Video Games Suck - Football Manager 2009

Yet again I am reviewing a football game, but I can't help it. Football is like a microbe in countries like Romania and we are addicted to it. So without further ado, here it is: Football Manager 2009.

Sports Interactive have launched yet another game for the Football Manager series, this time with 2009 rosters and an improved 3D match engine. With everyone singing its praises you'd think this game (and the series, in general) is the perfect football experience, but as you will find out, there are a number of problems that hinders this game from being great.

First and foremost, this game is very addictive and there are a lot of players calling it a perfect game. It is perfect only in terms of addiction. You have an indicator in this game of how many hours you spent on the game. If you are a fan of football and you play this game, easily in a few days the indicator will pop to +24 hours. And 1 day spent on this game is only the first rank of addiction, which is called "mildly addicted". You literally spend days on this game, and if you think about it, most games have a length of only 10-20 hours.

So let's just pop up right to the standard layout for the review (stolen covertly from Suislide):

Graphics: The major improvement for the series is the change from 2D matches to 3D matches. The only problem is that calling the engine an "improvement" is very far-fetched if not totally wrong. The 3D they put in is a joke. Considering that Sports Interactive earns a shitload (I had to use profane language in this review) of money from selling millions of copies of the game you would've expected something more decent, like the match engine from EA Sport's FIFA Manager. But no, the only good thing about this 3D engine is that it's 3D,but the actual quality is nonexistent. Graphics get a 1/10 for this game.

Sound: This game doesn't have any sound. No wait, it does have some: the sound of fans cheering, some sound effects, etc which are decent, but there is no music. FIFA Manager has music, and Football Manager is more popular (= more copies sold= more money earned). So with the money, it would've been nice for SI to add some music to the game, but I don't know, maybe it would've spoiled the style of the game. Who knows, it's a possibility, so let's just leave it at that.

Gameplay: This is where the game is thought to be perfect, spot on, excellent and without a flaw. But as I see it, this game still has room for improvement. Yes, the game is realistic, but you might even call it too realistic. If you're not a professional coach or manager in the real game, you can only survive in this game by downloading tactics over the internet. This is the problem: the creation of tactics that are not uber crap. The way I see the problem solved is the creation of some good and informative tutorials that help the player on the tactical part or the introduction of an easy difficulty that would suit the newcomers to the series. Either way, this game must be the most difficult game on the market, and it's a real surprise because this game is still very popular, even with its overall huge difficulty.

There are still a lot of good parts in this game, which are a very realistic transfer market, good player database and just a realistic game in general. But the major downside still remains the difficulty and until you find a good tactic (on the internet or created by you) this game will annoy you very much, because you will lose and lose, no matter what quality players you have transfered in.

Story: You are a 15 year old boy out of China named Yao Ming and you have been selected to play for your dream team from the Chinese First League. A new adventure begins for you when... wait, this game doesn't have any story.

So yeah, I think that this game is solid but still it definitely needs improving on some key components.

7/10