Football Manager 2015 Review

While most annual sports games occasionally falter under the overwatch of EA, 2K or Konami, Sports Interactive’s Football Manager series has remained of resolute quality. Their cyclical suite of UI updates and gameplay tweaks are largely dependable and smart, and although some of the alterations inevitably end up more successful than others, it’s rare to consider SI’s behemoth as truly broken. Football Manager 2015 continues that trend for slow but smart progress, and there’s little to suggest that SI can’t continue this trend for as long as they like.

It almost goes without saying that - under the hood - Football Manager 2015 is still the premier best-in-class football simulation that you know and love. Hour upon hour can (and will) be pumped into its recreation of footballing life, and the recent deal with Prozone suggests their statistical database is continuing to increase its real-world authenticity. Discover a burgeoning talent in FM 2015 and there’s every chance you might see your 18-year-old superstar lining up for a top real-life team in the next few years, and then you too can bore your friends to death with “I told you so” comments. And you definitely, definitely will.

The multitude of layers laid on top of their core footballing simulation have, over the years, come to offer an incredible level of depth. From staff hirings to individual training programs, there are so many things to tinker with in FM that it’s a wonder anybody knows where to start. From the cut-down classic mode through to sensible deployment of tooltips in the main UI however, there are at least a few footholds for new players or lapsed veterans to clutch on to. FM 2015 adds yet more information boxes and sensible UI tweaks to make the experience more intuitive, and on the whole, this is easily the best-looking and easiest release yet.

It’s hard to undersell the importance of UI in a game like Football Manager. The graphical changes are a manner for Sports Interactive to address shortcomings in last year’s release (the search bar is now front and centre at the top of the screen), freshen things up (2015 sees a return to a basic shortcut menu on the left-hand side), but perhaps their most important function is to draw your attention to new and improved features, funnelling players into underutilised areas of the simulation.

This year’s funnelling concerns the scouting and transfer system, which has undergone a significant rewrite. Scouting, and particularly building up a global network of knowledge, is a huge part of the modern game. Football Manager 2015 represents this better than ever by fusing together the player transfer database and the scouting interface into a one-for-all set of screens. Your range of searchable statistical data extends as far as your scouting knowledge (although message boards and google are still early-game options for the lazy), while scouts can now be assigned to find players of a specific position, ability range and nationality. If you’re looking for an up-and-coming Eastern European central midfield wonderkid for example, just filter away and assign somebody to travel the region.

The reports that come back have also been overhauled for the better. Players are broken down into current and potential star ratings, whilst key stats are now represented as a range rather than an absolute. The more you scout an area, the more accurate the data becomes, whilst a quick list of pros and cons for each player helps to guide your decision as to whether they’d fit the team and personal dynamic of your club. Unearthing new talent in this manner feels like a much more informed and involving process, and building up your range of available data is a satisfying task to accomplish.

The sense of overall involvement and ownership of the team is also heightened by your own personal stats, which take on a heavier influence in 2015. You’re free to set yourself as either a tracksuit manager, a tactician or some balance of both, while setting a playing history gives you a corresponding boost in certain areas. Player interaction now also runs deeper, with key squad members approaching you for frequent discussions about other teammates and transfers, while you also possess an extended range of interaction for persuading players to either stay with the club or move on to pastures new. If you need a clearout, simply ask your players to leave. You might need to get on their case repeatedly, but it’s nice to have that brutal option available. I’m sure they’ll take it well.

Getting down to the nuts and bolts of match day, 2015’s football engine, tactical interface and media interaction also exhibit significant changes. While these are mostly for the better, it’s worth noting that the pre-match and game-day rituals are still an area in which Football Manager continues to show a modicum of weakness.

For those of you keen on squad rotation, the team selection interface is now greatly aided by a small circular meter next to each player that indicates their suitability for a specific position and role. As an example, selecting the striker position in your formation will bring up a list of suitable candidates ranked from the most ready to the least likely, while changing the striking position to incorporate a specific role (target man, poacher, etc) will re-order the list accordingly. In that regard, the pain of learning your players when taking on the challenge of a new, unknown team is greatly eased.

Getting through to game time, in keeping with the trend of introducing as much media interaction as humanly possible, tunnel interviews now also feature, with a selection of questions revolving around team selection and tactics. Although such interviews are are an inevitable slice of the modern game, I frequently found myself clicking through them as fast as possible. Indeed the media interaction system, as a whole, might need a bit of a re-think in coming releases. It feels stale at this point in the Football Manager evolution, with identikit questions and responses creating more of a chore than an engaging feature, although at least there’s always the assistant manager to fall back on.

The match engine itself remains something of a conundrum awaiting a solution. Where once your mind’s eye extrapolated beautiful passes and screaming strikes from the 2D dots that roamed the pitch, now Football Manager hums along with a raft of 3D animation. The good stuff is in the atmosphere, the stadia, the pitches; the bad frequently happens when the players begin to interact with the ball.

It’s better, there’s no doubting that. Football Manager 2015 features the best evolution of its action thus far, but there’s still a huge way to go. Players rotate on the spot around the ball before launching bizarre passes and strikes completely at odds with their movement, and while there is a huge amount of different motion capture that’s gone into the game, at some point it feels like Sports Interactive aren’t addressing the problem that lies beneath, just ladling more complexity on top. Like most recent iterations, you do eventually get used to player movement and the odd interactions, but it’s very much a case of fantasising about what should be happening when players address the ball, rather than what’s presented in the engine.

In terms of tactics, at the time of going to press there does also seem to be a deference towards big, bulky strikers getting on the end of crosses. Whether I’m set up in my preferred attacking 4-4-2 or 4-3-2-1, it seems like a huge number of goals in Football Manager originated on the flanks. It’s not that silky, short passing is gone from the game (Fulham, of all teams, handily demonstrated the latter to me yesterday evening), but just that it now seems a little less effective, with clipped through balls and towering front men ruling the roost for the time being. Tailor your team selection accordingly.