NIDZUMI+

With Sports Interactive busy making Football Manager Live it’s a wonder how they manage to find the time to include a whole host of improvement’s for the offline rendition. Football Manager 2009 is ready to hit this autumn and will come with a whole host of new features although one of the more important updates to the game will come in the form of a long awaited 3D match engine.

Let’s get straight into the main improvement people will see here and that’s the new 3D match engine. The engine technically is similar to the old one but it will be represented in a better way, with better animations. This will take full advantage of Sport Interactive’s link with SEGA as it will use a lot of the resources used on Virtua Striker. Of course this will be fully optional as the 2D option is still featured so it will be able to run on most older rigs.

This match engine has been tweaked so you can rewind time and check out replays on the fly with the new time bar that has been ‘borrowed’ from FM Live. If you want to check out how that controversial decision went down you can do it without a skipping a heartbeat. The 3D engine will also feature widgets so when your viewing the match in full screen you can display smaller windows of information all on one full screen. It’s easy to be sceptical about the 3D match engine but let me tell you, it looks like it’s running as smooth as possible and apparently it’s only 50% done.

The Assistant Manager will be more involved this time by offering live information as the match is being played. How motivated a player looks, how your tactics are working, how your opponents are getting past your tactics and what you can do to stop this. We’ve seen even more dynamic involvement from the Assistant Manager’s in the last few games but this feature could seriously help you develop custom tactics and ultimately win games.

Football gets featured in the media a lot more everyday. Days never go past without some big story leaking whether it’s the next big move, a manager getting sacked or troubles on the training field. This year they are adding a whole host of new media stories to represent this change in the real game and you’ll have new ways you can respond to these. You’ll even get Transfer Rumours based on each league were some will be made up and some will be completely true you’ll even get to comment on how factual they are actually are.

This year will also see the addition of Press Conferences that will take place when you get a new job, before a game and after one. You’ll then have to answer a series of tough questions that will affect team morale. Through this mode you’ll get relationship’s with journalists but they will remember the answers to the questions. So this might come back in a bad way if you end up contradicting yourself.

Preferred moves have been in the series for a few years now but now you’ll get more customization on these. You can now tell a player to stay behind after training to work on curling a free kick or making long runs. Obviously teaching would have to go on a player by player basis as not everyone can perform step-overs or classy penalty’s.

The developers have received advice and criticism on five areas of the game from the prominent Football Manager community. They are now re-tweaking and in some cases re-developing certain areas. The first is Board Confidence were they’ve not only added two new area’s like squad harmony & team stature but they’ve improved the old area’s added last year.

All of the 51 league’s will be updated with new players, stats & in some cases new teams. As per usual the most up to date stats and player information will be present. The Finances page will also be expanded to be more realistic and advanced. Transfers have totally been re-developed with better shortlists and more true to life moves. Other additions come in the form of female manager support and the option to play in widescreen.

The team at Sports Interactive had the perfect chance to just reiterate on the formula with the release of FM Live. Personally I’m surprised they haven’t just released an updated stat pack but what they have done is included the most radical and surprisingly great changes to the game in recent memory. 3D match engine might not seem like a big deal for people outside of the FM community but this is something the game has always needed and it looks like they are doing a great job with it. I can’t wait to sink way too many hours into this one.