Football Manager 2012 PC Review - PAGE 1

Football Manager is back with a bang for the 2011-2012 season, boasting many new features and designs. Let's see how it shapes up.

New features

The new “Adaptive Layout” feature is very useful if, like me, you have a large monitor and prefer it as opposed to windowed mode. When using windowed mode there are only four panels in view, but when adjusted to full screen, that's expanded to nine. You can see it in action with the video below.

The most highly anticipated feature of Football Manager since the 3D match engine is the ability to add and remove leagues. I’m a great fan of having a journeyman career, so for example, if I was to load England only as a playable nation and then get fed up with winning everything, I could load Spain as another playable nation in the same save and try to win the Liga BBVA. A lot of work has been put into countering the possibility of leaving countries without players when you wish to manage there; teams will maintain most of their original players, unless their whole team gets purchased, so it’s highly unlikely the team you wish to manage will have a completely overhauled squad.

The camera angle Director’s Cut is the last of the new features and is a great add-on to the 3D match engine experience. It not only makes the game seem more realistic, it's a great way to watch the match, too. Camera angles like main stand, touchline and behind goals are all incorporated, saving a lot of hassle. For example, when watching a team like Liverpool dominating Manchester United at Anfield, you might see Stewart Downing suddenly cut his cross back to the edge of David De Gea’s box, at which point Steven Gerrard runs on to it and smashes the ball towards the top right hand corner; at this point De Gea might reach his fingertips to it and send it behind for a corner. Before, this would require pausing the game, backing out of the TV view and changing the camera angle to behind the goal so the corner could be seen more clearly; now you can watch the same match in FM12 and not have to do this because Director’s Cut has already switched camera angles for you. Swell!

Improvements

Gameplay has been improved through 'Contract Negotiations'. In FM11, a bid may have been accepted for a player who subsequently requested too much in wages per week which a club may not have agreed with and as a result, broke off negotiations. If the same scenario occurrs in FM12, the player’s agent is informed the wage budget is 'locked up' (can't be exceeded). As a bonus, if there isn’t the wage budget to match what the player or agent requires, you can just tell them this and hope the player will try to negotiate other parts of the contract to make up for what he’s losing out on. Further, loyalty bonuses can now be offered to players who want to leave the club, but you want to hold on to. If you can manage to persuade them to sign a deal with a little more money and add in that clause, they may stay if a club comes in for them.

Scouting is a feature many members have wanted to see improved in recent years, and I’m sure a lot of people will be very happy with the changes. There is now a much improved “Next Opposition” report from head scouts which enables preparation for the next match a whole lot easier. Not only are there in-depth reports about the next fixture available, but reports about any team in the game as well. ‘Squad Comparison' (one component) sees your scouts make comparisons between your team and the team you are playing next, or just the team you want to scout. This will break down a club into Goalkeepers, Defenders, Midfielders and Strikers and from there, players can be compared from the best to the worst rated out of five stars. From here, it can also be seen what players are best in certain positions, and for a simple yet comprehensive team comparison, research can be undertaken on stats like average age, height, weight, caps in the squad, and wage bills, right down to the number of players unavailable for the club.

Player scouting enhancements are in full form. The scouts are now more intelligent than ever and use their own initiative, and instead of just using the same scout continuously, the ‘Scouting Pool’ comes in to play, sending out a member of the scouting team or a coach (if you’re too broke to have a scout) without having to select a certain one. This comes in very handy if there’s a great selection of scouts and uncertainty about which would be best suited to the job.

Last year for the first time in Football Manager’s existence social networking integration appeared, enabling videos to be posted to YouTube or tweets to be made about being the "greatest manager evar". This year, it's taken a step further with Facebook integration and more control over YouTube videos. Facebook posts (including Match Reports) can be made directly through the game; with YouTube, you can choose whether you want the entire game or certain parts (a brilliant save, terrible penalty, thunderbolt, great or bad tackle, individual goal, etc.). When it's all done, you can preview the clip before uploading it to make sure it's just how you want it. If you don’t have or want a YouTube account, you can always just save the clip to your hard drive.

The length of time taken to load and process matches in FM11 was quite annoying to say the least; in FM12, it's much more smooth and fast, just the way it should be.

Visuals & Audio

When you get to the main menu of FM12, you are met by a fiery red layout, which I prefer to last year's cool blue. As always, there are two skins you can choose in the preferences screen: the retro grey/white skin and the dark skin. An attribute colour changer is available as well, and is very handy. Changing the attribute colours in FM11 proved greatly frustrating as I had to download many programs and try and incorporate them into the game, whereas now I can open preferences, click on “Display & Sound” then “Attribute Colour” and change whatever I want. What would take me a few hours on last year's game now takes five minutes on this year’s edition.

One major downside here is the audio hasn’t been upgraded from FM11, but a simple download from sortitoutsi.net fixes that.

Final thoughts

Football Manager 2012 is a vast improvement over its predecessors. In terms of look, feel and even just the general graphical user interface developments, it marks a major overhaul over previous versions. If you haven’t bought the game in the last few years and were undecided about this one: this is the year for you to break the mold. If however, you have been counting the days until release and can’t wait to purchase, you will not be disappointed.