So another year, another Football Manager. This years game offers several new features, but is it enough to encourage you to upgrade from last years impressive effort?
Firstly lets talk about the engine. It’s been improved… quite a bit. The game seems to fun faster and smoother, and it looks nicer. The 3D matches have been vastly worked on. There are a lot more player actions now, and a nice feature allowing goal highlights from different angles during gameplay has been introduced. In the manager hub, news and updates have now become one. Gone are the days where you had an ever-growning news inbox because you couldn’t be bothered reading news that didn’t concern you (or was that just me?). The new updates work so much better, and seem a lot more streamlined to give you news that is actually of value to you.
One of the most important additions to the game is with the contract negotiations system. If you are looking to sign a player, you do not just send your contract offer and hope for an acceptance message a few days later in your inbox. Now you actually hold a real-time meeting with the players agent where you try to accept each others demands by reducing or increasing different contractual features. Whether you sign a player or not could be determined by the member of staff you have in the room. Some are better at negotiations that others. If you can’t meet the demands of the agent, you can simply walk away. Or if you keep on trying for a contract that the agent simply will not accept, they will walk away and you will be unable to negotiate with that player for a while. It’s a brilliant new element to the game. Another new addition to the game is the Twitter and YouTube integration. I personally couldn’t find how to use these within the demo, but in the main game you will be able to upload video highlights and updates to these social networks. It’s a neat feature I think, especially for someone like me who is an avid Twitter user. It adds a socialising element to a franchise that was otherwise viewed as quite a lonely game to play by many people.
One thing I am disappointed with in the game is the lack of team logos and kits, as well as player pictures. I understand the copyrights behind it all, and I know there are plenty of addons out there to install these things manually, but it would be nice if they were already on there. As for everything else in the game, not much has changed. Some improved graphics here and there, but tactics, searches, player attributes and the like all seem pretty much as they were. I would have also have liked to test the networked gameplay, but was unable to. Hopefully some connection issues might have been fixed from the last instalment.
Verdict
What I like:
- Appears to run faster and smoother
- More detailed contract negotiations
- Improved 3D engine
- Streamlined inbox news and updates
What I don’t like:
- Lack of official team logos/kits and player pictures
- I have to wait until 5th November to get my hands on it!
Football Manager 2011 is released on 5th November 2011 in stores, and online from Steam.
