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Rob Zacny

Episode 410: Franchise Hockey Manager 4 and Motorsport Manager

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Three Moves Ahead 410:

Three Moves Ahead 410


Franchise Hockey Manager 4 and Motorsport Manager
It's time for a racing and hockey double-header as Rob, Michael, and Troy "My favorite movie is 1992's The Cutting Edge" Goodfellow talk about sports management sims. The beginning of a new NHL season is a darn good reason to examine Out of the Park Development's Franchise Hockey Manager 4. The crew also discusses Motorsport Manager, a sports sim game that may be the entry point needed for a non-sim gamer. If you like to boss other people around and not actually DO the thing that the game is about, then sports management sims might be for you!

Franchise Hockey Manager 4, Eastside Hockey, Motorsport Manager, Out of the Park Baseball, Football Manager

 

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It sounds to me less like Rob completely screwed up the Blackhawks and more like he tried to be just a bit too clever cleaning up  a core declining due to age and, in particular, the mess he inherited with the awful Brett Seabrook contract.

 

The part of the discussion about what the games are simulating was particularly interesting and I feel like Football Manager's the most pure of the games I've played. It's becoming less the case every year with Transfer Committees and Directors of Football but the authoritarian gaffer in charge from everything from setting up (or personally) scouting, to buying and selling players, and the lineups and tactical system was how the sport was run for years. Football Manager's take on generalship feels more accurate than most strategy games out there. 

 

There's something particularly agonizing about watching your players (or dots back in the 2D engine) create chance after chance only to be stymied by Jussi Jääskeläinen when there's not much you can do but sit and hope one of the chances finally goes past him.

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Not even listening to strategy game podcast can shield me from sport games.

 

"I work with engines for living"

"I think average gamer will easily understand that engine management game unlike the game about hockey"

- Michael, with a straight face

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I like it when the show tries to go into sub-branches of strategy games with multiple offerings.

That being said, I had my time in baseball mogul 2002 and will never go back to that world again.  These games require too much time at this point in my life.  

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5 hours ago, ilitarist said:

Not even listening to strategy game podcast can shield me from sport games.

 

"I work with engines for living"

"I think average gamer will easily understand that engine management game unlike the game about hockey"

- Michael, with a straight face

 

I stand by it! The systems in MM are abstracted almost to the point of the ship systems in FTL. (Think of any spaceship game - you're not an engineer in the future, but after a game or two you can intuit what ion thrusters and mass drivers are doing on your ship.) Tuning your car consists of moving sliders until the little arrows are in the green area, and the feedback from your drivers ranges from angry face to smiley face. You don't need to know about transmission gear ratios, your driver gives you all the feedback you need after the practice laps or qualifying. The feedback systems are good enough that knowledge about how cars work is practically unnecessary.

 

Conversely, FHM offers little to no feedback other than the player statistics. if you don't know how to interpret those, you're really on your own. And accurately interpreting that requires an in-depth knowledge of the game.

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