So I am back after my month long break from writing on this dear website. It is a good idea for us solo webmasters to take a break every now and again before writing become a chore in itself. So what do I come back to? This evening Football Manager 2009 news has finally been released after a few months of anticipation, Sports Interactive have put together for us a 15 minute documentary in two parts, I will look to review as Life in FM starts looking forward to November 13th, the release date of the new Football Management game.
Part One
The first 7 minutes of the new announcement was basically a clever bit of marketing for the game , even though it was mainly to advertise the Football Management series to new customers. It gave details of the history of the game, what Miles thinks of the series and a few Z list celebrities telling us how much they love the game themselves and something to show the awaiting ‘Gaming Press’. Although nothing was mentioned in this first video it was well put together and interesting from a marketing point of view really but other then that I think it is over to review Part Two for the best bits.
Part Two
Part Two is for the real Football Manager fan, the second part of the documentary is where Miles is going to take us through a selection of the new features, I am going to go through my inital thoughts on what Miles is presenting us.
Football Manager Handheld
FM:H is not a game I have played or know of anyone playing, it definitely has a market, but I don’t feel that these FM Lite games have much room in the PC addicts collection, unless to kick Chelsea’s arse on the tube. The news for those who are fans of the FM:H game is that now you will be able to play more then one league, just like you would do on the PC, you can have a career that will span over a few countries. You will be limited to about 3 other countries and will only be able to select the top leagues in those countries, after you have picked the main country you want to start in. Also because of the indecision of the SI team you will be treated with two skins in the game in contrast you will have a dark one and a light one.
The big news though for the FM:H users is that they will at last be able to play the game with the 2D match engine. An addition that transformed the game when it was introduced for the first time, will really help the FM Handheld users really get more involved with the matches they are witnessing, there may be an increase of cheers on the trains to work with this little addition added to the game.
Assistant Manager Feedback
So now onto the PC version the game that most of us will know in more depth. This first thing is Assistant Manager feedback. Being a Football Manager isn’t meant to be a lonely job, its not you against the world, it is important for any top manager to have a good backroom team with them and more importantly a top number 2. Where would Sir Alex Ferguson be without some of the famous fellas he had next to him? Most notably his last assistant Carlos Queiroz or Liverpool without Sammy Lee? These guys have a lot to add to the way a team is managed.
What I find interesting about the new feedback system is the tactical analysis the assistant is now going to give to the game where you are being exposed or how you could get at your opponent. This will help immensely for people like myself who are really struggling to get to grips with the more sophisticated Football Manager where tactics are more important. Knowing where you are going wrong or where you could be doing better could really prove useful in developing new tactics or just to get to grips with the new game. It has been a feature that I have wanted for a while, some way to help you with your tactics without giving the whole game away.
Press Conferences
The biggest argument about the media engine has been that is it so repetitive and it is something that just holds no value and is clicked away quickly as you play through the game. Something I fully agree with I begin to just ignore the media unless it is a big game where I think that the comments could really shape something out for me.
Now we will as many other managers abide by the FA laws and attend a press conference, there will be one at the start of a game and one after. The change from the previous editions is that the press conferences will allow us to build up relationships with the journalists themselves. What does this mean? I am not too sure yet, but the idea sounds a good one. Beating the repetitive and impersonal nature of the media a lot better if you have to strive towards getting the media on your side, or using the relationships to your own advantages. But now the media will have a memory and whatever answers you give at the start of the season may come back and haunt you later on in the game, so no longer should you just breeze through the replies without considering the consequences. It is definitely a push forward in the media interaction and should make a dull part of the game much more interesting.
Players Perferred Moves
PPM’s have been in the game for a few years, meant to give players more personality, doing tricks, diving in for tackles and hopefully having some sort of indvidual impact on a game. In 2009 you now get the chance to ask your young players to learn one of these perferred moves.
This is not really a new features, you have always be able to get your players to learn new PPM’s by learning them from other me
mbers of the team using the tutoring aspects of the game. But from that you were restricted from only learning PPM’s that players already had. This aspect now will allow you to add new PPM’s into your team.
I have never really took much notice of the PPM’s I don’t feel they make too much impact on a game, I think attributes are much more important part of the game and quite rightly. But I have never looked at the PPM’s when picking a player for my squad. That could be me making a big mistake and I can really see the value of the new aspect of training and it really can’t harm anything by putting it in, you never know I could set up my own Brazilan training scheme at the club, working the players to play with flair and trickery all over the pitch.
Playing as a Female Manager
Not ever been a problem for me, but I am sure there is plenty of ladies out there that feel that they should be able to put their own personality into Football Manager, lets hope it doesn’t tempt my own girlfriend into FM world. A useful way of showing the lady players out their that FM really do care or just for the fellas who want to be know by a different name at the weekends.
Board Confidence
A great feature that has been added to the game in the 2008 edition and just like many of the new features they start simple and develop over the editions. It was predictable that SI would be making improvements on this aspect of the game and we will all be glad that they will be doing. Miles says that they have tried to fix every bug that has been reported to them about the feature and hopefully it will work much smoother then before. My biggest problem of it was that sometimes the plan of the board was sometimes a bit unrealistic for the club, or failed to update after you had achieved their goal.
In 2009 to the board confidence will be added Squad Harmony, a decent feature to see how you squad is developing as a team and whether it is time to get them all down to the pub for a team bonding session. Club Stature will also be in their. Both these newly added confidences have also been visibale to see in the game in one way or the other, but putting them in with the confidence section of the game will mean they are much easier to read for the not so observant user.
Financial Modelling
I have found that the finances in 2008 were a little unrealistic and could really allow you to plot your team in the red way to easily and then what would happen in real life unintendedly. So it is good to hear that SI have spent alot of time in modelling the financial structure for each country. This will hopefully have a real impact on the economy of the game making it more realistic, keeping transfer prices at a reasonable price throughout the game.
Wide Screen Support
At last in the era that mostly everyone who buys a new PC now will buy it with a widescreen monitor. Even laptops come in widescreen now. I have had widescreen for a year now and I have never been able to play Football Manager full screen. At last I will now be able to do that and actually get lost in the game, I have found that playing it in windowed few just allowed me to get distracted easily meaning that I lose something from the whole Football Manager experience.
Transfer System
Apparently SI have actually rewrote this feature to help make transfers more realistic, making the shortlisting functions of managers alot better. I have never really had too much of a problem with the transfers that happen within game. It never has bothered me whether they are real or not, but I am a minority in this aspect and we do know how FM players love their realism. It will be a pity to not see the likes of Eddie Johnson go to Juventus for £50 million, but at least I can start using past transfers as a measure of how good a player is.
3D Match Engine
Probably the biggest change to the game and one that will get the scene’s big tongue wagging. The debate will now be on and the cries of it killing the game will emerge quickly. I have been around long enough to remember the last debate about the 2D match engine and now I don’t think many of us will do without it. If SI get it right and more often then not they do, the 3D match engine will be a huge installement into the game and could transform the way people play it, making it alot easier to view the way the football is played and how tactical analysis.
With the match engines foundations being tried and tested throughout the year on a mass scale with Football Manager Live I am pretty confident that the new match engine will probably be the best so far with the feedback that is coming out of the FM Live circles avoiding the problems that we seen when the 2D match engine first appeared in CM4.
But what I think is really cool along with the 3D view of the game is the introduction to the craze of web 2.0, Widgets. The new TV View will allow you watch the games in full screen and bring up these widgets to appear on the screen while watch the game. It will make it just alot more easier to view different aspects of the game w
hile not missing any of the action on the pitch. But for those who don’t like the sound of all this don’t worry nothing will be taken out from the current match engine and you can enjoy the good old panel view of the 2d match engine.
Overall
I think that this announcement was well worth the wait and I pretty pleased with what SI have told us, this only be a selection of what we should expect from the new game. all the features revealed should really make Football Manager 2009 the best SI games so far and I will look forward to what they have to offer in the future. But obviously most of the proof will be in the pudding and lets hope that these features will live up to the hype they will create.
View the Videos at http://www.youtube.com/sigames