![]() ![]() It’s all about living in a unique fantasy world of football-preferably one in which Aston Villa win a lot. It’s moments like these that reassure me Football Manager's developers understand why I, and others like me, love the series. Multiplayer games, meanwhile, can now start with a US style draft, letting player-controlled superteams duke it out with the greatest players in the world. Now Sports Interactive has acknowledged this strange social aspect of the game, and offers players the chance to create a club in a far more accessible way. There’s a whole culture of forums full of games like these. As far back as I can remember, Football Manager fans have used game editors to add their friends to the game in the form of a new club. Now at a stroke this problem is solved, and I can have my team rotate through different set pieces to boot. ![]() For years now I’ve been mildly irritated by the fact that I can only have one set of corner instructions, regardless of whether the person taking the kick is right or left footed. Let's start with the new set-piece creator, which is a perfect example of the series’ penchant for incremental improvement working well. There are, however, several new features here that had a meaningful impact. The user interface, which in older iterations looked little better than colored spreadsheets, has become slick and intuitive.įootball Manager typically comes with an army of borderline-inconsequential tweaks that together deliver a noticeable difference overall but individually are difficult to rave about. It was a godsend, offering a version of the game that focused on what I felt was important. It offers a stripped-down, fluid approach to play. Thankfully, three years ago its creators at Sports Interactive acknowledged this split in the fanbase by introducing Classic Mode, which has now been confusingly rebranded to Football Manager Touch even though it plays just fine with a mouse and keyboard. I find these time-sinks an irritating barrier to playing the matches, and as a result, Football Manager and I have been drifting apart for a while. It’s not a position I can agree with, though. People play Football Manager for a lot of reasons, and I’ve been aggressively reminded in the past that those who desire a "realistic" simulation actively enjoy the incredibly slow scouting and endless questions from the media. I still think the game has a serious problem with bloat. That’s not to say that all my problems with Football Manager have gone away. If last year’s Football Manager felt oddly retro, this year's is cutting-edge. The fact that striker-less tactics (something real world coaches have been dabbling with for years) have now finally found their way into the game’s preset formations shows a willingness to keep up with the times. The football on display this year is distinctly modern too, with a degree of fluidity and position swapping that feels authentic to today’s football world. ![]() I deliberately made this guy look weird, but honestly it wasn’t dificult. It’s balanced on a beautiful knife edge, and its greatest achievement is selling you the fantasy of sitting in the manager's chair. It's just easy enough that you can do it, but just hard enough that you’re never quite certain you can. It’s perfectly possible to arrive at a struggling club with a grand history, implement innovative new tactics, and take them back to the top. And as ever, Football Manager remains a fairytale generator. This year's edition, while flawed, has fixed just enough of my quibbles to draw me back in. An assortment of minor annoyances and disappointments with Football Manager 2015 left me too frustrated to continue. By this time last year I thought I was done. I’ve won the World Cup, the Champions League, the Premiership, the Championship, League One, Serie A, La Liga, the Bundesliga, and most importantly, the Romanian Second Division. I’ve taken twenty odd teams from rags to riches. Over the years I’ve played a dozen iterations of Football Manager and its predecessor, Championship Manager. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |