Every self-respecting football and gaming fan has a Championship Manager/Football Manager story - like that time you almost won the Champions League with Torino but lost to a last minute penalty by a regen called Francesco Della Morte, or that other time your housemate at university took his Birmingham team to the FA Cup final and he actually wore a suit for the occasion (both of those are true, and it really was my housemate, not me, honest). It has punctuated our lives with such regularity over the years that it at times almost feels as important as football itself. It isn’t, but when there’s no football on the TV it’s a bloody good substitute.
In short, there is a reason that Football Manager is so popular: It has transcended the world of football management sims like no other game before it, and has moved from a game to a cultural phenomenon. It’s no coincidence I remember those two incidents better than I remember the majority of my university education; I spent more time playing it than I actually did studying.
So what’s new about FM2013? Well, lots actually. There are two new game modes in addition to the usual Football Manager and Online modes. The first, Challenge, drops you into a variety of different scenarios and challenges you to make a success of them. Some of them are interesting, some of them less so, but I imagine they’d be of great intrigue to FM completists, or for players that are looking to break up the rhythm of how they play the game.
There has now clearly been an admission at FM Towers that somewhere along the line, the game became a bit too complicated and time-consuming for the casual gamer.
The second merits more attention: Classic Mode. There has now clearly been an admission at FM Towers that somewhere along the line, the game became a bit too complicated and time-consuming for the casual gamer. Obviously, the players who grew up with the game are now older and probably have more demanding jobs and/or a family and so don’t have the time they once did to dedicate to a computer game. The Classic mode scales back a lot of the detail required of the main game, and also in turn makes it more accessible to the newcomer. This is a shrewd move by Miles and the team, Classic is the mode I will likely play more often than not now, despite having played FM for years. There is only so much time one can spend filtering out qualifications of prospective new coaches (another new feature of the main game).
In the main game, there are some nice new touches that really do make a difference: the assistant coach comments throughout a match add another veneer of authenticity to proceedings and make the hiring of a good assistant even more important. The ‘body language’ feature during a game gives you even further insight into your players and allows you to make more informed decisions tactically.
Aesthetically, the game looks sharper; the windows slide in and out when you hit continue and there is an option to split-screen the match coverage with stats. The match engine itself is more realistic; the movements of the players are better rendered and the surrounding paraphernalia like stadiums, benches and match officials seem somehow more complex and therefore more immersive.
The beauty of this FM though is that yes it’s deeper and more complicated, but you can tailor your game-playing preferences accordingly.
The astonishing level of detail of what seems like just about every player in world football is still a mainstay of the game and really is worth pointing out. It is a mark of how consistently good these games have been over the years that all of us take for granted the depth and detail on just about every player playing professionally in the western world (and beyond) that seems to exist here. We are no longer surprised by this. We expect it. And yet again, it's delivered.
The beauty of this FM though is that yes it’s deeper and more complicated, and the level of detail in training now is enough to throw your Andre Villas-Boas-sized dossiers into the fire in despair, but you can tailor your game-playing preferences accordingly. The Classic mode, the option to use your assistant manager should you need to and the adding of a new Director of Football who can pick up a lot of the more menial jobs mean it really can be adjusted to how much time you have to dedicate to it.
Football Manager 2013 is out on November 2nd, and we'll have a full review on Monday 29th. Keep your eye on the ball.
Luke Moore is a writer and broadcaster and the co-founder of The Football Ramble. He has contributed to regularly to BBC Radio 5 Live and has featured on Radio 4, ESPN, The Guardian, Betfair and, of course, IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
