As we play offers the thought strands of the reviewer as they’re going through the game. This offers unique content for the reader so they can come to understand the conflicting feelings of the reviewer as they’re playing a game for the very first time.
All feedback on this concept is welcome.
Opening Sentiments
I’ve played football manager a lot. Even before it was football manager right back to the early 90’s and the days of Championship Manager. I even once got Wales to the finals of the World Cup with ex-Burnley legend Kurt Nogan scoring bagging five against Norway in the semi finals… happy days. Anyway I digress. The one thing you can say about SI Games is despite having undoubtedly the definitive football management game they don’t rest on their laurels, Football Manager 2014 has a purported 1000 new features. These range from minor tweaks to the match engine – which is now finally living up to its promise – to whole new features like Steam Workshop support allowing gamers to make their own challenges and share them with the community. With this in mind I figured ‘what better way to see what is new in this edition that to fire up the tutorial’. So I logged into Steam on my nifty wee Linux netbook and started FM2014 for the first time. The menus were all present and correct from 2013, there wasn’t a noticeable change in the user interface or the graphics so if you’ve played any of the previous games (and let’s be honest if you’re buying this you probably have) you’ll feel right at home. That said I was playing FM natively on Linux for the first time (This comes just at the right time with the monstrosity that is Windows 8 ruining peoples computing experiences the world over). If you are one of those mystery new FMers the tutorial is a great place to start. It takes you through the basics from just getting around the behemoth that is FM2014, to buying players, building tactics and training your squad. I walked through the whole thing in 15-20 minutes (earning myself a couple of trophies as I went) and it looked like after the major changes to the training system in the last iteration that on the surface not a lot had changed from FM2013. So all trained up I put on my sheepskin, warmed up the hair dryer and I fired up a new game…
It looks so pretty…
Early Gameplay
The game starts as usual with you building the database you will play, selecting the in scope countries and the number of players and staff that will be kicking around. This matters a little less than it used to since in the last iteration they added the facility to add a country to the database later in the game. So if you get bored after winning the Premier League with Margate for the 15th time you can add in the Belgian league and take a shot at the Champions League with Waasland-Beveren. I decided to get a large database of players with just the English divisions playable. Once you have all this decided you click continue and then wait while the game is built… on my 4gb dual core AMD Linux box this took a while, not the half hour it used to take back in the Amiga days but it was a bit of a drag FM2014 is a resource hungry little blighter. Once the game booted up I created my manager alter-ego started unemployed and waited for the job offers to come rolling in. That was when I got my first surprise, instead of just being offered a job like in the previous versions I was invited to an interview with Skrill North’s finest Stockport County.
How insulting surely a manager of my calibre (ex-Sunday League footballer) should just be given the job straight away! “I’ll play your game you rogue,” I muttered slipping out of my sheepskin and into my job interview suit. The interview was a good opportunity for me to put across what I thought I’d need to be successful (a slightly larger wage budget and a parent club) and I thought it worked pretty well. It adds a bit of risk/reward to the job application process; do you risk not getting the job by asking for more cash or do you risk failing at the job by saying you can do it on the cheap? Anyway needless to say I got the job and the life of PictoPirate football manager began.
With the interview out of the way it was time to get down to the business of running the club, signing players and have many many meetings. Veterans of Football Manager will be right at home, configuring tactics and training and signing players. There are little tweaks, a useful training summary screen for instance but it is more evolution than revolution this time around from the Si Games folks.
Once you’ve done the hard work on the training ground and in the transfer market like a proud father you must send your boys out to fend for themselves, you can only watch on in horror or pride as they rise to the occasion or sink like rocks. Watching is better than ever though with the match engine looking shinier than ever; also you now have the ability to apply your assistant managers advice in one easy click of a button rather than having to pause the game and go hunting in the menus amongst a host of other minor tweaks. The whole game feels the same as it ever has but just a tiny bit better.
To paraphrase a famous manager we are going to play four four flipping two…
Football manager is more of a phenomenon than a game it has spawned a book, a comedy show and any number of divorces; this is a game that tracks your addictedness rating not in hours but days. I’ve no doubt that this latest edition will spawn a new stream of wonder kids (Tonton Zola Moukoko anyone?) A new set of anecdotes to chat to you’re mates about down the pub and a who new batch of unhappy girlfriends.
Other Modes
That’s not to mention the exciting other modes that you can have a bash at. With classic mode not only do you get a less complex more old skool game but you can also take your game on the go with cloud saves and a PS Vita. This also cuts out a lot of the bits detail with less meetings, interviews and in depth tactical tweaking; this significantly speeds up the game allowing you to knock out a season in a few hours.
Oh challenging…
Bored of taking Average Villa to mid table mediocrity every season? Crack on with the challenge modes and see if you can take Average Villa to mid table mediocrity when you have an injury crisis, or you’re Brian Laws (everyone hates you for no particular reason). If all that wasn’t enough just fire up one of the 51 playable nations or playable leagues you could play this game for a whole year and not even scratch the surface. There is always a new challenge around the corner in FM2014 you do get a whole lot of bang for your proverbial buck.
Looking Forward
I really enjoy FM and have done for years but the one thing that I do a lot (and I’m not sure entirely why) is play a very similar game all the time. Start unemployed in country X try to get to the top and win everything before moving to county Y, rinse and repeat. Thus I for one am looking forward to the exciting challenges that the people of the tinterweb can come with up over the coming months to keep the game fresh and exciting. Can you win the World Cup with San Marino if Messi suddenly became San Morinian? Just how good is a team of Gary Breens? Can you survive more than a month under the Venkys? The game has only been out a matter of days and the Steam Workshop is already filling up with tactics, challenges and new content and this will only grow as the game matures. The world of Football Manager 2014 is an exciting one indeed.
You must be logged in to post a comment.