Football Manager 2013 – Review
Sega and Sports Interactive bring us, like every other year, a new Football Manager, this time it’s Football Manager 2013. Can the most successful football management game retain its number one position? Did it make enough progresscompared to itspredecessor? Let’s find out below.
Story:
In the beginning of the game you can choose any team you want to manage, and you will be the new manager of that team. From that point on you will have to try to get the best out of your team, buy new players etc. So you can conquer all the competitions.
As Football Manager has no real story this part will not be graded below.
Graphics:
As the game exists mostly out of menu’s the graphics are not that important. Everything is clearly readable. The colors are very well chosen so the screen design looks very nice.
But the 3D view of the match has improved a lot, it runs much smoother, looks sharper. When watching a match in the new Football Manager, it now gives the feeling like you are watching a real life match on television. This is because a lot of new camera angles are added which give you a whole new experience.
Everything looks much more realistic: the movement of the players, the stadiums and the movement of the ball over the ground and in the air. They certainly put a lot of time in the improvement of the 3D view.
Off course it still doesn’t look like a real life on television match, but they sure did a good job improving compared to its predecessor.
Sound:
Except from the public cheering you on during your matches and the whistle from the referee, there is no sound present in the game. So like the story this part will not be graded.
Gameplay:
There is a single player and a multiplayer.
The single player consists out of Football Manager, Football Manager Classic and Challenge.
Football Manager gives you the whole experience. You’ll have the ability to control all aspects of the game. And that is a lot cause there are already over 900 new functions in this release alone.
Football Manager Classic will give you the light experience. The matches will be shorter with the option to go directly to the results. No more individually training your players, but only trainings in team. No more team talks or conferences before and after the matches. Etc. In short you will get the experience of managing your own team but with a lot less work to handle.
In Challenge, most of the time, you’ll have to play half a season completing a challenge. There are four challenges available in the game: can you win the cup with only very young players? Can you save your club when you’re in danger of degradation? Your team hasn’t lost a single match this season, can you finish the season without losing? Almost all players of your team are injured, can you meet the board’s expectations in the league?
These 3 modes are plenty to choose from. You will have your hands full by completing the challenges and playing the 2 manager modes which can occupy you for days, weeks even months.
The multiplayer part consists out of Versus.
Here you can play online against your friends. No more fights over whose team is better, now you can put the challenge to the test. See who’s best by putting both teams on the same field and try to win the game by smartly managing your team to victory.
It’s a nice addition to the game but of course you’ll be spending your time mostly in the manager campaigns.
The only thing about the game that bugged me is that sometimes the AI is really annoying. For example one of my players got the ball in front of the goal and instead of shooting to score, he decided to pass backwards to another player who lost the ball. Or a player has the ball and left of him another player is wide open and he decides to keep the ball and tries to pass it to someone on the left who is not free at all. These are things I hope will be improved in the next installment of the game.
Conclusion:
A Football Manager is not a Football Manager if it does not have the “just one more” feeling, the urge to play just one more before going to bed. Luckily this feeling is still present in the latest installment. This is what makes the game so addicted, before you know it, it’s already the middle of the night.
The introduction of Football Manager Classic is a good move to bring back people who quit playing the game after it got too complicated for the common man.
I found the game a lot better then it’s predecessors, it was an improvement on many levels. And I’m looking forward to a lot of fun long nights.
Football Manager did the job and still is the number one football managing game!
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