My constructive feedback to SI

Hey everyone. I know it’s like a broken record but I actually have been a Football Manager/Championship Manager player since the very beginning. I still remember Paul Kitson being a genius, Tommy Johnson being world class and Marcelo Salas… Don’t get me started on this F R. I wanted to have his babies!

Anyway I used to be a hardcore player and would regularly play season after season, however, as I got older I’ve been unable to dedicate as much time to the game however I still buy it every year on release date and play it as often as I can. I love the game and appreciate the good work SI put into it. I also appreciate these forums and how SI interact with there fanbase. I think this is very refreshing.

Anyway despite all of the above I’m not a fan boy and would like to think I can give a balanced opinion on the game for those who’ve not yet played the demo and are looking for some thoughts on it.

I’ll give you a background as to what I’ve done on the demo so far…

Saturday night I started a game as Celtic, my favourite team, before a ball had been kicked in pre-season three of my star players – Boruc, Nakamura and Samaras – had all been ruled out between 4 and 8 weeks. I switched off the demo due to tiredness and injuries after watching one friendly in the 3D mode.

On Sunday I started a game as Man City, mainly because of a large budget and I was keen to see the new transfer system, I signed a lot of players and my results have been okay but nothing great and I currently sit 8th in the Premiership in the middle of October. None of my players has scored more than two in the league, I got put out the UEFA Cup by some Israeli mob I’d never heard of, Santa Cruz was purchased for £25m and got injured for 5 months and Robinho hates my guts. Apart from that all is going well 

Anyway here is my positives and negatives:

Positives:

- Press conferences: I really like these. Some of the choices you have to chose from when responding to questions need another look at but overall I can see real potential in this. The free text box is great as well as although only a cosmetic feature it does add some realism to the game and makes you feel more involved.

- Match engine: In 2008 I think there was just too many goals and the who match experience felt very volatile to me. Already in 2009 I think my results and the flow of my matches seems a lot more realistic. Maybe it’s just my tactics but that’s my experience anyway.

- Assistant Manager feedback: As I stated in my intro I’m struggling to find time to play Football Manager so when I do I normally play on text only and that made it difficult to see where my tactics were going wrong. The Assistant Manager feedback gives a lot of useful information I wouldn’t have seen without spending some time watching the matches in 2D or 3D.

Negatives:

- 3D/Graphics: I actually think the 3D engine is quite good, for what it is, however I have no desire to use it, due mainly to time, and feel like it’s effecting the flow of the game for myself. For example I turn off 3D and play away and the match goes quick through the first half but then when I go to make a sub I get it hanging on ‘Setting up match’ for about 25 seconds. This is quite annoying to me.

- Lack of highlight speed slider: Since 2D came in I’ve watched on commentary only with the match speed slider up the top and the highlight speed in the middle and replayed on for goals only. That way I watched in text and got to see replays of goals on 2D. I enjoyed this set up but now I’m watching only commentary cause when the replays come up cause I have the speed up top the players go to quick in the replay so it’s barely worth watching.

- Transfer system: I don’t know if this should be in positives or negatives. FM09’s system is a slight improvement over FM08, however, I think we all agree it’s not really a realistic representation of the transfer system in real life. I think this area of the game need a total overhaul however it’s still more than playable I just expected a bigger improvement than we got.

- Injuries: In my Man City game so far I’ve not experienced anything too unrealistic by the way of injuries however given the sheer scale of complaints on here about this and my brief experience with the Celtic game I think there’s a problem here.

Overall I’m very much enjoying the demo after having some reservations at first. It’s growing on me and I’m looking forward to getting the full release. I hope anyone from SI who reads this takes it for what it is intended to be – constructive feedback from a long time player of the game and maybe takes on a couple of points I’ve made.

I would especially hope they see my point about being a long time player of the game who is desperate to keep playing the game but feel this release is a step back in terms of giving me the chance to play the game on my terms as I'm sure there's many like me who love the game but have had to accept we no longer have the time to lead St Albans to the Premiership and are just looking for a quick fix of Football Manager.

Thanks for reading.