All game reviews can be summed up like thus, either you want to continue playing the title after the review process or you don’t. In Football Managers case I’ll be playing more, a lot more, in fact my mouse cursor is already moving over to the FM2009 short cut on my desktop, I can’t really stop. Its becoming a problem, not just because I need to get this review done but because I want to see what happens in the next chapter of my digital life.
The Football Manager series has been going on under different alias for over a decade now and it is widely regarded as the most complete Football experience on any platform. There have been many pretenders over the years but Sports Interactive’s title which has previously relied on gimmicks now has one of its own, a 3D match engine. It’s a change which has been met with both suspicion and optimism, how can the gaming equivalent of Excel create a winning 3D match engine when all other management games have failed, well it would be the Collyer brothers, who created the original Championship Manager way back in 1992, who would have a thing to say about that.
Football Manager 2009 completely envelopes professional football and places you right at its centre. Within the gaming medium there are few other titles that even come close to its detail, scope and sheer amount of choice a title like this represents. With a team of dedicated researches and hundreds of scouts from around the world, the FM database is updated yearly with the new season data and this is accompanied with the obligatory changes and refreshes within the game which aid game play. It is essentially the same model which EA uses with their yearly sports franchises and understandable it attracts the same kind of both excitement and animosity which attracts those titles so if your not interested in the least about Football, you should probably look away now.
As mentioned previously the star addition this year is the 3D match engine, previously Football Manager games have relied on the text commentary and the last few years a pitch display with number tokens representing players moving around the pitch. In a title where you are going to be sitting through at least 50 matches per season this engine needs to be spot on, spontaneous and organic enough to not seem rehearsed and most importantly it needs to reflect real football. It is understandable that Sports Interactive have taken so long to develop a solution, nearly four years, and this year they have duly delivered. At first I was sceptical of such a change but after you see one of your players hit a curving shot from outside the area into the top corner a realization comes crashing down upon you, this feels like watching actual football. Graphically it is nowhere near real life fidelity but in the way play develops and movement of players it feels accurate. Any discrepancies within the engine can usually be dismissed to your players own fallibility for example keepers not coming to collect the ball quick enough, or strikers taking an age to actually get the ball under control. The action can be viewed from multiple angles within the stadium but you can never zoom into play close enough to see the players, ball or pitch in detail. This isn’t the Fifa engine, it looks something more equatable to something you would see on an Amiga 500 but this allows the processing power to be funnelled into the action on the pitch. I’ve seen over fifteen hours worth of this engine and I’ve yet to see any goals twice and the random aspect of the engine even threw up a goalkeeper score from within his own area thanks to a howler from an opposing area. Now this did dumbfound me at first but the fact that such random events can happen means this engine is satisfying but crucially recreates the crazy unpredictable variables of Football even with the professional game. The craziest thing in all this is that despite the vast effort and expense on developing such an engine, they have also given players the option to go back to previous options of text and circle running after ball match engines, keeping even the most ardently stubborn players happy.
Finally Sports Interactive have made media interactions feel realistic, reporters and press conferences will dog your very existence at the higher levels of club management but while the questions are repeatedly often across different conferences you can’t help but think that actual press conferences also head in that direction as well. Prospective Alex Ferguson’s can also type their own comments, this doesn’t effect the outcome of the press conference at all but at the very least they can make you smile. Especially when a future press conference isprefaced with one of your previous responses, no matter how silly or inappropriate it may be.
There are still some issues within the game that do break the immersion, for example the computer generated faces of a small number of players. Only an issue when the largest database option is checked in the creation of each game world of which your career will start, these players fill the necessary gap allowing the individual more choice when searching for more talent. But when you come across these guys you’re often reluctant to sign them, just because they look so jarringly ugly and completely break your immersion from the world. Their look can only be really described as fake but when you look at the screen shots you’ll know exactly what I mean. But immediately this is a small and petty issue when you consider the sheer amount of research that has been carried out for this title. Considering even the most minor players in the lowest simulated divisions have their real life photos in their profiles the amount of data present within each game world is staggering and if reports of real managers using the database to save money is true, its also impressively accurate.
A considerable effort has been made to accommodate all gamers within a tutorial system which pops up whenever players continue the game, explaining the options and issues in front of them. For example the first time you reach half time with your chosen team you’ll be greeted with a small pop up detailing each option you have in front on you and what that option resolves. If you know exactly what your doing you can immediately discard the pop up and you’ll be asked whether you want to be asked the question ever again and if you don’t the pop up, regarding the issue, will never appear again. It may sound like an annoying system but after an hours worth of dealing with game play, aspects which you’ll commonly come across will be either explained or dismissed as you already know what your doing. Sports Interactive have done a great job of incorporating a tutorial or advisor service which is only called upon when its really needed and can be dismissed as soon as you think you have got to grips with the scope of the game. It would be easy to condemn the advisor as an attempt to capture all sections of the audience but admittedly I found myself using it from time to time, you know, just to make sure the right thing was being done.
On reflection Football Manager is never going to win over your admiration with the way it looks, however to discount this title just because of that is absolutely missing the point. Existing as more a template than a game, it provides users to imprint their own personality’s and football knowledge into a viable, cohesive universe which rewards commitment and long stretches of play. The stories that are crafted around your decisions within the game world become the game’s best moments, like when Southampton revolted against their manager (me) after selling a key player or when Bournemouth fans camped outside the stadium in protest against the manager (me, again.) These stories stay with you and ultimately make your victories all the more sweeter when you meet them years later when your in control of something else and no vendetta meter was present, it was a feeling that came naturally without game prompt or ‘Vendetta Bar.’
Obviously the amount of fun you’ll have with this years iteration of the beloved series will be directly proportionate to the how much you enjoy the so called ‘beautiful game’. However within this game there is aspects of your favourite RPG, excellent story telling and it evolves with your every action the vast majority of which are not scripted and are made entirely by your hand on the world. Now if you saw that blurb on the back of any other box you would be immediately intrigued right? Well, don’t let the fact that this is a yearly franchise discourage you, give it a try and hopefully you’ll have somewhere near the amount of fun I did.
Andy Griffiths
