Although many prefer their video game sports to be played on consoles with full team control and interactivity, there is a strong community supporting the sports simulation side of the genre. With the 2013 version having a consistently strong showing in Steam’s game stats page, there’s no point in denying the popularity of Sports Interactive’s Football Manager series. In the age where playing in online rotisserie sports leagues is the norm, Football Manager 13’s success only makes sense. The idea of taking control of your favorite team in whatever league they may be in–chances are it’s featured in FM13–is certainly an attractive one.
Making the soon-to-be-released 2014 version, complete with over “1000 improvements,” an inevitability. And, hopefully, a good thing as well.
If you aren’t familiar with Football Manager’s presentation, it is essentially an in-depth graphical form of fantasy football (as in soccer, not NFL). As the title implies, you manager whatever team you’ve chosen. This means you’re responsible for the roster, the training, and the match-day preparation. Once these tasks are complete, you unleash your team on the opposition, and pray that your coaching/management impacts your team in a positive manner. In other words, players don’t get to control the players on the pitch once the game begins. This means you won’t be able to take your best player and dribble the length of the field, putting the ball in the back of the net while the defense looks on helplessly. If you want that kind of game, FIFA 14 will be out on September 25.
Again, those used to fantasy sports should be used to this lack of on-field control.
While you may not be able to directly impact the in-game outcome, you can watch every tortuous moment of it. To help make this a more enjoyable experience, Sports Interactive added some improvements to the match engine. While we’re not talking photo realism, the simulation doesn’t look bad at all:
The release date hasn’t been set in stone yet, but according to the Steam page, it’s expected to be launched “late 2013.”