Football Manager 2011 Preview

Well it's that time again, the time women all over the country fear, the release of the latest Football Manager game. The game that causes more sleepless nights, frustrations, and divorces than almost any other game, apart from the dreaded World of Warcraft.

In case you have been living under a rock for the whole of eternity, I'll give you a bit of an overview of what the game concept is. As the name suggests, here we are looking at a football management game, ever wanted to take over your favourite club and lead them to the top of the world? Take over the national side and see how well you could do? Well that's what the Football Manager series allows you to do, and it's been doing it better than the rest for well over 20 years now.

So, let's take a look at what's new this year.

This year we have lots to look forward too, there are many updates to the interface, and many updates to the transfer system and a general overhaul of the game making it feel quicker in general use.

The transfer system has been given a full face lift, no longer is the agent just the faceless message that asks you to take a look at this client, oh no. This year he is a fully interactive member of the game world, you will have to haggle with him before his client even takes a look at your offer.

One of the other aspects given a face lift is interaction with the media, again, this takes more of a conversational feel, rather than what sometimes felt like taking part in a survey than a conversation with the media sharks of the sporting world.

Nearly all interactions with people in the game world take on a more conversational feel this year, even talking to players, the board and other managers. Giving the game more of a feel of a living breathing world than, as has been said of the game, a graphical spreadsheet.
Once again the 3D match engine has been updated too; more player animations and goal celebrations have been added, along with more stadium graphics and sideline banners. Not that these stay in many peoples' games long as the FM community soon releases extra graphics and themes for the game to personalise it to your own tastes.

The biggest debut in this year's version however is the inclusion of social networking, you can now upload the highlights of games to YouTube, and keep people updated with your teams progress via Twitter as well. Not sure how much of a great inclusion this is, but it is welcome none the less.

The general interface when starting the game has also been given a brush up, now easier to navigate than before and also easier to see how selecting more leagues, players etc will impact on game speed.

This year seems to be the update we have waited quite a few years for, after finding the 2010 version little more than a data update to 2009's effort this feels like it could be the big one.
The game is released on November 5th 2010, so look forward to the forthcoming review from us.