World Basketball Manager 2010

While Sports Management games don't necessarily need wonderful graphics or exciting 3D match engines, it's good to have something pleasant to look at during the hours you invest into them. Even Football Manager has gone down the visuals road now, so to play World Basketball Manager 2010 is like stepping back into the dark ages in a very, very bad way.

Judge how accurate the game is at simulating the work of a basketball coach is difficult, because every time a match was initiated, the game would display an error and stop. So this is a basketball management game that you can't even look at the text highlights in. That's not the most inspirational thing to say about a game, is it? Just running through a slow-running glorified text adventure clicking "Simulate" a lot surely isn't anyone's idea of fun.

The whole point of basketball is that you get involyed with the substitutions, create a playbook and all that sort of thing, so to be denied it all (there was no play creation option to be seen) is a kick in the proverbials. The interface is utterly horrible and counter-intuitive as well - just accessing your squad is frustratingly fiddly. There's no excuse for the design flaws shown here, and it makes you appreciate fully how well made games like Football Manager are. So yeah, you could say this isn't the game of choice for lunch breaks.