LEGEND!”

Craig Bellamy: “His view on the game was outstanding… football has lost a true football man”

Back in the game, I thought long and hard about offering him a contract offer. A big part of playing legacy Champ Man titles was bringing adoration or grudges from the game back out into the real world. I didn’t want that with Ray and decided to let him rest, stay at Watford and flourish in his career. His stats were far too good to remain a coach for long and I’d look forward to battling against him on the touchline soon. RIP Ray.

With My coaching situation almost resolved, it was time to turn my attention back to the Premier League and the visit of Southampton and I finally got that long awaited victory…

Squad vs Soton (Home)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Subs: Given, Gomez, Solano, Barsom (on 85), Selakovic (on 85).

It was 1-1 with 6 minutes left to play when Alan Shearer netted against his former side. “Goal Machine” Madeira had given us the lead before substitute Adrian Cacares had brought the Saints level. Shearer’s blistering strike from range was just what the doctor ordered and stopped a rot which was threatening my chances of a European place…

Back to winning ways, now it was time to really make it count and try to beat 4th placed Liverpool in what would prove to be a 6-pointer of a game.

Squad vs Liverpool (Home)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Subs: Given, Kallstrom (on 83), Gomez, Risp (on 60), Quaresma.

In CM 01/02 Liverpool were incredible. They’d just come off the back of a treble-winning season and current England star Michael Owen was in red hot form, netting 5 goals in his last 3 appearances. Fortunately, it was a former England star that stole the headlines…

Alan Shearer netted AGAIN. Scoring his 8th Goal in as many games with a fine header from a Bakircioglu corner . His strike giving us a healthy 7-point cushion in third place and with Leicester away next in the cup… the dismay of the draws and defeat were behind us. Things were starting to look up again in the battle for both Silverware and that coveted European spot.

Taking a break from the league, my mags travelled to City’s former home ground of Filbert Street looking to advance to an FA Cup Quarter.

Squad vs Leicester (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Subs: Given, Selakovic (on 89), Risp (on 82), Barsom, Speed.

Leicester away was an uneventful tie until a second half, 17 minute spell got hearts racing. The scores were level at 1-1 when Kim Kallstrom came up with a moment of genius followed by a moment of madness. He scored a fantastic solo effort before losing his cool, seeing red and being sent to the stands!

The goal read like a thing of beauty, Kim beating three players before rounding the keeper and slotting home to give Newcastle the lead but he soon turned from hero to zero when he executed a stupid, two-footed lunge and gave referee Roy Pearson little choice but to show the Swede to the stands.

Reckless yes, but did we care? No. We were into the hat for the next round and the draw was very kind…

With Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool, Blackburn and Everton still in the competition, we were gifted Walsall or Derby. Surely a very winnable QF match!

The cups were the heartbeat of my play-through and I really felt like the Premier League had become a lull. Before my eagerly anticipated League Cup game against Spurs, I had an uninspiring midweek trip to the valley – as Wednesday’s game against Charlton proved little more than a warm up for the main event.

Squad vs Charlton (Away)

Formation: 4-3-2-1

Subs: Given, Lee (on 89), Solano (on 89), Barsom (on 89), Quaresma.

As all eyes were on the Second leg of Spurs, I decided to attack and make my DM and AM in a 4-3-2-1 formation. I wanted to do something to get the fans excited ahead of the chance to win the first piece of silverware in 33 long, insufferable years. We certainly delivered on that promise, Yepes, Shearer and Madeira scoring magnificent the goals in a 3-1 win.

Now that was over, it was onto the match we’d all been waiting for. Newcastle had a decent history of getting to cup finals, finishing runners up in the FA Cup in both ’98 and in ’99 and it was the latter cup run that here springs to memory. That day our opponents were none other than… you guessed it… Tottenham Hotspur.

At a sold out Old Trafford, backed by 27,000 Geordies, Newcastle progressed to the final courtesy of an extra-time brace from Alan Shearer – one from the spot and one in-off the bar from 25-yards. However, real life history wasn’t my friend in this game. Particularly not where Tottenham Hotspur were concerned. The 2001/2002 League Cup Semi saw Spurs end their 27-game winless run against Chelsea end in style. Smashing the blues and their hoodoo in a magnificent 6-3 aggregate victory. One way or the other, History would repeat itself. Either Newcastle or Spurs would be in the final at the expense of the other and for my own sanity, I was desperate for that team to be mine.

With the premier league fixtures done and a first leg advantage of 2 goals. I was knocking on the door of that first League Cup final in 25 years and all I had to do was not concede 3. Surely even my boys could manage that…. Right?

Oh how wrong could I be…

Squad vs Spurs (Away)

Formation: 4-2-2-2

Subs: Given, Shearer, Madeira (on 57), Kerr (on 57), Dyer (on 57).

I should have learned my lesson. I got cock-sure just like I did against Crewe and rested some players. Gomez and Barsom came in for Shearer and Madeira. First blood was well and truly to the home side…

GOAL! TEDDY SHERINGHAM SCORES.

It was 1-2 on aggregate and I had lost that cushion. My players were rocked and my fans were nervous. We didn’t have the best of records in London – not winning in 29 games before this season had started. I was beginning to get nervous.

GOAL! MATTHEW ETHERINGTON SCORES.

Nerves soon turned to blind panic. It was now 2-2 on aggregate and we were back to square one. I had to do something, I’d come too far to lose this for both me and for the fans. I switched back to 4-1-3-2 and brought on Kerr and To Madeira. Surely we can get one goal… surely… just then, I see the words flashing…. GOAL!

…RONALD GOMEZ SCORES.

Oh thank god. I can breathe. I’ve got the goal to push me in front and now I can relax and take it ea.….

GOAL! JONATHAN BLACK SCORES!

Oh FFS. Seriously? I’ve never even heard of him! It was now 3-3 and there was only 11 minutes to go when FINALLY. We got that lucky break

GOAL! RONALD GOMEZ SCORES!

My heart was pounding as the clock counted down and finally, with 90+2 on the watch, the referee blew the final Whistle. Thank God for that…

The game ended and we were into the final, the fans were jubilant, the board delighted and we were finally within touching distance of a trophy. I’d had a week off and fallen in love with the game all over again. I couldn’t wait to get to the final and give it my all to lift the trophy.

There was just one thing left to question, who would I be playing. I checked out the other Semi-Final eager to see my opponent. Who would stand in my way of success…?

Imagine my utter dismay when I saw the words: Manchester United. *face palm*

With one Cup Final already secured, could I make it two and progress through the Quarter and Semi Final of the FA Cup? or would that dream die? Toon in next week…

DOOM

A Rage Quit Review

FBT gets mad at DOOM. Not Doom, DOOM.

Doom changed my life. It turned me from a gaming fan into a gamer. It was the vanguard of grown up gaming and the games that followed it were something else too – the Tomb Raiders, Elder Scrolls, GTAs, MoH, Max Payne, CoD and so much more all sprung from Doom’s quantum leap of an experience; it didn’t invent FPS – but it was gaming’s Jaws.

Aside from the ill-judged Doom 3 in 2004, Doom has been dead a long time, talked about only by aged hardcore gamers as where they made their shooter bones, and ignored by pubescent brats who scurry about in CoD Online. But in 2011 amid stories of failed restarts, id’s new owners Bethesda announced ‘DOOM’, a sequel-reboot that would return to the classic FPS era. That era died for a reason, but if any franchise can breathe new death into FPS it’s Doom. Or can it? No.

Since Doom II’s ending, UAC has found a way to provide alternative energy for earth by syphoning power from Hell while bringing back various trinkets, including a mysterious sarcophagus. One scientist makes a deal with the demons and opens a portal letting them invade. The sarcophagus opens to reveal ‘Doom Slayer’ (Doomguy to you and me; I think). And with the story crap out the way, let’s get knee deep in the dead.

I can see why this game required specific driver updates and the soul of your first-born to run. It looks utterly fantastic, practically photo-realistic; a real Doom? Bring it. It’s one of the most grotesquely beautiful games I’ve even seen, like an Iron Maiden album cover come to life. The detail is extraordinary and it ‘feels’ solid to play (especially for a Bethesda game). There’s brutally quick fights, the demons are relentless and you don’t get a moment’s peace, but then – and I never thought I’d say this – DOOM gets boring. Not boring in the sighing, fed up kind of way, just so relentlessly repetitive that I start to see past the shouting and growling and realise there’s nothing here, just the same fight over and over and I kinda just … switch off to it.

It’s certainly loud enough and busy enough to keep your attention; instead of Doom, DOOM calls to mind Serious Sam or Painkiller and while the creatures (including a few old buddies) are noisily aggressive, all their clowning about trying to be scary means the exact opposite happens. They not intimidating, they just get progressively bigger and the once hellish mixture of flesh and mechanics is now like a Halloween party at Cyberdog. On top of which, there is nowhere to hide, nowhere they can’t get you, nowhere to be tactical, no opportunity to actually be a badass Hellkiller and act heroic – it’s a party with a bunch of goths; I just hold down fire until it’s done.

Despite the sense that DOOM is trying to be a desperate struggle to survive, it’s novelty driven. You’re in the middle of a brutal fight only to be pulled out of the moment to trigger a ‘Glory Kill’ where you over-murder an Imp. They’re annoyingly insistent. The Imp crumples then flashes, demanding your attention. I don’t have time, I’ve got a hundred more of the screechy little divas to deal with, just die already. Knowing they’ll recover – especially the bigger ones – means the Glory Kills become your focus and you get cut to ribbons just to reach it and perform the kill. And doing so gains you health and ammo – both of which you sacrificed to reach the fecking half-dead undead in the first place; you’re just maintaining a status quo when this was supposed to be Iron Maiden. They are brutally cool once you get there but somehow they should be more automatic, like Indy making short work of the sword guy not reliant on you reaching them in one piece; Bethesda’s Skyrim/Fallout managed wicked little animated kill shots, why can’t those happen mid-DOOM? Bethesda’s games are incestuous enough as it is, they didn’t think that moment would carry over? Doomguy kicked Hell’s ass twice already (I’m pretending 3 didn’t happen), why isn’t he cooler? If he can pause to fist-bump an original Doomguy toy he finds, why can’t he dispatch a downed Imp from a distance? And … Collectables? In Doom? FFS.

Glory-Kills are not the only way DOOM distracts you; there’s transporters that send you to an Arena to do battle and unlock upgrades, while weapons can be upgraded by accepting challenges. Why the hell am I trying to kill 100 imps in a minute with a shotgun just to unlock faster shotgunning? Doomguy can unlock upgrades for his suit by pillaging the bodies of other Doomguys; Doomguy never got better, he was the best, I don’t want to piss about looking for inconveniently placed dead buddies. I thought this would be a brilliant, well-observed retro throwback not Call of Duty Zombie mode full of distraction fodder.

There’s the original weapons, including the BFG – which is hobbled by a lack of ammo – and some new toys but the biggest insult is the chainsaw is now a standard weapon you need gas for – using it gains a much higher yield of health and ammo; which you lost by equipping the Chainsaw and meleeing in the middle of a moshpit.

For those who argue FPS is a very narrow genre and you can’t expect more than point and shoot, I have one word; Bulletstorm. It may have been uneven, unoriginal, daft and had an idiot for a main villain, but it did this kind of frantic firefights right – and kept it fresh; if I can be completely overwhelmed and still trying to kick an opponent into a cactus, that’s a good shooter. And Bulletstorm had better glory-kills. It’s about balance; if you’re not going down the Bioshock route, a pure FPS should be traumatic but you come out the other side with boasts, with hard-won victory stories. DOOM is just a loud, overwrought arena fight that thinks calling itself DOOM is enough. It’s not unfair, it’s just not fun; in Doom you had fun kicking ass. This is just endless ass.

After reaching another hellish location, and disinterestedly fighting my way through, I find a secret – much like Bethesda’s Wolfenstein easter egg, the secret takes me all the way back to where it started; an original Doom level. I enjoyed playing the original level so much, going back to the reboot was too much to bare. It’s a sign when a game reminds you of how bad it is. Rage Quit.

DOOM was the darling of the critics on release, who argued it recaptures FPS’s 1990’s glory days. No it doesn’t. It really doesn’t; it’s the biggest insult to Doom’s legacy; it’s derivative, not of Doom but of modern shooters, which is unforgivable. This is the house that Doom built and this game is just squatting in it. You can’t recapture Doom, but this isn’t even Doom-era, it’s the kind of corporate nonsense that the original id would have pissed all over; it reeks of market research and focus groups – it’s as shiny as it is shallow – it doesn’t even have those jokey insults when you tried to quit. Quit? Yes, with added Rage.

2016 | Developer id Software | Publisher Bethesda Softworks.

Platforms; Win, PS4, XO

Championship Manager 01/02 – Part 3: West Ham Sandwich

I’d had some good results of late with the epic victory over Sunderland crowning my achievements, but now I was about to enter the toughest period of the season. Christmas.

This time of year would always be tricky, the festive period has games coming thick and fast as December takes the accolade of being the most congested month on the footballing calendar. As Europe takes a break and players in the Spanish, Italian and French leagues have some much needed time off, the English decide to double their efforts as fans up and down the country just can’t bear a holiday without their national sport. With the fixture list about to ramp up, my first task for Part 3 was to amend my training regime…

The training sessions in CM 01/02 are very basic, but in my opinion; they’re perfect! Let’s be honest, no-one cares about training – it’s all about the thrills of matchday. So why waste time setting out the cones and creating overly-complicated drills?

CM 01/02 simplifies this fantastically so that you feel your actions make a difference, without them taking a whole day to implement. It focuses on Fitness, Tactics, Shooting, Skill and Goalkeeping – each of which has 4 settings: None, Light, Medium, Intensive. In playthroughs gone by, I used a tried and tested system. 24 and under? Everything’s intensive! 25 and over, only 1 intensive session. My working theory was that younger lads had better recovery time before matches whereas the older guard needed to avoid being knackered come Saturday afternoon and would be more susceptible to injury on an intensive course.

Winter is coming and to cope I decided to change my system and drop the intensity in some of the sessions. With 6 games scheduled this month and an FA Cup third round game in the new year, I wanted to make sure that my players took life a bit easier so they had more energy and higher condition levels for the matches.

My new routine became Medium for all, with an Intensive in: Shooting for the strikers, ‘Keeping for the Keepers, Skill for the midfielders and tactics for the Defenders. Let’s see if this would yield some results…

Squad vs West Ham (Home)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Subs: Given, Barsom (on 5), Speed (on 76), Kallstrom (on 76), Robert.

Within 5 minutes of kick off, Alan Shearer went down clutching his hamstring, not wanting to take any risks with such an influential player, I made an early sub bringing on Barsom in his place. We didn’t seem to miss big Al and Newcastle took the lead shortly after through Kennedy Bakircioglu. Our midfield man following up on a goalkeeping spill from David James and tucking the ball home to make it 1-0.

Now, the irony of David James making a mistake and gifting me a goal in this virtual game wasn’t lost on me. In 1997, while on the books of Liverpool, James was checked into a facility to treat an addiction… It wasn’t for drugs, alcohol or gambling – in fact, it was for something quite obscure. The custodian, like FBT and I, was a massive gamer and had become addicted to Tomb Raider. It was influencing his footballing-form and after too many late nights spent with Lara on the PlayStation, he’d found himself making high-profile mistakes in important games. James dropping a virtual-clanger here seemed fitting and it soon got a lot worse for the West Ham keeper. James looked all lost at sea and appeared like he was trying to put in the Tomb Raider cheat codes. First, he took one step forward, then one step back, he turned around three times and jumped forward. Rather than skip him forward to the next level, he instead conceded another 4 goals. Selakovic bagging a perfect hat-trick (with his left foot, right foot and his head) before Madeira got in on the act, lobbing him from distance and leaving the poor keeper on the floor, licking his wounds. There was a late consolation from Freddie Kanoute, but nothing could take the shine off this glossy performance from a rampant Magpies side – seemingly fearing no-one.

The Shearer injury wasn’t too bad, but our Physio Derek Wright gave the word that he should be rested for a week as a precaution. Thankfully, we weren’t light up front and coming up against bottom of the league side Derby County in the next game, it was the perfect opportunity to bring some fresh blood into the side.

Matches against bottom of the league sides could always be a Banana skin. Particularly when it comes to this midlands side. In 2007/2008, Derby County became officially the worst club in the history of the Premier League, taking a record low 11 points from a possible 114 in the 38 league games they played. Derby managed one win in that entire season and guess what? That win came at their home ground of Pride Park against none other than Newcastle United. With omens against us and with a squad boasting Champions League winner and celebratory shirt-lifter Fabrizio Ravanelli – Derby might not be the easiest team to brush aside.

In the absence of Shearer, I had a call to make on the captaincy. I decided to give it to Madeira and it proved to be an inspired choice…

Squad vs Derby (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Subs: Given, Barsom (on 68), Speed, Kallstrom (on 68), Robert (on 68).

My banana-skin scare was quickly forgotten when stand-in skipper Madeira scored a pearler of a shot 15 minutes into the match. Picking up a loose ball and hitting it from 30 yards into the top corner of Mart Poom’s goal. Kieron Dyer was next to get in on the action, scoring from close range just before half time. The victory was confirmed and the game effectively ended on the 70th minute. Bakircioglu scoring directly from a free-kick and pushing the black and whites up to the lofty heights of third in the table – but still some way behind leaders Arsenal…

Next up, Blackburn Rovers were travelling to Tyneside but before I could prepare for the game, I had some off-the-field issues to resolve. Chelsea had offered a contract to two members of my backroom staff. Alan Irvine and John Carver. One of the amazing things about CM 01/02 is that when it comes to staff, money talks. It’s not hugely about the prestige or reputation of the offering club. Negotiating your staff contracts simply comes down to how much you’re willing to pay per week. Irvine had tremendous stats so, for that reason, I offered him my ceiling of £2k per week. He snapped my hands off and signed a 5-year deal. However, Carver would be trickier. The once, self-proclaimed “Best Manager in the Premier League” was a lot of things but a great coach? I wasn’t quite so sure. I gambled he’d accept a moderate weekly wage of £900 knowing full well that Chelsea could have easily matched it. Thankfully they didn’t and I kept my backroom staff in one piece.

Squad vs Blackburn Rovers (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Subs: Given, Barsom, Speed (on 56), Kallstrom (on 51), Gomez.

Big Alan Shearer had finally shrugged off his injury and returned to the starting line-up, but in all the kerfuffle of my backroom staff contracts I made a cardinal sin – I forgot to give him back the armband. I can only imagine how Alan must have reacted, I mean, this is a man that once knocked Keith Gillespie out with one punch just for knocking some cutlery off a table. Fortunately, he couldn’t complain too much as Madeira carried on his rich vein of form – knocking in a first half brace to make it 2-1. Matt Jansen made it 2-1 late on, but it proved nothing more than a consolation.

December was proving to be a good month for me, going into the hectic Christmas period with 3 wins in 3 and next up was the return visit of the Tractor Boys.

After the close-run game against Ipswich at the start of the season, I decided to go for something a little different and start three at the back with Egyptian Said, Nigerian West and Columbian Yepes as the rear guard. I had still retained Gomez on the bench from the last game but was suddenly blocked from submitting my team. Sadly, it was here that I got my first glimpse of the post-Brexit future of football management games.

In 2001/02, FA rules on Non-EU players in the Premier League stated you could only have 3 at a time in a matchday squad. This was to encourage the production of Homegrown talent. This changed in 2010/11 where clubs instead were ordered to include eight Home Grown players out of an eligible squad of 25. Regardless of your position on Britain’s exit from the EU, I really fear for the future of football management games if the restricted free-movement of workers means I’ll be applying for permits for those coming from the mainland. I mean, it’s hard enough as it is to get a competitive squad together on a shoestring budget and without the Nordic market to exploit I’d be royally screwed. In order to carry out my plan, Gomez would sadly have to miss out…

Squad vs Ipswich Town (Home)

Formation: 3-2-3-2

Subs: Given, Barsom, Speed (on 62), Kallstrom (on 66), Duff (on 45).

It worked a treat. Madeira and Selakovic scoring in the 19th and 44th minute, respectively. Madeira’s was a trademark 1-on-1 while Selakovic scored from an uncharacteristic header. I’d been mainly concerned by the goal-scoring prowess of Marcus Stewart and wanted to control possession, but an injury on the stroke of half time to Taribo West meant I had to revert to a back 4. Duff came on at Left Back and Dyer slotted in on the right.

As originally feared, the extra space centrally meant Stewart could pull one back, but when Yepes nodded in a corner in the 61st minute, we had a nice cushion to see out the game. Speed came on in place of Bakircioglu and we never looked like conceding. Madeira even had a chance to score his second and he obliged, adding the cherry on the icing on the cake. 4 wins and 14 goals in 4 December games had pushed us up above Man Utd in to second place. Liverpool had just inflicted Arsenal’s first defeat of the season too… who knows… maybe Santa would bring us a little bit of luck after all and our title fight might still be alive…

Nah, the only thing that came out of Santa’s sack was the news that Taribo West’s injury was worse than feared and a torn groin muscle would keep him out of action for three months! Typical. I couldn’t risk Robbie Elliot coming back into the team and I had very few options in reserve but, before I could delve once again into the transfer market, I had the small matter of a Boxing Day trip to White Hart Lane.

Squad vs Spurs (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Subs: Given, Barsom (on 79), Queresma (on 79), Kallstrom (on 79), Risp.

I opted to bring Olivier Bernard up from the reserves. The former-Lyon academy prospect had spent the back end of the previous season on-loan at Div. 3 side Darlington and had scored twice in 10 games to help them survive and remain in the football league. He had big boots to fill, but his pace and crossing stats meant he’d fit right in to an attacking 4-1-3-2 formation.

However, he didn’t have the best of games – being 5-rated by half time with us 0-2 down. Sergei Rebrov was having the game of his life and netted very early on. It went from bad to worse when curly-haired Welsh winger Simon Davies doubled their lead, beating Bernard out wide before cutting inside and hitting a long-range effort into the top corner. I was at some cross-roads. Everyone was playing well and I didn’t want to knee-jerk my reaction. I took the gamble to keep faith in my midfield and my strikers… Boy did they repay me…

Within seconds of the restart we’d pegged one back, Shearer capitalising on a poor back pass and knocking the ball past keeper Kasey Keller. The skipper’s persistence had the desired effect and I was watching ratings rise in real time as everyone stepped up their game. By the 60th minute we were level. Ibrahim Said smashing home a bullet header from a free-kick to make it 2-2. The comeback was well and truly on. As we approached the 79th minute it was still level, but our possession for the last 5 minutes was at 80%. I decided to roll the dice, making a 3-man wonder sub. Kallstrom, Queresma and Barsom emerged onto the field and it was Barsom who made the most immediate of impacts. On the 82nd Minute, Barsom whipped in a lovely cross from out wide to Shearer who smashed home the ball to make it 3-2 to the Toon and we weren’t done there… Barsom again the provider as Kennedy Bakircioglu beat the offside trap and put the game to bed with just seconds left on the clock. A fantastic win against a difficult side and one that made it 18 goals for December. The Toon were in red-hot form!

To really top off a fantastic December, there was a little surprise in store…

Getting out of my seat, clutching a coffee cup in my hand with glee, I proceed to give my cliché-ridden acceptance speech. “Thank you, thank you, I couldn’t have done it without my players and my backroom staff.” An Emotional TheMorty continued, “I’m not in it for the awards and I’d trade it in for a win in the 3rd of the FA cup against West Ham.” I told the fans what they wanted to hear whilst also keeping the players sweet. Mind, not that they heard it. The only person that did overhear my speech was the wife who looked at me in a cocktail of shame, disgust and pity. CM 01/02 doesn’t do acceptance speeches, probably for the best…

The winner of the Player of the Month award for December was Joe Cole. A player I’d desperately tried to sign earlier in the season but West Ham were just too reluctant to sell – and rightly so. He was a fantastic player and arguably the missing link in my team, but It was typical that we’d be facing him in top form as we traveled to the Boleyn Ground for our 3rd round tie in the FA Cup.

The FA Cup – the world’s oldest football competition. Since The Wanderers first beat the Royal Engineers 1-0 in 1872, the competition has had a special significance on the footballing calendar. It has an undeniable magic, a magic Newcastle know all too well about. Despite not winning the trophy since 1955, In 2001 Newcastle were joint 4th on the all-time winners list, having lifted the cup 6 times in 13 final appearances. The black and whites had also been on the end of a few famous losses, uttering the words “Ronnie Radford” on Tyneside would almost certainly earn you a trip to the RVI. The FA Cup was a thing of marvel but sadly, it’s lately lost a bit of it’s pizzazz. The Final is no longer the season ending showpiece it had so gloriously once been and in recent years we’ve even seen 5:30pm finals on the same day as Premier League fixtures. Teams play weakened sides to forfeit and concentrate on the league and, most horrifically, we’d seen the end of the FA Cup finalists’ songs! Long gone were the collaborations with Sting or Status Quo and the Anfield Rap was never to be heard again…

The Board of Directors wanted Europe, but there’d be no weakened team from me – I wanted the Cup and I was going all out to get it…

Squad vs West Ham (Away)

Formation: 4-1-3-2

Subs: Given, Barsom, Risp, Selakovic (on 75), Gomez.

Our referee for the game was Gerald Ashby. Sadly, Mr Ashby would not have been able to take charge of the West Ham game in real life as he tragically died shortly after CM 01/02’s release, suffering a heart attack in December 2001. That said, this game proved fitting for the guy who was famously the man in the middle of Everton’s epic victory over Man Utd in 1995. There’d be no 1-0 repeat today though, instead he’d preside over a 9-goal thriller!

From the word go it was end-to-end stuff and within 4 minutes the deadlock was broken. Iron’s veteran Steve Lomas nodding home a corner at the far post to make it 0-1.

The Magpies fought back and were dominating possession. Coming agonisingly close to the equaliser, first Shearer fired inches wide before Madeira hit the post. It wasn’t long before we finally made the pressure count… GOAL! Shearer Scores! It’s another header as the big man crashes home a Kallstrom free-kick inside the box. What a game this was turning into.

As I’d feared Joe Cole was starting to pull the strings in the heart of the Hammers’ midfield and could have easily had a Penalty when Said fouled him in the box, but fortunately Mr Ashby waved away the protests… GOAL! Madeira! Not one to allow Shearer to take all the glory, Madeira slotted home from 12 yards to give Newcastle a goal advantage, but it didn’t last long… Bloody Joe Cole with the instant reply to make it 2-2. It was edge of your seat stuff as two phenomenally exciting teams went toe-to-toe and traded blows. Both throwing caution to the wind and neither backing down from a fight.

The deadlock remained until the 58th minute and it was that man again, Joe Cole with a beauty from long range to restore West Ham’s advantage. It was typical, the player I’d tried to sign was coming back to haunt me by having a 10-rated game and scoring for fun. It didn’t look like it was going to be Newcastle’s day. Just then, GOAL! Madeira turned up again, rounding David James and slotting home to bring us back on level terms. A game for the neutrals and one you couldn’t look away from.

PENALTY TO NEWCASTLE UNITED. A fantastic through-ball from Madeira sets Shearer through one-on-one, he’s only got the keeper to beat when out of nowhere Laurent Courtois trips him. It’s a Cynical foul and one that see’s the Frenchman get his marching orders. 63rd minute, a Penalty and a 1-man advantage. If Shearer Scores this is it, we’ll be into the next round, surely? It was a battle of two giants:

Alan Shearer – scorer of the most penalties in PL history (56)

David James – saver of the most penalties in PL history (13)

Who would win, the boot or the glove?

!!!!!!! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAL !!!!!!!!!!! SHEARER SCORES! Of course it’s the boot who comes out on top as Shearer smashes to the keepers right and James is absolutely helpless. Maybe if he spent less time playing Tomb Raider and more time playing ISS Pro Evolution Soccer, he might have stood a chance…

4-3 and both Shearer and Madeira are at the double. 10 v 11 and Newcastle were in the ascendancy but, against the run of play disaster struck. Future Mackem and perennial pain in the arse Jermaine Defoe hit a long-range effort past Chiotis to level things up. You’re kidding. All that hard work and we’re on the verge of a replay, who knows, maybe even a defeat? This was not how I wanted my FA Cup run to start off. We had to do the business and we had to do it soon. I decide to go for broke. I bring on Selakovic and behind the in-form front two and go for broke.

It’s the 82nd minute and West Ham have a corner. The ball comes in and Shearer heads it clear, the ball lands to Madeira on the edge of his own box. “DRIVE” I yell at the screen as he gets his head down and sprints, knocking the ball in front of him and running as fast as he can, like the lovechild of Steve Guppy and a wild gazelle. He only has one defender back and that’s Lomas. Madeira breezes past him on the half way line and bears down on goal. James is in no mans land and doesn’t know whether to come or go. He stands on the penalty spot, waiting to see if help will get back. Help never comes. It’s Madeira vs James for a place in the FA Cup 4th Round. Madeira shoots…

Goal flashes up on the screen. He’s done it, Madeira has sealed his hat-trick. West Ham’s heads have dropped and they play out the last 8 minutes of the game in utter disbelief. The referee blows the final whistle and Newcastle are victorious. Edging the goal-fest in dramatic style and securing their ball in the hat for the 4th round draw.

Semi of the League Cup, 4th Round of the FA Cup, 2nd in the league and the ranking manager of the month. Things are looking good for the mighty mags, but can we keep it going? Can we go that extra yard and secure the first piece of silverware since 1969? Find out next week… but for now, I’m going to bask in my winning streak.