Football Manager 2009 - Hands On Preview

Football Manager and the Championship Manager games that preceded it at Sports Interactive have always developed games under the 'evolution rather than revolution' mantra. Each yearly release has built on its predecessor in ways that aren't always immediately obvious, but develop a more detailed and streamlined experience year-on-year for what is undisputedly the best football management sim on the market.

This won't be the case for Football Manager 2009 because it offers the biggest expansion to the series since Championship Manager 4 in 2003 (when the 2D match engine was added). A 3D match engine is the headlining new addition for this year's FM on PC, which got us so excited when SI made the announcement last month that we nearly shed a tear of pure joy. It's true that 3D match engines have been in other football management games in the past, with Codemasters' LMA Manager being the pioneer, but they've always been pretty crumby or lacked decent enough managerial aspects underneath them to smash the addiction-o-meter.

2D Guarantee

'Surely this is where Football Manager 2009 could fill in the gap,' we thought when the announcement was made. With the code of its tried and tested 2D match engine being transferred directly onto this new 3D display there was the guarantee that player movement and behaviour would be recreated down to the last anal detail of the beautiful game. From our hands on we can confirm that this guarantee is definitely not void. The 3D match engine behaves exactly as the 2D one has over the years and if you want any further proof of this, then consider the fact that you can switch at will between the old 2D match engine and the new 3D one with no loading or interruption.

You'll see the same elastic movement of players within a formation as they make darting runs out of position before back-tracking into their rightful slot to wait for the next opportunity. The ratio of different types of scoring opportunities remain right on the button too, with enough but not too many goals coming from set-pieces, counter-attacks that happen at the right moments and with an accurate frequency, as well as the right mix of slow build-up play as well. The simulated matches play out more like real football than anything else in a computer game.

As far as animations are concerned, the build we played was 75% complete and there's clearly still a little bit of touching up to be done just to make sure all of the player movements flow together smoothly. It looks pretty good at this stage in development, with all of the swerving shots and long balls from the 2D engine being picked up well in the 3D display, as well as the odd skilful move from players (we noticed a couple of nifty back-heels). Players did seem to spin around a bit like ballerina figures from a music box on occasion, which looked a little bit strange, but the general passing and movement of player models was pretty solid.

A variety of camera angles will be on offer from the grand stand view to sideline cams and a slightly angled vertical perspective that follows action up and down the pitch. The thing is, from most of these views we found it difficult to get a good view of what all our players were doing at any one time. Side-on views obscured our view of what players were doing on the far side of the pitch, while vertical cameras sometimes missed the downfield action while following the ball around. The thing is, in many ways the 2D engine is actually more useful from a tactical perspective. It allows you to keep track of all your players at one time; it's easier to make out which player is which from the view, and assessing player movement is easier in two dimensions than it is in three.

None of these factors are to the detriment of the game though, because you can always switch back to the classic 2D view if you want to. What is to the detriment of the game, however, are a couple of interface features that SI has either not added in yet or simply decided to eliminate from last year's game. FM 2008 and its predecessors have two sliders that determine the speed at which a match can be viewed. If you have Highlights set to 'Key', then the Match Speed slider determines how fast minutes tick by when highlights aren't playing, while the Highlights Speed slider controls the speed of the 2D engine during a highlight. Curiously, in the build we played of FM 2009 there was no Highlights slider and only a Match Speed slider, which means that highlights play at a ridiculous speed in the 3D engine if you want to speed up the rest of the match (as most FM gamers tend to).

Another interface woe comes from the tactics screen. While you used to able to tell players to make curved or diagonal runs from the formation screen, we could only lay down straight runs (forwards, backwards, or sideways) in the tactics section of our preview code. Both this and the issue with the sliders may seem like minor things, but they actually make the gamer feel a bit powerless and that's the last thing you want in a FM game. However, where the power comes right back to you is in the new press conferences.

Stop The Press

These press conferences are generally held before and after games but can also be arranged at other key moments (e.g. when you start at a new club). The questions tend to follow the same basic format, such as "How confident are you for the match ahead?" or "Would you say your appointment at this club is a dream come true?" However, the press will often throw questions into the mix which react to occurrences in the game. For example, if a player takes exception to one of your locker room talks and voices their discontent to the media then journalists will often ask you questions on the matter in a press conference. In most cases, your best bet is to avoid inflammatory comments so that the hacks don't come away with a story that paints you badly, but sometimes they'll keep badgering you for a response even if you say no comment. This tends to be pretty effective and even though the system is just text chains generated from a spreadsheet, you really do feel the pressure and the FM magic that we know and love is all present and correct.

You'll also be asked questions about ongoing transfer speculation in the press conferences, in which case it might be better to say something provocative to try and make one of your targets request a transfer. Usually the feedback comes in the form of news pieces that turn up in your inbox and the way these articles are written clearly takes a lot of factors into account. For example, while playing as Liverpool we decided to don our sarcastic Rafa Benitez hat and take the piss a little. When asked who we thought would win the premiership we answered, "Stoke" (our next opponents), which prompted a news report that started, "Liverpool's manager seemed to be in an impatient mood as he fielded questions from the media before today's match..." The news report then went on to quote our answer to a different question (do we have a good chance of a win?), which displayed some pretty sharp spreadsheet work from the SI team.

Both the new match engine and the press conferences are certainly the most notable additions to the game, although there are many more tweaks and slight improvements that are certainly going to add more detail here and there. The list is far too extensive and exacting for us to go through all of them with a fine tooth comb in this preview, but needless to say that we've covered the most pressing areas here (you can check out the other enhancements on the SI website). What we will say is that the interface is more or less the same layout as last year's game. SI gave FM's layout a minor overhaul last year anyway so there's certainly no reason for them to go to town on it for 2009.