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Football Manager Classic 2014

Football Manager Classic 2014

Sports Interactive's excellent football management sim has been crammed onto PlayStation Vita.

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Football Manager's position as the premier football management sim isn't a result of luck. Hundreds, even thousands of people contribute to making the database, the secret sauce of Football Manager if you will, as accurate and as finely tuned as possible. Over decades the simulation and database has grown more refined and the numbers that are the basis for 2014's edition are sharp as ever. It's no wonder the database is being used by professional football teams to aid scouting.

It's this database and simulation that forms the core of the PS Vita edition - Football Manager Classic 2014. It's incredibly accurate and well tuned. As the name implies the game offers a version of the trimmed down "classic mode" from Football Manager 2014. This means that roughly ten years worth of added micromanagement trimmings have been stripped away for a more streamlined experience. But don't be fooled, it's still the same depth in terms of the simulation and the database that's at work beneath the surface.

Football Manager Classic 2014

While the PS Vita is a capable device it doesn't quite sport the kind of horse power you'll find in your desktop, and some concessions have been made. You can choose from leagues in a massive 51 nations (in England you can play as far down as Skrill North/South), but as maximum you can pick leagues from three nations - and choosing too many leagues will slow down your game quite severly. In our experience one nation with just a few leagues is the way to go.

Picking all the English leagues on offer gives you a two star rating out of five in terms of speed - so unless you want a lower league manager experience where you try and take, say Altrincham and try and win promotion on promotion, you should probably skip a few of the lower leagues to improve speed. This is where the immense database and detailed simulation is something of a double edged sword for Football Manager Classic 2014 - while we get the full experience, the full simulation - it's also causes long waits for the game to process data and load things. In fact, we'd recommend you change your idle settings on the Vita to be a little more generous as you'll stare att progress bars for much of the experience. To be honest, the full Football Manager 2014 experience is similar, but we often find ourselves listening/watching TV or even playing other games while we play FM on a desktop and with your Vita you're more locked into the experience so the waiting is more of a problem.

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Football Manager Classic 2014Football Manager Classic 2014

The high resolution of the PS Vita screens is of great benefit to a game like FM as tons of information can be crammed into each screen. A massive improvement compared to the PSP version, but as with the deep database and simulation this also presents a double edged sword. The developers have opted for a touch screen approach to the controls, and while extremely intuitive the small button and tabs mean that you'll make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Hitting the correct pixels with your thumb to execute a substitution can be a frustrating exercise. It's a shame on what's an otherwise well crafted user interface. There's a smart feature where you hide or bring out the top menu with the right trigger and everything you need is available in one or two touches.

Football Manager Classic 2014 marks the first time a portable FM title features the 3D match engine. And while we're the kind of mamangers who prefer to watch numbers and text commentary, it's still nice to be able to watch that crucial cup final play out on the pitch or take a close look at how your new formation and signings perform during those pre-season friendlies. Other than that we limited our viewing to key moments.

Football Manager Classic 2014
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The full career mode is the main way of experiencing FM, but we're also offered more specific challenges (things like injury crisis, avoiding relegation, managing a squad of youngsters) that are very fitting to the format. It provides us with more focussed objectives and is a great way of adding variation. And naturally each of these challenges in turn come in thousands of variations. We tried an injury crisis with Manchester City and our medicine was to buy Diego Cost for £32 million. He scored a hat trick in his second game and the injuries to Aguero, Dzeko, Jovetic and Negredo, didn't hurt quite as badly. Of course, you can't really solve a crisis at West Bromwich the same way.

Ultimately Football Manager Classic 2014 both succeeds and fails. The accuracy and simulation is flawless, and it's as addictive as it ever was. But the nature of having to wait for long stretches while data is being saved and processed, and the troublesome interface, means that we found ourselves booting up Football Manager 2014 on Steam instead of carrying on with the Vita edition.

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07 Gamereactor UK
7 / 10
+
The full deep FM simulation we're used to, Information presented neatly on the high-res Vita screen, Challenges fit well with the portable format.
-
Data processing will have you sit idle with your Vita a lot, Touch screen controls prove frustrating.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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