HEY THERE FM-PLAYING LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!
Have you ever experienced:
- That your favourite player gets sold against your will because of that stupid chairman who ironically "loves his club" ?
- Savegame crashes?
- Not signing Lauri Dalla Valle?
- Not winning the treble each season?
Well, don't be afraid! Football Manager 2009 promises to fix all this and add 147+ old new features. I was lucky enough to get to test the FM09 beta and here's my preview of this new installment of FM. Enjoy.
The new, slightly improved skin. Clicking the fast-backwards button brings you to the beginning of the last transfer window.
First impressions
First of all, I have to say that SI have done it once again. They've listened to the gamers and instead of just recycle that old FM05-game, and they've taken the game one step further towards the perfect football manager game. One of the new features I enjoy the most is the enhanced holiday-mode, which let your team win every single match for as long as you'll like. I've used this new feature frequently, as it saves me alot of time because I no longer have to reload the game whenever I l
The new holiday-mode. Bravo SI!
The game is just as hard as FM08, though. The new team talks during training, holidays and dinners might seem challenging at first, but luckily there's no new things to say in this version either. Be aware though: telling your players to "do this for the supporters" during spring break might leave them confused and unhappy. The worst case scenario you could get from this is your whole team commiting suicide, a feature that has been requested for years by the fans of the series. Players can also die on and off the pitch from other causes; peeing on electrical fences is perhaps the most frequent one. One season five of my strikers died of peeing on electrical fences, which was kinda annoying.
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Deaths adds a whole new tactical twist to FM09. "Is my new youngster likely to die during his next three years?" Hiring a fortune teller might be a good idea, although from my experience they're pretty shit.
Online gaming and other new features
The multiplayer part of FM has long been the Achilles' heel for these games, but now it's finally looking better than ever before. The new online-mode "Hurry up!" only allow players 24 seconds to look around before they are forced to continue, which should be plenty enough time to scout players, but not enough time to brag enough about your performance over MSN. It's still to early to say if this will get popular among the majority of the FM-players since most players constantly brag about their savegames on forums and through IM. But I feel that it has some potential.
As for leagues and players, there are no new leagues added so far, and it probably won't be added any new since that most likely requires stepping out of the house to watch matches in real life. But players in the already playable leagues in FM have had the opportunity to send in their own suggestions for their own attributes, considering that the players themselves know eachother best. This has taken realism to a higher level, although many players have 20 in all attributes.
Match engine
Like FM08 did when it was new, FM09 introduces a new match-engine, and this year SI has gone for the 3D-option after threads like "I don't believe that the guys at SI can even make 3D animations." Well guys, SI has got you by the balls and you are probably already banned from the internet. Sucks to be you. Anyway, the new match engine is doing its job and will probably attract more younger players to the game, and the older players will get old and lose their current ability to win after being used to seeing Kallstrom score from one net to another. Well luckily you can holiday 20 years and no one will notice.
Xavier in his debut for Colchester Reserves.
Final words
All in all, Football Manager 2009 looks like a solid game already. There's still some minor bugs like way too many players dying each season, but hopefully this will be fixed with a couple of patches after the game has been released. I can't wait for this new game though, so I've decided to put myself in the freezer for a couple of months.
pre-Rating: 98% Pre-order it already!
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