NIDZUMI+

It might not be a big deal across the pond for obvious reasons but back in Europe, Football Manager is generally regarded as a big deal. Every year prospective wannabee managers get another simulation complete with game changing improvements along with a brand new database with brand new talent to be picked out. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was surprised by the quality seen in the last core version of the game (FM2009). Not only did it feature series changing experiments and features but it also delivered on nearly every promise and offered a brilliant simulation to boot. That’s why it’s impressive that they have managed to get Football Manager Live out already so soon after the last rendition. But if your worrying about any kind of over saturation of management think again because the addictiveness has been taken up to a whole different level.

Football Manager Live is essentially an MMO filled with managers and clubs. There are up to a thousand teams in each gameworld and they are then split into different FA’s, depending on play times, and then they are split into different leagues. There are also official cup competitions and overall global competitions within the gameworld. You can also partake in friendly matches against anyone who is online at the same and if your willing to put some cash up on the line you can enter user ran competitions and leagues on the side.

You start off by naming your own custom team. Forget dreams of taking your local Blue Sq. Conference side to European glory as no real teams are present. You then get to pick every little detail about our club such as the stadium name, the kit colours and even the number of main and youth squads you would like. The kit creator is a nice touch and offers a lot of variety. Hundreds of colours and kit combinations result in nobody having the exact same kit as you and you can even upload your own club badge along with a team mission statement. Although these are nice features and you can tastefully design your self a nice club most of the time you’ll either be playing against some one with a horribly edited club badge done on Photoshop or someone with puke covered kit colours. Despite that it works as part of the games charm.

While at the start you get a 24 hour grace period to pick your squad from the list of free agents. You’ll have to be pretty quick if you want to get any recognizable names but the idea here is that you stick with the generated players until you build up the cash reserves. Although I would recommend going all out during this period as the game has an awkward transfer system that doesn’t really favor the rich or at least in the gameworld I played it didn’t. Due to a rule that stops you making profit on a player you’ve just signed, most players are locked to a club due to their managers reluctance to sell and generally speaking the only way of obtaining a player is by a part exchange. It makes sense from a game and a managers point of view but it means that if you want big name players you’ll have to either get lucky or bid on a wage auction and these are auctions for players who aren’t attached to a club. The auction starts as soon as someone makes a bid and 24 hours later the player goes to the club with the highest bid. Makes sense but the game does put a high tax and fee rate on these players so this isn’t a place for bargains. It also doesn’t help the marketplace with inflation but it explains why nobody sells their best players even for ridiculous fees.

Weird rules aside the game does a great job of creating a community. The chat rooms and chat features during matches really help you meet new managers and eventually forge friendships that can help you later on. Your league might be limited to a few teams but you’ll meet a lot of people through friendlys and competitions. A lot of my deals have came out of these brief encounters during matches. But the community aspect is present all around although with the amount of people online combined with the unnatural rules the game has it becomes repetitive explaining everything to people over and over again. For example the previously mentioned tax rule on bought players had to be explained over and over again to people who were trying to make three times as much profit on a player. Despite the massive announcements, the complex rules have a way of confusing newer players and then in turn this causes even more confusion. Especially when once I had to tell a moderator about a few of the rules. Still if you need an answer the community and chat rooms are normally there straight away.

Speaking of matches the game’s engine is similar to the 2D engine seen in recent simulations. The 3D isn’t present but the 2D is fast and slick enough to do the job. We would have liked to see the 3D engine but that doesn’t seem to be viable over the internet. Still the game as a whole runs smoothly and surprisingly the game will take up less than 50Mb (after patches) as all the data is stored server side. The client does a very good job of retrieving the information without too much of a wait unless your playing over a shockingly horrible connection.

To veterans of the Football Manager franchise this game will appear to be a nice change of pace at first but soon you’ll be bogged down in weird rules and financial fees. Football Manager Live is more of a simulation of the core game. That might sound weird but after playing the game for a while you’ll realize it soon enough. This by no way is a bad thing as the game plays smoothly and offers a great sense of community within a unique world. But this will probably be suited for a hardcore FM audience instead of the casually accessible of the main game. More intense players will learn to forgive the awkward-ness of a new challenge and find a new addiction even if it is different from the core game you know and love. Still if you love Football Manager then don’t hesitate for a second and pick the simulation of a simulation, just be warned that it will be hard to put down afterwards.