Codicier

Football Manager 20XX: the Far Cry 2 of sports sims

Recommended Posts

So we are one day away from the official release of the latest iteration of the Football Manager series and honestly I'm pretty excited.

I'm excited because the series has been steadily moving away from just being a game of pure strategic system optimisation, and putting more and more emphasis into producing a wonderfully chaotic match system. A sub game full of plans, failures, and improvisation that really captures what I love about the beautiful game itself.

Football Manager will never escape some of the baggage that comes with a game simulating a sport's metagame, it's a theme which will turn off a lot of players regardless of how good the game is itself so I realise that my excitement may not necessarily be shared by that many other readers.

However I'm hoping that perhaps the excellent entertainment provided by this years World Cup in Brazil might have stirred some interest in the football itself, showing off just how fascinating it can be to watch a game which has had over 100 years to fully mature.

So if you're interest has been piqued but you have previously been put off by the reputation FM has (& shares with many management sims) of a game somewhat impenetrable to newcomers unfamiliar with it's theme I have some good news, the time I've spent with the 2015 beta suggests that this is probably the most user friendly version of the game yet.

A noticeable improvement on 2014 (which was itself a notable improvement over the rest of the series), and one which makes some smart choices regarding its accessibility and presentation.

There's no sliders to deal with here just a neat series of verbs (complete with mouse over explanations), and enough data visualisations that you can now set out a reasonable team without spending time looking at a big old chunk of stats.

Of course the stats are still there for those who want to micro manage, and in fact finding and developing specialist players is more important than ever before, because the AI is no longer the punching bag of yesteryear and anyone who sends the same team into battle week after week will soon find themselves viciously countered .

Anyway if there's any other closet FM addicts out there who want to weigh in about the latest revision or readers who are thinking of dipping into the series for the first time and want some help (because even a much more accessible game about a sports metagame is still, a game about a sports metagame with all the accompanying complexity and some assumptions which may not be obvious to the uninitiated) I can offer some advice or throw some useful links your way.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A long time ago, when I was but a lad, I put a ton of time into Baseball Mogul and Hollywood Mogul, as well as playing through tons of NCAA football seasons doing simulation only. In especially dark times in my past, I have also been known to simulate fake wrestling in Total Extreme Wrestling games by Grey Dog Software. I'm all about the simulation games. Football Manager has had my interest for a long time, but I've had a hard time pulling the trigger for some reason.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

A long time ago, when I was but a lad, I put a ton of time into Baseball Mogul and Hollywood Mogul, as well as playing through tons of NCAA football seasons doing simulation only. In especially dark times in my past, I have also been known to simulate fake wrestling in Total Extreme Wrestling games by Grey Dog Software. I'm all about the simulation games. Football Manager has had my interest for a long time, but I've had a hard time pulling the trigger for some reason.

 

Oh boy a wrestling sim sounds fascinating, i'd 100% play a Luchador style one (partly because i love the women's wrestling sum plot in the Love & Rockets comics). you could script the feuds, who wins/loose, who's having a affair with who's wife! (hmm feels like a ck2 mod in the making :D )

 

Anyway! do you no idea what stopped you from pulling the trigger in the past Dewar? The big thing for me for strat games is normally either time commitment or a intimidating UI,

neither which is a sin FM was entirely innocent of in the past but as i said i do think it go better at this year.

 

As I said above I quite like this years version, (although it does at times feel like a bit like a skin for windows 8 or something)

 

Over the weekend i had 2 matches which really confirmed to me they have done something right this time.

 

In contrast to reality My Liverpool team had after a shack start been having a great season, and now i found myself facing Bayern Munich (arguably the worlds best team and the best manager)the knockout stages of the Champions League.

 

I did what i thought was sensible vs a possession based team like bayern, and sent out a line-up designed to sit back, with a skillfull ball player behind a midfield shield & then hit them on the counter attack with a lightning fast trio of forwards.

 

post-24580-0-79346100-1415654919_thumb.jpg

 

then Steven Gerrard mis-controlled a pass from one of our defenders, letting my opponents striker slot the ball pass liverpools stranded keeper

 

Let it never be said that games don't imitate life.

 

But still somehow i convinced myself that goal was a freak accident, a mistake not a tactical error perhaps if i persisted id recover. However by 59 mins i was 3-0 down and being utterly dominated. I'd made a total miscall on the tactics and the game was punishing me.

 

So I made all three changes available to me. Utterly abandoning my plan A and all caution went for it, throwing on two big midfield destroyers powerful forward, to see if brawn could accomplish what brain could not. 1st i got one back, then another, and while 3-2 wasn't the victory i'd hoped for it was respectable.

 

Which is what made my oopponents89th minute goal all the bigger kick in the guts

and made me cheer IRL at my extra time third

 

post-24580-0-03304500-1415654915_thumb.jpg

 

so 1st leg 4-3 to Bayern, and despite being nearly humilated just a victory at home by 1 goal (without conceding more than 3) and i was through to the next round of the cup.

 

So a few weeks of game time later it's the 2nd leg this time I've learned from my mistakes, no quarter shall be given, i'm going to totally out muscle them and get the goal i need to win this. This all is going great until 54 mins in when my star wing back picks up his 2nd yellow card and gets sent off, meaning its now 10 v 11. Not only that i don't have a left footed defender i can throw on to take his place.

I end up utterly reshaping my team removing all but two of one my attacking players, and throwing on a right footed player with a partial aptitude for the position, and two of the quick attackers who had failed so miserably last time.

 

Plan B is trash, lets try plan A again.

 

Now this should fail IF Bayern had played the same way they had against my full team in the 1st game, but they don't. Their extra numbers mean they push further and further up the field, finally giving my quick players the space they need to run beyond them, oh that and I get lucky.

In FM you can pick different instructions for your team to follow. What turns out to be my most important one i give my team is this one

post-24580-0-22494900-1415656043.jpg

Whipped crosses are high risk, the very qualities that make them hard for defenders to deal with can also make them difficult to capitalise on but here they work perfectly. 1st a opposing defender puts the ball into his own net attempting to prevent a rocket of a cross from reaching my striker, its 1-0 and I'm going through and then a few minutes later the moment that really makes the game for me.

 

Another cross is whipped in on the counter attack and there charging into he area from the left is my improvised left back who volleys it into the goal. What makes this interesting to me is that he's only able to score this easily because he's right footed. If my original left footed defender hadn't got sent off its unlikely that either the cross would have got made or the man on the end of it would have been able to score.

 

post-24580-0-10047300-1415649104_thumb.jpg

 

For me a big part of what makes a good sim is being able to look at a big event and see how little events,player choice, and AI behaviour interact to make it possible, and for me that sending off proved to be my 'grenade rolling down the hill' moment.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Speaking of bad UI, Total Extreme Wrestling is really tough to understand, but I've had my fun with it over the years. It's pretty much exactly what you think it is. If you're really curious about it you can pick up a demo at http://www.greydogsoftware.com/downloads.php?id=97

 

Reasons for not pulling the trigger on Football Manager include:

1) Knowing about enough the sport of soccer to be dangerous, but still have a lot of the terminology go over my head

2) Knowing absolutely nothing about the business of soccer

3) Fear of another huge timesink in my life

4) Considering just buying FIFA 2015 for the same price and getting a game I can play as well as manage

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Speaking of bad UI, Total Extreme Wrestling is really tough to understand, but I've had my fun with it over the years. It's pretty much exactly what you think it is. If you're really curious about it you can pick up a demo at http://www.greydogsoftware.com/downloads.php?id=97

 

Reasons for not pulling the trigger on Football Manager include:

1) Knowing about enough the sport of soccer to be dangerous, but still have a lot of the terminology go over my head

2) Knowing absolutely nothing about the business of soccer

3) Fear of another huge timesink in my life

4) Considering just buying FIFA 2015 for the same price and getting a game I can play as well as manage

 

I'll have a look at that wrestling game, it's a shame about the Art style they've gone for I'd love the same basic premise but with nice bright pixel art.

 

As for you're concerns (in reverse order!)

 

4.Is a bit of a false choice, because FIFA isn't football. 

I know it looks like football, and makes all the appropriate noises, but the compromises it makes to make a interesting & "fun" arcade sports game also mean you learn virtually noting about what makes a good football player, and even less about what makes good football tactics.

 

3. Is a very real and very well founded fear.

 

2. In recent years FM has given people a lot more options about how deeply engaged you get with it, If you really want you can assign pretty much anything outside managing your match day squad to the games AI. The 'Classic' mode in particular cuts a lot of the extra stuff detail down, and taking on one of it's challange modes on easy is a good way to learn the ropes.

 

1.I have a solution here and one i know worked exceedingly well both for myself, and for a IRL friend who is a much less committed football fan than me, which is to read Inverting the Pyramid while playing FM.

 

It's basically considered one of if not the most important entries in the canon of works on football. People say nice things about it such as:

 

A masterful work, It's all deliciously nerdy - a cross between a coaching manual and a social history - and if its publication helps foster a flowering of interest in the tactical and analytical side of the game in this country, it could be the best thing to have happened to English football in years.****' TIME OUT - Book of the Week

'Facts and stats, plus anecdotes, interviews and Wilson's deft touch with football-speak, give colour to a subject that can be a little dry and all-too confusing for those watching (and often those picking the side).' GQ

'For a detailed analysis of how a single striker became the norm throughout football, you had better read Jonathan Wilson's excellent new book about tactics.' -- Patrick Barclay SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

'[A] fascinating history of tactics, a book that is guaranteed to enhance your football watching; your team may still lose, but you'll have a far better idea why they did.' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

'This must surely go down as one of the most revelatory sports books of the year, as well as one of the best, who would have thought that a book charting the history of football tactics and strategy, from the 1870s to the present day, could be so engrossing and entertaining.' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

 

Now obviously there's a certain amount of "going all in" to this approach, but reading about how the meta game of football developed and then seeing those very forces in play in your own matches in Fm was a deeply deeply satisfying experience for me, and lead to me putting a lot more time in yet also getting far more out of the game than i ever had before.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now