About two months ago, we told you about Championship Manager going on sale for only £.01 in a presale deal. So today, as part of our quest to provide equal time to the various (i.e., two) different football management simulation games out there, we’re announcing that CM 2010′s main competitor – Football Manager 2010 – has released a demo. You can download the demo via the Football Manager website; it comes in two “flavors”, one with several leagues and one with just England and Scotland. The demo’s fully-featured and allows you to play half a season for free; you only have to wait a couple of weeks before the game comes out (on October 30th) to get the full thing (although you will have to pay full price for it; no special preorder deals are available, probably because this game is better).
Now, I have to be honest: I’m a complete Football Manager (or, as we call it stateside, “World Soccer Manager”) geek. I did purchase the CM game for a penny, but since it’s got fewer leagues, a different interface, and different rules, I really haven’t played it at all; instead, I continued on with my season as manager of Fiorentina in the 2015-16 season (I just snuck past Real Madrid on away goals in the Champions League semis after clinching Serie A back in April). I understand there are diehard CM guys, and I mean them no disrespect, but that game seems to blow
FM 2009 was my first foray into the game, so I never played with “dots”; the 3D match engine is the only one I know. Still, just looking at the change log, there are tons of little tweaks I’m really excited about. Among them:
- A “Match Analysis” tool that shows you what your team did after the fact. I’m positive I’ll spend far more time than is really necessary with this feature, which will show who passed to whom, where there were fouls, and (hopefully) where your player actually was all match. Remember those heat maps for Conor Casey that showed how he liked to hang out basically around the center circle? I’m thinking this will be like that.
- A tactics “wizard” that’s supposed to make setting up your tactics (which is the hardest part of the game, and one that I only sort of half understand) easier. I can’t say I’m 100% thrilled about this, but since the old slider system is still there I can just ignore it if it sucks. There are also new tactical instructions; you can tell your wingers, for example, that whether you want them to “cut in” or “hug the touchline”, which is fantastic as you no longer need to trick the match engine to get the result you want.
- A news center that allows you to track certain clubs, competitions, players, whatever. How often did you want to scout the U-19 World Cup but didn’t because you forgot to? That’s a thing of the past with this; just subscribe to the tournament.
- You can now give “touchline shouts” to change things like tactics, kick takers, and individual instructions on the fly in a match. Also, you can give a team talk to your sub before he goes on; that’s going to be really helpful to avoid complacency in the striker you send on in the last half hour of a blowout. Speaking of team talks, there are also more options available for those, so you won’t get stuck in a rut.
- Press conferences (which, really, were FAR too easy to manipulate) have gotten an overhaul, with more questions asked of you with less repetition. You can also call a press conference to announce a new signing, and you can tell a new signing that you’re planning on grooming him for later so your veteran doesn’t get unsettled because you signed a sixteen year old to replace him in four years. Good stuff.
Those are just a few of the changes from FM ’09; needless to say, I’m far more interested in this game than I am in CM. Frankly, depending on how Liverpool’s season goes, I may be more interested in FM than in real soccer. Time will tell on that.
