Brutal Gamer

Football Manager Live (PC) Review

By Leigh - February 5, 2009 - 12:14 UTC

Football Manager Live is the newest title under the Football Manager (FM) series, the whole idea behind the franchise to sum it up quickly and simply is that your are the manager of your favourite football team and everything which the team does is completely up to you. However, Football Manager Live has taken quite a different approach to the series. Football Manager Live allows you to directly challenge other managers around the world with there own created teams. Live also brings in something else unique to the series, a monthly fee which you have to pay in advance; two months(£22.99), six months (£43.99) or twelve months (£72.99).

Once you’ve purchased your membership of the game through the games website, you’ll be prompted to create your own manager profile, team, outfit and stadium – this is where the games customizable side shines, as you can make your team be anything which you want them to be. I decided to go with a sort-of sailing/boating theme to my club name; The Skipper’s Strikers who wore a rather disgusting pink, lime green and mustard yellow kit and the stadium was called ‘The Poop Deck’. My question is; why do people take things like team names etc. so seriously? I’ve always struggled to take things seriously as its just so much more fun being creative, but hey – that could just be me.

There are 3 major differences between Football Manager ’09 and Football Manager Live:

The first one being FM Live is a lot more user friendly compared to the normal Football Manager games in the sense that there are half as many spreadsheets to make you want to cry yourself to sleep. This is the main reason why I never really got into the Football Manager games, and I could see this being a game which could nicely introduce people into the series.

The second huge difference is in Football Manager Live is that you play against other real people, where in the past you have played against the AI. You’re able to play against other players in 3 different modes; friendly, friendly competitive and official competition matches, which are used for the numerous different leagues and tournaments both official tournaments and player created ones. Each match will last between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on the speed which is set during the match. A small thing which did really annoy me during the matches is that in a game, there is a chat box where you and the other manager can talk, but every-single game I played, not one bloody person spoke, ignorant bastards.

The third huge difference is in the traditional Football Manager games – at the beginning of the game in Football Manager Live you’re given a set budget which you then spend on the vast amount of real life players, but you can’t get the better football superstars ‘till you start earning the big bucks as you’ve got to pay the players there weekly wages to spend on hair and beauty products. The difference here however, (if you don’t already know) is that FM Live instantly allows you to go all out and manage your favourite team straight away.

However there is a problem with me claiming that it’ll help introduce people into franchise – the tutorial. For the brief 5-10 minutes where it takes you through the creating your team section of the game, it pretty much just drops you into the deep end, and doesn’t explain to you what half the buttons on the nicely designed layout actually do. It’s honestly a matter of trial and error about what each one does and whether or not it’s of any real importance. I will give the lack-of a decent tutorial a break though, because it does make the things which are important flash red, and against the sky blue backing it’s hard to miss.

A nice feature that has been brought into Football Manager Live is its own achievements system. It works a lot like the PS3 trophy system and Xbox Live achievements in that when you meet the specific criteria you’ll obviously unlock the acheivement. I know its an odd thing to talk about in a review, but I love things like this – seeing the little message pop-up and give you a pat on the back, just makes me smile.

One of the worst things I’ve ever heard in a game, ever, are the sound clips in this game. When you’re playing a match or browsing through the pages, you’ll randomly here some commentary which just sounds awful. Then when a goal is scored etc. you’ll hear a crowd noise which makes my ears cry at night, originally I thought it was my gaming headset playing up, and after trying 3 or 4 pairs, realizing it was just the crappy quality of them.

A major problem which could start appearing later on in the games lifetime is the ‘skills’ which you set your manager/team to learn. Basically a skill in the game is something which will help in a specific area, such as striking or tactics. Each skill is learnt over a period of time which the game will tell you, ranging from hours to days. And if you plan on jumping on the Football Manager Live wagon in a few months, you’ll most likely be destroyed every match by someone who has been playing it for months learning skills constantly.

Football Manager Live is a fantastic change in the series, which in all honesty, is gradually pulling me into the series more. I enjoy being able to boot up Football manager Live and sit there with a nice cup of tea in the morning and see how badly my team is sucking/winning. Yeah, it did take me a while to get into the game because of the rather poor tutorial and the extremely crap and annoying random clips of audio which would make you cringe every time you heard them. But other then that, it’s a well made game and if you can put up with its faults, it’s totally worth checking out a the very least.

No related posts.