Football Manager 2015

[Benji]

You and I have very different ideas about what Gods should be. Then again, about his only goal for Blackburn was against the Dingles......

He's done great for me, IIRC he was 12 goals in 24 games and plenty of assists too, all for a free transfer and a very reasonable wage.

[Noah]

Saw this review on steam. Guy doesn't like it.

I'm a Fifa Manager guy. However as it has been discontinued, I had to move to Football Manager. A friend taught me the ropes, and I've been playing for a while. I played with Liverpool, AC Milan, Bayer Leverkusen and Atletico Madrid. No game has gone to mid season.

I studied, researched and spent a lot of time talking to friends about this game. I wish I hadn't.

This is just the worst Manager game I've ever played.

[Gazz]

Does anyone know how to improve a club's corporate facilities beyond building an entirely new stadium?

How about you cater to the real fucking fans, you fucking corporate prawn sandwich sell out. Who do you think you are? Rich?

[Benji]

I don't know what they were for, I just wanted to improve them because seeing them as "average" bothers me >_>

[Rich]

Did someone say Prawn Sandwich?

[stokeriño]

Saw this review on steam. Guy doesn't like it.

I'm a Fifa Manager guy. However as it has been discontinued, I had to move to Football Manager. A friend taught me the ropes, and I've been playing for a while. I played with Liverpool, AC Milan, Bayer Leverkusen and Atletico Madrid. No game has gone to mid season.

I studied, researched and spent a lot of time talking to friends about this game. I wish I hadn't.

This is just the worst Manager game I've ever played.

I'm guessing that's the full depth of his review? Shame... I always have a morbid curiosity for the reasoning on things like this.

Does anyone know how to improve a club's corporate facilities beyond building an entirely new stadium?

How about you cater to the real fucking fans, you fucking corporate prawn sandwich sell out. Who do you think you are? Rich?

BENJI OUT

[Noah]

Saw this review on steam. Guy doesn't like it.

I'm a Fifa Manager guy. However as it has been discontinued, I had to move to Football Manager. A friend taught me the ropes, and I've been playing for a while. I played with Liverpool, AC Milan, Bayer Leverkusen and Atletico Madrid. No game has gone to mid season.

I studied, researched and spent a lot of time talking to friends about this game. I wish I hadn't.

This is just the worst Manager game I've ever played.

I'm guessing that's the full depth of his review? Shame... I always have a morbid curiosity for the reasoning on things like this.

Well to be fair he did give several more paragraphs in explanation, I cut it to that due to laziness mostly but also because cherry picking that bit made it look funnier.

His main reason seemed to be that he felt nothing that he did mattered. No action he took in game really influenced anything.

[Meacon Keaton]

Saw this review on steam. Guy doesn't like it.

I'm a Fifa Manager guy. However as it has been discontinued, I had to move to Football Manager. A friend taught me the ropes, and I've been playing for a while. I played with Liverpool, AC Milan, Bayer Leverkusen and Atletico Madrid. No game has gone to mid season.

I studied, researched and spent a lot of time talking to friends about this game. I wish I hadn't.

This is just the worst Manager game I've ever played.

I'm guessing that's the full depth of his review? Shame... I always have a morbid curiosity for the reasoning on things like this.

Well to be fair he did give several more paragraphs in explanation, I cut it to that due to laziness mostly but also because cherry picking that bit made it look funnier.

His main reason seemed to be that he felt nothing that he did mattered. No action he took in game really influenced anything.

In other words, he didn't win every game and he didn't care for that.

[stokeriño]

There's also the possibility that he took over a club like Real Madrid with a Sunday League reputation and wondered why Cristiano Ronaldo thought his opinion was worth fuck all.

[Noah]

What's even funnier is the person who replied to his review, agreeing with the guy.

"Nothing you do matters."

I had Manuel Neuer concede 4 goals against a freaking Chinese team and lost 1-4! I mean, even if I rolled my face over the keyboard and picked whatever tactic, a full-strength Bayern Munich team would NEVEr lose 1-4 to a Chinese team in 1.000,00 matches!

Best GK in the world conceding 4 goals to Chinese players!!!!!

[Whisper]

Saw this review on steam. Guy doesn't like it.

I'm a Fifa Manager guy. However as it has been discontinued, I had to move to Football Manager. A friend taught me the ropes, and I've been playing for a while. I played with Liverpool, AC Milan, Bayer Leverkusen and Atletico Madrid. No game has gone to mid season.

I studied, researched and spent a lot of time talking to friends about this game. I wish I hadn't.

This is just the worst Manager game I've ever played.

I'm guessing that's the full depth of his review? Shame... I always have a morbid curiosity for the reasoning on things like this.

Well to be fair he did give several more paragraphs in explanation, I cut it to that due to laziness mostly but also because cherry picking that bit made it look funnier.

His main reason seemed to be that he felt nothing that he did mattered. No action he took in game really influenced anything.

Not that anything he said in that "review" was any way accurate, but it does outline what I think is a pretty big problem with the series, specifically for new players.

There isn't much by way of feedback for players, particularly around tactical changes. FM does a pretty poor job of explaining how selecting, for example, "drop deeper" will affect team performance, or how it will work in conjunction with other (possibly conflicting) instructions. Sure, it's a non issue for those of us who have played forever, but I imagine it can be pretty daunting to new players.

[Benji]

Does anyone know how to improve a club's corporate facilities beyond building an entirely new stadium?

How about you cater to the real fucking fans, you fucking corporate prawn sandwich sell out. Who do you think you are? Rich?

BENJI OUT

Have you seen the kind of improvements I've made to this club, you ostrich?

[Noah]

I'm a FIFA Manager guy. However, as it has been discontinued, I had to move to Football Manager. A friend taught me the ropes, and I've been playing for a while. I played with Liverpool, AC Milan, Bayer Leverkusen and Atlético Madrid. No game has gone to mid-season.

I studied, researched and spent a lot of time talking with friends about this game. I wish I hadn't.

This is just the worst Manager game I've ever played for a simple reason: Nothing you do matters. I bought Marco Reus and Alex Oxdale-Chamberlain to play on the wings. Might as well have kept the money for myself and used Emile Heskey and Djimi Traoré there. The most skilled player cannot dribble past the worst defender. The best crosser of the ball cannot beat the first man. The tallest and best header cannot score 3 goals a season from crosses. Every team play the exact same way, and most goals come from the same three things: Shots from outside the box, defensive mistakes and free-kicks. In upwards of 300 hours spent in the game, I don't think I saw a single goal from a corner. However, three times I saw a goalkeeper handle the ball outside the box and get booked, and two of those free-kicks resulted in goals.

Players are so unbelievably stupid that it's annoying. Steven Gerrard to take a free kick on the edge of the box. You think he's going for goal. No. He's going to pass it back to the left back, who will then try to dribble and lose it. You think Asmir Begovic is a good goalkeeper? Well, he's not above handling the ball outside of the box when trying to boot it upfield.

I'd always been told that Football Manager was all about the tactics, and that it is the hardest thing to manage. Well, it is hard. Specially because no matter how you set your team up to play, they will always play the same way. You can try to get the best passers of the game, but they will misplace at least 30% of their 6 yard passes. This is so frustrating I'm at a loss for words.

Injuries? Well, how's this for a list. Before the third match of the season, I had the following players injured: Steven Gerrard, Jordan Henderson, Alex Oxdale-Chamberlain, Alberto Moreno, John Flanagan, Marco Reus, Adam Lallana, Daniel Sturridge, Asmir Begovic and Mario Balotelli. That's BEFORE THE THIRD MATCH! All of those players (bar Lallana and Reus, who are injured at the start of the season) got injured during pre season! Seriously?

Unless this game is heavily patched to fix everything that's not just wrong, but plain dumb, I'll be forced to stop playing a genre I really enjoy because EA were not competent enough to keep FIFA Manager going, and because SEGA apparently have no clue what a football match looks like.

I'll wait and see. But I will not hope for much.

The full review.

[badotori]

Well to be fair he did give several more paragraphs in explanation, I cut it to that due to laziness mostly but also because cherry picking that bit made it look funnier.

His main reason seemed to be that he felt nothing that he did mattered. No action he took in game really influenced anything.Not that anything he said in that "review" was any way accurate, but it does outline what I think is a pretty big problem with the series, specifically for new players.

There isn't much by way of feedback for players, particularly around tactical changes. FM does a pretty poor job of explaining how selecting, for example, "drop deeper" will affect team performance, or how it will work in conjunction with other (possibly conflicting) instructions. Sure, it's a non issue for those of us who have played forever, but I imagine it can be pretty daunting to new players.

They've at least got the feature now where if you select "drop deeper" from the drop-down menu, the likes of "push higher up" will be highlighted in red just to basically say "don't choose this as well, you muppet".

Do the in-built tutorials cover the tactics screen at all?

[Baddar]

I wasn't aware you COULD choose two conflicting instructions.

[stokeriño]

Yeah, I thought if you selected one, it turned the other off.

[badotori]

Yeah it does but I thought that wasn't a feature in the likes of FM11 or 12? I'm not sure, I'd have to check when I've got Steam to hand. Just seems to be made more obvious in the newer versions.

[Meacon Keaton]

I have been playing FM11 for years, and it doesn't notify you. But I've never played a second of soccer...err football, in my life, and still understood how stuff like that worked. Doesn't take a football mind to realize telling your players to stay back conflicts with when you told them to press forward.

[Whisper]

Not everything is as directly conflicting as that though. I mean, you can set your team up to play high tempo, direct passing, retain possession and drop much deeper. I'm not sure those 4 instructions would work particularly well together and that's before throwing your overall mentality into the mix.

I think the game could be a little kinder to newer (and younger?) players, just by telling them how each of these instructions will work with the other. I can imagine a lot of people's frustrations come from not understanding why their team can't keep the ball for toffee, can't create chances etc. The game gives you very little feedback in that regard.

[Noah]

I have been playing FM11 for years, and it doesn't notify you. But I've never played a second of soccer...err football, in my life, and still understood how stuff like that worked. Doesn't take a football mind to realize telling your players to stay back conflicts with when you told them to press forward.

I played heaps when I was younger. Constantly kicking people in the shins helped prepare me for games such as this.