Thomas Levin of the Excellent FM Pundit reviews Football Manager 2012 for us.
The winter months are approaching here in England, the days are shorter and nights are longer. But it also marks the time in which we see the next instalment of the long running football management
Over the past few years Football Manager has lead the line when it comes to the football simulation games. We have seen vast improvements in it’s tactics engine, scouting, players development and the match engine visually and under the hood. 2012 is no different as we can mark this edition not a total revolution in the gaming world. But an evolution building on the foundations that 2010 and 2011 have laid in place before hand.
The changes that happen from game to game, are into the hundreds many being under the hood small tweaks, the major changes that we have in the game this year are.
- New camera available to watch your games
- New team scout reports
- Improved GUI with intelligent interface
- Tone system
But just like every year Football Manager 2012 is always the best one yet. The Sports Interactive model of gradual improvement has ensured year after year that we get a better game built on the successors of the previous years.
I impressed with the new team scout reports. Giving you the ability to look in great detail the teams that you will be coming up against based on real scout reports. This Includes formations that the team has faced, how they faired, last game, comparison stats and what I find the most useful, Where the assists have come on the pitch. This has been really useful for me so far in the game as it highlights where I need to target my defence against the opposition and cut the supply to the strikers.
The new interface with it intelligent interface which changes depending on the size of the screen, or in windowed view if you change the size of the window the amount of information on screen will change. But overall the interface has allowed more important information in the right places. Because of such a compressive game with hundreds of stats, attributes and settings available to make those important decisions it vital that you can get that information in a way that doesn’t overwhelm and is in the right places.
Here is where you see the greatest improvements to this years game. Football Managers and the media have become much more aware of the stats and they are much more important in a game like Football Manager. The important information is much easier to get to and now much easier to understand within the game helping swerve away from the danger of being overwhelmed by the crammed information.
The tone system brings a whole new dimension and difficulty to the media and player interaction in-bedded in the game, I am not too sure on the system myself just yet. It does add a new dimension to the player interaction module in order to keep you entertained. But to me it seems more like just a more options to say the same thing.
Football Manager still holds the mighty playability that will that will keep us engaged for the whole year until we see 2013. It continues to be at the forefront of it’s genre and looks like little will come close to knocking it off it’s perch.
I just wish the game was a little less addictive so that I can concentrate on my day job, get the chores around the house done and actually sleep.
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