Football (not American Football, and no, not “Soccer”) is probably one of the most followed sports, together with baseball. Colorful events like the World Cup or Champions League add a lot to the flavor, whereas players like Messi or Ronaldo turn the experience into pure joy. Of course, when there is this much interest in the sport, a part of that interest also focuses on the computer game side of things.

Football Manager 2012 is one of the higher assets of this field. The series started after the disputes between Sports Interactive and Eidos Interactive back in 2004. If you were a follower of the long-time Championship Manager series, you probably know the story. Football Manager, before losing the name rights to Eidos, was actually called Championship Manager, and it was being developed by Sports Interactive for more than a decade. Therefore, most of the fans moved on to Football Manager when that change occurred.

Football Manager 2012 (or FM 12) is the latest installment of the series. Known as “Worldwide Soccer Manager” in the US, FM 12 is the best of the series so far. Managing your favorite team and leading them to success couldn’t be much more fun.

Of course, you have to understand one thing if you are not familiar with the genre. Management games usually feature minimum graphical features, except for a few examples like On the Ball, The Manager and Ultimate Soccer Manager from the 90s.  Therefore, don’t expect to see a Fifa 2012 winning any graphics awards. Management games are more like those old roleplaying games where all you had was text to look at.

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FM12 is the successor of FM11 and it is surely the most appealing football management game out there. If you are seeing the career mode of Fifa 2012 as a management experience, you have no idea. In FM, you are responsible for every detail of a club as expected from a manager. You have to check your team, talk to them, train them, build up your strategies, manage media, other teams’ reactions, follow world events, youth academies, scouts, trainers… even the simplest issues like your reserve player’s flu is yours to deal with. It may seem overwhelming to you at first, but the events really flow in FM. That is the reason why it is so successful.

If we focus on the changes applied to FM12, there isn’t much to talk about, except for two major improvements. One of them is the “tone” system that has been added to your talks. As the manager, you can now select in what tone you want to talk with your team. You can be aggressive, calm or cautious (plus some other options) and it affects how players react to your input.

The other change is the ability to add other leagues in your game while you are playing. This was always an issue for the followers of the game. Adding too many leagues would slow down the game as the number of calculations and statistics were increasing with each added league. On the other hand, if you wanted to switch to a new career at another place, unless you selected the league at the beginning, you had to start over again.  This was a major inconvenience, especially for seasoned players. You know, management games like FM 12 are slow paced games and it takes a serious amount of time before you build up your “character”. I have friends who literally invest months on their games as if they are truly the manager of a team. So, this may seem absurd for a normal gamer, but it is a vital change for the fans.

There are other minor differences of course, like the improved design of the menu system and the changes in youth and b-team management.

There are also two more camera angles added to the match screen. They don’t affect much to be sincere, and if you know what you are doing, you rarely watch the games without increasing the speed anyway. It is all about statistics, numbers and text in this game. Seeing your name at the hall of fame as “Manager of the Year” is quite satisfactory, especially after a long season. As I said, the game duration is long, as expected from a management game, and when you achieve something you really enjoy the moment.

One of the things that I like about FM is that you can play the game without having the disc in the tray and play it in windowed mode with ease, as if you are running a normal task. If you are a person who works on two screens all day long, having FM on one of the screens and checking it out every now and then is a great way to escape from work when you can afford the time.

The difficulty of the game is quite balanced; it isn’t too easy to achieve your goals, but it doesn’t feel impossible. Even if your tactics and squad skills are top notch, you may still face with defeat as there are many variables involved, just as in the real Beautiful Game.

However, as it is generally seen as a standard in between seasoned management gamers, FM becomes fun after you start training a mediocre or low level team and building a successful career with it. Moving your team to upper leagues and earning trophies is what gives you the real feeling of success while you try to juggle your way in between financial difficulties and budget gaps.

Otherwise, having Barcelona and putting the unstoppable Messi – Villa – Sanchez triplet to front and scoring 12 goals against some poor Eastern European team will extinguish your interest in the game quite fast.

WHAT WOULD MESSI DO

Well, I don’t know what he would do, but I am fairly certain that there are things that can be added to this game. I remember On The Ball World Cup Edition, a game from the 90s. The game had a different perspective, focusing on personality and other side elements of football as well. For instance, you had the chance to go out and get drunk (and it was shown in great graphics), having the media focusing on you the next day. The match screens of those games were much more fun. Today’s management games are not interested in the fun part of things; they are more focused on the realism. It is a free choice and I am still very happy with the game. However, I wouldn’t say no to some graphical advancements and side details like that to create some additional fun in the game. After all, even if it is realism we are talking about, there is room for many of the fun things we can think of. Advertisements, sponsor campaigns, night life, family issues like we saw in the movie series “Goal”, random events and better graphics would all help to complete the picture for the player. These are all a part of football life as well and a manager should focus on those things too.

IT IS A GOAL!

FM 2012 is not a game for everyone; that is a fact. The learning curve, especially if you are new to management games, is pretty high. If you are fairly new to football itself, it will be even higher because then you will have to understand technical concepts like “false striker”, “stoppers moving to opposition box while backs cover the midfield”, “holding field narrow to oppress passing” and many more. The game doesn’t have a solid walkthrough for these kinds of things, so it is aimed at gamers who know what they are getting themselves into. For example, I am not a maniac management gamer who runs a club for 40 seasons in a game, but I have played almost all the football management games out there since Championship Manager 92 when Eric Cantona was still young and like a raging bull (well, the latter part didn’t change actually).

All in all, there is room for improvement, especially with make-up and additional stuff as I mentioned above. Besides those, the game is probably the best management game out there. I didn’t have the chance to play Championship Manager 2011 yet, but 2010 version was too easy, my local language version was translated horribly and the game had some seriously annoying bugs. Switching to FM was a relief. I would give this game a 9/10; the only reason I am dropping to 8 is because Sports Interactive played it safe by almost keeping everything the way it was in 2010.

I always express this about sports games: you don’t have to release a version every year (this is applied to those three piece suit guys, not the poor developer who does what they ask of him / her). Give the team some time and let them improve the title by far.

Set aside that, and creating the future of your team is addictive, believe me.

Written by Oganalp Canatan

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