The Addiction Begins...Again...
For all intents and purposes, the Football Manager franchise a football (soccer) simulation game. The player starts off as either an unemployed manager, or one who takes control of more or less any professional, or semi-professional football team in the world. From there you're given a budget to work with, and a squad of real life players. Your goal, well, isn't it obvious? Take whatever team you choose (or chooses you) to the pinnacle of footballing stardom.
That's the breakdown of the purpose of the game, but I'm going to come right out and say it. Football Manager is nothing but a glorified spreadsheet. There are stats and attributes which improve and decline based on various mathematical equations and, from what I've been lead to understand, fairly complex algorithms. Yet on the surface, as I said, it's an MS Excel spreadsheet.
Of course there's more to it than that, but at the heart of it, that's what runs the system. Nevertheless, the layout of the games makes it seem so much more, and the interactivity of it makes it seem so incredibly real. You really are in control of everything that an actual team manager would be. You can buy and sell players as you see fit in a realistic setting too. In fact, the transfers have been one of the overhauled aspects of the game in 2012.
In years past, the transfer system seemed a bit slow and tedious. But now you can interact in near real time with the agents of the players. Sometimes they tell you what they want, sometimes you start the negotiations. From there a salary and benefits are either agreed upon, or they aren't. It's pretty simple, yet you'll find yourself spending hours negotiating with one player. However, eventually the agent will pull out if you're not doing what's ultimately in his best interests. Though, depending on who you are as a manager (are you accomplished? Is it your first ever negotiation?) the agent may not even give you the chance to talk.
That's just one of the realistic aspects of the game. In all seriousness, David Villa is going to sign with QPR no matter how much money they throw his way. That's to say, he won't sign with you until you take the little West London club to European glory.
So, you've booted up the game and signed a few guys. That's just one piece of the puzzle set into place. Next thing to work with are the tactics. Yup, you have 100% control over your teams formation, style, speed, passing, tackling... Everything. Unlike years past, it shows you how comfortable your players are with any given formation. If you barge in and tell the lads you want them to play a counter attacking wide 4-3-3 when they're used to a controlled and narrow 4-1-2-1-2, you're going to have some issues, and hopefully they'll eventually pick it up.
I realize I've made it sound like you just start barking orders into a microphone or something. But realistically, it's all done through various sliders that tell the players how often to close the opposition down, or how you want them to pass the ball. It can get pretty complex, and how deep you want to take it is entirely up to you.
Transfers, tactics, and now training. Thankfully in FM 2012 the training is much more straight forward than it used to be. Sports Interactive have listened to the fans and introduced already set training regimes for each position. They have the categories of midfield, defense, attack, and goalkeeping all laid out for you with the sliders adjusted appropriately. In every version I've played before this, you had to do all that yourself, and it was tedious. Of course, if you're unhappy with how the default is set, you can still make your regime and categories, which isn't always a bad idea.
Now-a-days a lot of the focus of video games are set on how they look. Well, this is by far the best looking version of the game to date, as expected, but as I said, it's more or less a spreadsheet. It's all two dimensional. Everything shown in pictures or text, that is until you get to the match itself. Whether you're a traditionalist or a revolutionary, the game has a setting for you. Over the past few years, the match engine has gone from little dots on a green background to generic sprites on a green background, to legitimate stick figures on a playing surface.
No, the graphics aren't anything to write home about. But that's not the point. The 3D option is there for those who want to see the game in more detail, which is nice. With the dots you don't really know why your player lost the ball, or quite how the ball went through your keeper and in the net. But with the 3D setting, you can see the flick, or the step over, and that your keeper was just nutmegged. It's a nice touch, but it's not going to change the gameplay at all.
Speaking of the match engine. It's been improved yet again. I haven't noticed any exploits as of yet, though like in every version, there's an ultimate tactic out there, but in general the matches play out how you'd imagine. The in match control is phenomenal. Without having to switch to a different screen, you can shout at your player(s) and tell them to do something differently. You can switch your style of play around as you see fit, and even make a quick substitution without having to leave the match screen. It's quite innovative. One of the best new features about the quick sub is that if a player picks up a knock, it will tell you in a pop-up window. It tells you who it is, and how their stamina is. From there you can simply just sub him off. It's really handy.
Perhaps the biggest change to the series in 2012 is the team talk page. Previously you had a generic selection of phrases to chose from before the match, at half time, and after the match. You took a guess at what you thought was right, and continued on. The only way to tell how the players reacted was to go to an almost hidden menu. It was a bit useless. Enter 2012.
Now not only can you see how they react to your team talk in real time, but you can give the talk in various tones from aggressive to calm, from passionate to reluctant. I'm not sure how your tone varies into as they often have very similar phrases to chose from, nevertheless, it's still an interesting feature.
But wait, there's more. Say you give that passionate team talk telling the lads to go out there and win it for the fans, and you see that all that did was upset a few of them, made a few other players nervous, and just didn't register with the rest; well now you can have a second chance at it. So the young guy in your starting XI got nervous, pull him aside, so to speak, and tell him there's no pressure and see his body language go from stressed to relaxed. You can do that with any player, but that's not overly new, that's been around for a while. The new aspect is that you can do that by position. Group all the defenders together and tell them they're the reason you're holding the lead. You can do that with the midfielders and the strike force as well. It's beyond helpful at half time, and really adds to the realism.
All in all, the game is a drug. You'll turn it on and become addicted from the first seconds - well that is if you're a football fan. There's no competition out there for this game. FIFA Manager doesn't come close, nor does the FIFA franchise itself. It's a totally different and unique beast unlike anything available today.
Go ahead, try it out... you'll be hooked.
8.5/10