Flawed, unpredictable, yet addictive, flashy and with a variety of options available.
Upon starting a new game I was impressed with the number of options available, such as starting your own club, owning a club, and also managing both a National and Club team (one flaw in the Football Manager series). Also interesting was the concept of having a personal life, seemingly bringing forward a more realistic outlook as you juggle your management skills with personal and family life. With this the option to have your son play for your youth team was an added bonus, but this leads to an added bias for your children to be male and all playing for your club, which I am sure your future wife/girlfriend wouldn't be too happy about.
After choosing the many options available I finally got to my first day, my choice being of managing Sheffield United in the championship. After a multitude of flashing and dramatic images appearing telling me about my first day in charge I started to check out and around. This is when one of the flaws of this game kicked in. I had recruited a top assistant manager, with a level of 87 he seemed good....until I asked what team he thought I should field for the first game. He picked lower levelled players (leaving out my top striker and midfielder) and did a formation of what can only be described as 4-1-1-3-1 which looked terrible. 'Oh well' I thought, might as well try it in the first game, he is meant to be a great assistant manager after all, and it is only a friendly against Bury, should be easy to win. When we lost 5-2 I was quick to blame my assistant, down 4-0 at half time we only managed to salvage 2 goals from me reverting back to the formation I was first going to use.
To cut a long story short this scenario continued in some games, in the majority of the games I managed to win (after only letting me assistant handle training and nothing else). But one main thing I was disappointed with was the repetitiveness of the games, it was easy to notice the same events happening such as goalkeepers dropping an easy cross straight to opponents, rubbish ranked players getting hat-tricks and amazing goals from far from goal, and always some mention of how angry my manager avatar stood on the touchline is when we are losing a match. I was also impressed with being able to give touchline instructions and these actually did affect my team's performance which worked well...until the referee banned me from the touchline, apparently I had been doing my job too much and that irritated him. I immediately thanked the game for (not) warning me that this would happen should you encourage your team on too much and watched as my mentally challenged AI assistant proceeded to substitute at will and cost me the game.
One thing I love about football manager games is possible transfers and being able to re-shape the team into how you want it, rather than the way the former manager had shaped it. Football Manager 2010 is perfect example of how you can't just buy top players and expect them to work, you need teamwork and them to gel, adding a realism side to things. But with Fifa Manager 10 you can buy at will (depending on your difficulty settings at the beginning) and proceed into doom as agents and managers charge ludicrous amounts for basic players, and your chairman and board executives in their high wisdom decide to not give you any money, even if you sell all of your best players (I tested it out, added a manager of Manchester City, bought players and ended up earning 30 million for Sheffield United) you will never ever see one penny of it go to the club, it seems to just fill up the pockets of the chairman and his board, who also retire pretty fast now their pensions are paid for. And don't even try to expand the stadium and club facilities...
Nevertheless I could still sign a few good players, they could make good subs. So I sent my scouts out to search and they actually came up with good results, some would make good first team players, so stupidly I went to buy these players. When they joined my first team the levels the 'scouts' had informed me of were actually overvalued, and their real values were 2-6 levels lower, after paying so much for them I was severely pissed off, isn't any staff member on this game got common sense or talent?
To shorten this review for those bored I will just round up the rest of the flaws and strengths of this game:
The training scenario's are good, unlike Football Manager 2010 you can focus on individual abilities of players, and also specific tactics for your entire team so they can play how you want them too, a strong form shown in the footballing world with different managers and different styles of football they get their team to play. But after spending a while creating these you get irritated when after a week passes the training set-up disappears thanks to your esteemed assistant, and instead of focusing on different styles he just gives them 'friendly' sessions that never really focus or accomplish anything.
Cooperation with lower teams is also flawed, with Football Manager 2010 you could get a 'Feeder club', which you could loan young talent or reserve players too, either to keep them happy or till they are ready for the first team, this is seen in everyday football with Wilshire's loan to Bolton and Mancienne's loan to Wolves. After setting up a link with Crewe Alexandria I got a message from my assistant a few days later, they were interested in loaning one of my reserve players and that I needed to go to the cooperation page to hack out a deal. So I went, offered him to them to loan and stunningly they rejected it, saying they never wanted him!
But, despite all the flaws, unpredictable results, unrealistic transfers and staff, this game is addictive and can eat up many hours of your gaming time. This offers a wide range of options not available on Football Manager 2010, such as negotiations, better interactions with your players (such as telling them to improve their strength in tackles, saying they have been doing well in training or welcoming them to the club). Each match has you on the edge of your seat as you heckle mistakes by your players and cheer on fantastic efforts whereas Football Manager is one where you can put on the stats screen, sit back and watch TV until half time, but that's mostly because you can predict the match better than Fifa Manager (in one incident I managed to win against Chelsea with Sheffield United in the FA Cup, now I know teams can have bad games but when you dominate the game and win 3-0 it is a massive fail).
Owning a club is the best thing to do at the start, with no restrictions on budgets and other aspects of the club you can run it how you seem fit, even putting in or taking out money from the club.
In all this game will irritate you with its unpredictability and huge flaws, but will slowly win you back with it's wide array of options, it's 3D match views and the drive to get your team to the top and beat the match engine.
Flaws:
~Unpredictable
~Flawed
~Money grabbing board members
~Failed staff members
~Useless scouting system
~Not much help and advice in-game
Strengths:
~Large array of options
~In-depth view of Management and Personal life
~Able to build Youth Camps and upgrade Club facilities
~Option to own or start a Club
~Can manage both Club and National teams from the start
~Impressive 3D view and Touchline instructions