English
Gamereactor
reviews
Football Manager 2015

Football Manager 2015

There's a new Football Manager to deprive us of sleep and distract us from our daily duties. How glorious. And during the busiest month of the year. Even better.

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

Year after year Sports Interactive's timesink sells incredibly well and sees the average player spend well over 100 hours on the game. Yeah, that's the average - not an extreme. It's simply that kind of game - the kind that will see the sun rise and send it beams over your shoulder and onto the screen as dawn breaks. As it should be then.

In many ways the franchise has reached a point where all the major (and minor) aspects of running a football club are simulated to some degree. But improvements can always be made in all areas and as usual the latest Football Manager release tweaks and touches up nearly every aspect of the formula.

We're not completely at home with the new user interface - some of the changes left us searching for basic features for far too long (moving players between the full squad and the reserves, for example). It's the kind of stuff you'll likely get completely used to after a handful of hours with the new game, but in some ways it feels like the interface is something that gets a tweak whether it needs it or not. But perhaps the sidebar is the best longterm solution for this kind of game.

Football Manager 2015
At the start of the game you will be asked to set up your manager profile distributing stats in various categories that have been there in the background for many years.
This is an ad:

Improvements have been made in terms of the 3D match engine and the match view is more useful and customisable than ever. However, the 3D match engine is still far from being enjoyable and match situations often look very strange, not just in terms of animations but what actually happens. The tactical options and control are extremely detailed, and yet when we watch the games play out something as basic as the pace of a winger compared the pace of the fullback he's facing can be the deciding factor of a match, much like in real life.

One of the first new things you'll come across is the fact that you can customise the abilities of your manager. You're manager has in fact had these stats for many years now and as you progress they've changed, but they've always remained hidden - that is until now. Now it's possible to alter these parameters ahead of starting the game to tailor your manager to the needs you have. It's in no way a perfect system, in fact, some of it kind of contradicts the "God game"-nature of Football Manager. For instance, why should you have a rating when it comes to judging player ability or potential? Isn't that something where your own experience and knowledge should be the only factor? Here you have the exact same set of abilities as any NPC and maybe that is a flaw in the design that is now a little more visible. Still we kind of like the fact that the veil has been lifted and that players are given more insight into how the persona they're creating and shaping through their actions actually impacts the game.

We're still not fans of how media relations and press conferences play out. Perhaps this is an area that needs a complete redesign rather than gradual small improvements and fine tuning. Sure you can hand these duties off to your assistant. But that's not really addressing the issue. Perhaps the sad truth is that outside of José Mourinho, the conversations between media and football managers are rather dull and formulaic and perhaps then FM is only replicating life.

Football Manager 2015
We prefer the 2D view match engine.
This is an ad:

Scouting is another area that has received a make over and now reflects the reality that scouting isn't an exact science. There's no such thing as a perfect scout. Then again playing as Barcelona I found my scouts not finding any players in Germany and wanting to stop scouting the Champion's League as there were no players "good enough to recommend". One has to ask from where Barcelona can find new players if the Champion's League isn't good enough.

One interesting aspect about the evolution of Football Manager in recent years is the realisation from the developers that a large portion of their fanbase simply don't have the time and patience to commit themselves to the increasingly complex nature of the main mode simulation. This gave birth to FM Classic - a stripped down version of the game that in many ways reverts the game back to how it was maybe ten years ago in terms of features, but still retains all the advancements made in terms of the database and simulation since those days. It's not the perfect solution, but between that and the option to tailor what responsibilities you want to take on in the full simulation mode every football fan, regardless of the daily schedules, should be able to find a way to fit in the FM experience.

As always the incredible depth of the database is what truly elevates Football Manager 2015 from the competition. You're likely going to find out who the next few breakout stars in world football are going to be if you simulate it for a few seasons (and likely you'll also take a liking to some prospects in game that will never pan out).

Football Manager 2015
The 3D match engine is hardly stellar looking on a laptop.

There have been a lot of online complaints over excessive scorelines and far too many injuries. We haven't really experienced anything too bad (even if injuries are hitting hard and often), but perhaps it is the weird realities of modern football that come into play. If FM is to factor in the frequency of injuries at Arsenal or Manchester United, then yes, some players will be hit what that misfortune (we lost Neymar, Iniesta and Pedro in one game with Barcelona - just a couple of weeks into the season we only had 6 substitutes on the bench) - and if teams are balanced like Real Madrid the scorelines may well be ridiculous. Perhaps there are one or two dials that SI Games didn't set just right prior to pushing the game onto Steam. Likely one or two tweaks or hot fixes are needed to get it settled. Then again trying to adapt to random spells of frequent injuries is part of being a football manager. We certainly felt that the results were more even-keeled when in the 2D match engine than when using the 3D match engine, but that's anecdotal if anything.

However, most of the game appears balanced against reality. If you are to manage Manchester United you may want to invest in a quality centre back and with Liverpool you're in for a bumpy ride without Suarez. But as always the Premier League appears to be the league that has received the most playtesting ahead of release and thus is the most balanced and realistic.

There really aren't any viable alternatives to Football Manager out there, and perhaps that is part of the problem. There isn't the incentive to truly rip out any of the major systems and completely redesign them from the core. To be honest much of the foundation of the database is the same now as it was when the game merely covered the top four English leagues - it still does a good job with simulating leagues from around the world of varying quality, but it is clearly at its best at the top levels of football. The current game may need a bit of tweaking and balancing to get the injury frequency to normal levels (again, we'd have to play the game A LOT to know whether it's actually a real problem and not related to a particular pre-season set up) and perhaps tweak a few aspects of the 3D match engine simulation.

Football Manager 2015
The frequency of injuries is something we found a little annoying in the early goings - are we pushing our team too hard or does this need to be tweaked? Tough to tell.

It's a great game at its core, it just falls short in some respects in terms of game balance. Hopefully tweaks will be released to ensure a good experience between now and the major update we're typically getting at the close of the winter transfer window. We find ourselves saving our progress and calling it quits earlier in the evening than we were expecting and it might be that the franchise is in need of a major shake up. As it stands FM2015 is a rather weak 8 on our scale.

We played Football Manager 2015 on our gaming laptop and the performance in terms of speed using leagues from England and Scotland was very good. No major technical flaws were noticed. If you want to have a large number of leagues running simultaneously you will need a rather powerful rig.

08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
+
Giving the RPG aspects of your manager career more of a spotlight is a nice move, Brilliant database and research as always, Caters to all levels of armchair managers, Scouting and training have gotten welcome tweaks, Tons of tactical options.
-
3D match engine still has ways to go until it looks anything like the real game, Injury frequency appeared inflated (especially when using the 3D match engine), Not a great deal of innovation to be found.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

Related texts

0
Football Manager 2015Score

Football Manager 2015

REVIEW. Written by Bengt Lemne

"It's a great game at its core, it just falls short in some respects in terms of game balance."



Loading next content