Developer: Sports Interactive
Publisher: Sega
Platforms: PC, OS X, Linux
Tested on: PC
Football Manager 2016 – Review
The twelfth iteration in the famous football management simulation series Football Manager, namely Football Manager 2016, has been released to the public. Developed by Sports Interactive and published by Sega, Football Manager 2016 is by far the most realistic and in-depth sports simulation game ever to be released for Windows, OS X and Linux.
Story
Life as a manager is tough as you must lead your team to victory, ultimately becoming the champion of whatever championship you’ve decided to participate in. Football Mananger 2016 does not truly offer a narrative but the game adapts itself to the manager profile you’ve set up in the beginning of the game. A young manager will be doubted while a senior manager will be praised for its hard work. These prejudices are mostly felt during interviews but you’ll learn to take the entire team’s interest at heart quite fast if you are to become the world’s best.
Graphics
Football Manager 2016 looks nearly identical to the previous iteration in the series, where the menus were clear and colors were fresh, making the entire user interface incredibly streamlined. Veterans of the series will be able to jump into the game without any issues while novices might have some trouble finding whatever it is they are searching for but the streamlined concept certainly works well for both parties.
Viewing entire matches or their highlights can be seen in several modes and the visuals shown there are not spectacular. In fact, the graphics cannot even be compared to sports games such as FIFA or PES but as Football Manager is a sports management simulation, the visuals are good enough.
Sound
The lack of a soundtrack stimulating the player while contemplating some difficult choices is surprising, especially since the player will spend hours in the user interface before even seeing a match being played out. The short time you will spend looking at the highlights, or even full matches, is however accompanied with sounds such as the cheering crowds, applause of players and even the thud of a foot hitting the ball. This makes the lack of background tunes even more surprising but then again, one can always play their own playlist.
Gameplay
The Football Manager series has always attracted a certain kind of crowd and if you were to jump into the game as a novice, you would be entirely clueless as the tutorial in the game isn’t quite as helpful as it should be. Question marks provide a simple written text that in all honesty is daunting to read. Veterans however will know the game mechanics inside out and have no need for an extensive tutorial.
This is where the game modes come in. Upon creating a career game, you’ll be asked to chose one out of five modes. Football Manager is a full featured simulation while Football Manager Touch is a streamlined version for quicker gameplay. You can also create a new club in the Create-a-Club mode, or you can create a new club in the Touch Create-a-Club mode. The last mode is the Challenge mode where you can take on preset challenges. The online game modes offer five modes as well, Football Manager and Football Manager Touch being the same as in the career mode. An online Versus mode is where you take your existing team and play against friends. Last two modes are the Fantasy Draft and Touch Fantasy Draft modes where you pick a new team and dribble it out against friends. Obviously the Football Manager mode is more extensive and can be quite a task for novices.
Managing is a team seems to be an easy task until you see the menus provided to do just that. The player is given free rein on literally anything that has to do with managing a football team, whether it is arranging your squad for future matches or making sure each member is trained accordingly. Tedious tasks such as reading through team reports, being interviewed by newspapers and offering contracts to possible transfers is only a small fraction of the job you’ll be doing but the game has simulated each task amazingly accurately.
The amount of attention and detail that goes into the game is clear. Not only does the game provide an extensive database of teams, players and possible choices, it also provides the player with technical information of their computer. Picking out multiple teams can stress your computer and the developers want to avoid that at all cost. I’m sure there will be players who will still be oblivious to the technical side of things but it is a nice feature.
However, as it is a new iteration in the series, one must compare it to the previous one and this is the underlying problem of Football Manager 2016. Compared to FM15, the game barely provides a difference as new features are barely visible. The transfer negotiations has improved drastically and injuries seem to be more realistic in the sense that players can now have more than one injury at the same time but the match engine stays the same albeit with less errors. Football Manager 2016 is an improved, updated version of Football Manager 2015 but that’s as far as it goes.
Conclusion
As a sports manager simulation game Football Manager 2016 is certainly one of the best simulation games on the market. On the other hand, the game is also an improved and updated version of Football Manager 2015 which means that the game has not evolved much. Nonetheless, Football Manager 2016 is to be recommended as it is a great sport simulation game for both novices and veterans who have skipped an iteration or two.
Football Manager 2016 - Review,
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