Screenshots :.
Football Manager 2010
PC
Matt
19-11-2009
"Nice tie!"
"Tactics are now a lot easier to sort out"
"Match engine's a lot better"
"The game's layout is also more intuitive"
"This is the news."
It's always a curious experience playing and reviewing a Football Manager game. When the box hits your desk you stare at it, looking at a bunch of screenshots that show it to be pretty much just a well-linked bunch of spreadsheets with a sparkly skin. You get a little voice in the back of your mind telling you that no, no matter how involving, this year you won't get addicted. You fire it up with the intention of exploring all the tactical offerings, match engine tweaks and database authenticity and to grab a couple of quick screen grabs along the way for your review, still telling yourself that all you need do is a half dozen hours max. Then you quit the game and realise it's 4am the next morning, and you've been playing for at least ten hours straight.
To people who don't like football or have never played such a game, this might sound ridiculous and perhaps it is. Then again, there's something just so... empowering about being able to take the reigns of your favourite club and do the things you think are right, such as SELLING LUCAS AND BUYING A PROPER SODDING WINGER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD BENITEZ. Ahem. Sports Interactive have once again tweaked away at their already pretty slick game and come up with a range of improvements, some cosmetic, some to do with the way the game works, and by-and-large they have once again done enough to make this year's iteration the best yet.
The most obvious change is to the interface, which this year has gone all Apple-like with its clean, clinical whiteness. For the first couple of game weeks you will no doubt be faffing around trying to work out where the useful shortcuts are (in most cases they are now in drop-down menus), but pretty soon it smooths itself out and you're left to happily clickety click your way around with ease. Perhaps one complaint is that the new layout is a little too tidy for its own good and hence makes the game feel somewhat too clinical at times, but hey – Football Manager would not be where it is without its dedicated set of home mod-creators making a raft of cool stuff, and within a few weeks there should be plenty of community offerings freely available should you fancy a change.
Of more importance to seasoned veterans are changes such as the increased level of communication from your backroom staff, who will now offer you advice on matters such as particular players who might be willing to adapt their game to certain extents or young trial kids who may warrant a professional contract. How much use you will find this depends entirely on how involved you like to get, but on a personal level I actually enjoyed having the people I virtually employ actually doing their bit and helping me out. Would I have managed to decide that Glen Johnson would have played a little better if he stopped cutting in off the wing on forward runs on my own? Probably not, and although the advice isn't always spot-on, it helps create the illusion of a living, breathing football club all the more.
What isn't quite so good, and something you really feel should be updated and tweaked more, is how you deal with the media in press conferences. Whilst giving you the option of taking questions and having your answers affect squad morale and the like is a good one, yet again the selection of answers available to you often leaves you stuck as none really say what you want. It's too rigid a system and it leaves no real room for you to create your own virtual manager personality, so any budding Mourinho's out there may feel a little frustrated that they can't digress into a ten minute ramble about traffic and pet dogs along the way. Perhaps allowing the player to make their own little custom text comment at the end of certain questions might have worked well.
Heading out of the board and conference rooms and into the dressing room and out onto the touchline there are yet more tweaks. Tactics can be a confusing time sink for many people, but this time around there's a handy tactic creator that runs you through a number of steps in order for you to be able to piece together something you think will suit your players that little bit better. As with most of the other changes in 2010, you don't need to necessarily use this if you don't wish, but again I found the thing to be really very helpful and take a bit of the guesswork out of matters.
The match engine has also been upgraded, meaning that this year things don't look like a bunch of puppets prancing around a shoebox pitch. This time around players react and animate much more smoothly and genuinely, and as a result watching the 3D match highlights is now a more viable option. You can of course watch from the old 2D point-of-view if you prefer coloured circles to players, but hey, give it a go and you might end up liking it. It's also now possible to yell orders from the touchline without having to leave the 3D match view, which is a nice little touch and helps keep things running more seamlessly than before.
After your game has finished there is also a handy little match analysis tool to use, which will show you graphs and all sorts of stats so you can find exactly who is to blame for your latest resounding defeat, or which player in particular cemented your glorious victory. It comes in particularly handy for picking up on players who are wasteful with their passes, and enables you to then give those players advice or change your tactic to suit them a little better.
Overall, Sports Interactive have basically made FM 2010 a bit of an all-rounder. See, there are plent of folks here who would more than happily sit through an entire two hours of play before even having their players' feet touch the pitch in order to tinker and tweak their staff. There are people, on the other hand, who may wish to play through a season inside a couple of shorter evening sessions or during lunchbreaks, and the great thing is that the options and advice settings on offer now allow the game to cater for both audiences.
This, of course, also takes place amongst the backdrop of the Championship Manager series finally getting its act together, which will hopefully spur SI onward in future seasons to iron out the minor quibbles and bugs (I had been given 9 penalties in 10 games during my first season of managing) and give us more features, and a more involving media section. In any case though this is very much Football Manager refined and tweaked to a new peak, and for us bunch of weary tacticians who fall under its curious spell, it's hard not to find yourself getting addicted all over again. Best cross off any social events in the diary, then.
To people who don't like football or have never played such a game, this might sound ridiculous and perhaps it is. Then again, there's something just so... empowering about being able to take the reigns of your favourite club and do the things you think are right, such as SELLING LUCAS AND BUYING A PROPER SODDING WINGER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD BENITEZ. Ahem. Sports Interactive have once again tweaked away at their already pretty slick game and come up with a range of improvements, some cosmetic, some to do with the way the game works, and by-and-large they have once again done enough to make this year's iteration the best yet.
The most obvious change is to the interface, which this year has gone all Apple-like with its clean, clinical whiteness. For the first couple of game weeks you will no doubt be faffing around trying to work out where the useful shortcuts are (in most cases they are now in drop-down menus), but pretty soon it smooths itself out and you're left to happily clickety click your way around with ease. Perhaps one complaint is that the new layout is a little too tidy for its own good and hence makes the game feel somewhat too clinical at times, but hey – Football Manager would not be where it is without its dedicated set of home mod-creators making a raft of cool stuff, and within a few weeks there should be plenty of community offerings freely available should you fancy a change.
Of more importance to seasoned veterans are changes such as the increased level of communication from your backroom staff, who will now offer you advice on matters such as particular players who might be willing to adapt their game to certain extents or young trial kids who may warrant a professional contract. How much use you will find this depends entirely on how involved you like to get, but on a personal level I actually enjoyed having the people I virtually employ actually doing their bit and helping me out. Would I have managed to decide that Glen Johnson would have played a little better if he stopped cutting in off the wing on forward runs on my own? Probably not, and although the advice isn't always spot-on, it helps create the illusion of a living, breathing football club all the more.
What isn't quite so good, and something you really feel should be updated and tweaked more, is how you deal with the media in press conferences. Whilst giving you the option of taking questions and having your answers affect squad morale and the like is a good one, yet again the selection of answers available to you often leaves you stuck as none really say what you want. It's too rigid a system and it leaves no real room for you to create your own virtual manager personality, so any budding Mourinho's out there may feel a little frustrated that they can't digress into a ten minute ramble about traffic and pet dogs along the way. Perhaps allowing the player to make their own little custom text comment at the end of certain questions might have worked well.
Heading out of the board and conference rooms and into the dressing room and out onto the touchline there are yet more tweaks. Tactics can be a confusing time sink for many people, but this time around there's a handy tactic creator that runs you through a number of steps in order for you to be able to piece together something you think will suit your players that little bit better. As with most of the other changes in 2010, you don't need to necessarily use this if you don't wish, but again I found the thing to be really very helpful and take a bit of the guesswork out of matters.
The match engine has also been upgraded, meaning that this year things don't look like a bunch of puppets prancing around a shoebox pitch. This time around players react and animate much more smoothly and genuinely, and as a result watching the 3D match highlights is now a more viable option. You can of course watch from the old 2D point-of-view if you prefer coloured circles to players, but hey, give it a go and you might end up liking it. It's also now possible to yell orders from the touchline without having to leave the 3D match view, which is a nice little touch and helps keep things running more seamlessly than before.
After your game has finished there is also a handy little match analysis tool to use, which will show you graphs and all sorts of stats so you can find exactly who is to blame for your latest resounding defeat, or which player in particular cemented your glorious victory. It comes in particularly handy for picking up on players who are wasteful with their passes, and enables you to then give those players advice or change your tactic to suit them a little better.
Overall, Sports Interactive have basically made FM 2010 a bit of an all-rounder. See, there are plent of folks here who would more than happily sit through an entire two hours of play before even having their players' feet touch the pitch in order to tinker and tweak their staff. There are people, on the other hand, who may wish to play through a season inside a couple of shorter evening sessions or during lunchbreaks, and the great thing is that the options and advice settings on offer now allow the game to cater for both audiences.
This, of course, also takes place amongst the backdrop of the Championship Manager series finally getting its act together, which will hopefully spur SI onward in future seasons to iron out the minor quibbles and bugs (I had been given 9 penalties in 10 games during my first season of managing) and give us more features, and a more involving media section. In any case though this is very much Football Manager refined and tweaked to a new peak, and for us bunch of weary tacticians who fall under its curious spell, it's hard not to find yourself getting addicted all over again. Best cross off any social events in the diary, then.
9/10
