FIFA Manger returns for another year and again with nothing out of the ordinary
A central element of EA SPORTS FIFA MANAGER 09 is the matchday itself. The 3D mode offers new improvements, particularly in the areas of graphics, sound and AI. The new, fully customizable user interface in 3D mode gives players direct access to substitutions, tactical changes, and statistics. The text mode has been completely revamped and now features a unique mixture of traditional live commentary and an Internet live ticker. Lots of exciting and informative tools create a high level of transparency and atmosphere.
Other major features of EA SPORTS FIFA MANAGER 09 are the line-up and tactics sections. Various new team and single-player options offer endless possibilities for every type of coach. New features include a youth transfer market and match prediction tool. Players can put teams together freely and even assign form and fitness values to single players. This allows matches in the real world of football to be simulated under very realistic conditions in order to predict the outcome of a match.
Featuring licensed league, club and player data from 33 countries, EA SPORTS FIFA MANAGER 09 has a comprehensive player data bank containing over 1,500 clubs and more than 25,000 players, with over 7,000 original player photos included in the game. Other players can be added by using the editor tool.
If anyone saw my review of FIFA Manager 08, you’ll know that I pretty much despised it. Despite that, I still appreciated that a lot of people enjoy the game, and while that opinion remains the same this year, it’s become more difficult to accept it as a good game since it seems like a clone of last year’s game. It can’t even do a decent resolution like 1920×1080.
FIFA Manager 09 seems very bare with its options. You can play matches but only as one player on the pitch, it doesn’t have the best controls or load times either. Loading a 3D match takes ages as does the basics of the game. As with each past game, you’ll spend more time making decisions like how to spend your budget, which ways to train your team and so on. If I’m being perfectly honest, I found the manager mode for FIFA 09 to be much more fun and rewarding than this dull game.
I wouldn’t mind so much if the atmosphere of the game wasn’t so boring. Just menus after menus with pretty bad background music. Sure you can play your own, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I find the game to be incredibly frustrating and dull. There’s nothing out of the ordinary with this year’s game, and with the improvements made to the Manager mode to FIFA 09, I can’t see what the problem is. Why not just rip that part of the game out, slap it on a DVD and sell it? I and many others would have had much more fun.
The Verdict
I would go into the rights and wrongs of the game, but there would be just too many wrongs and no rights. Sure it does what it says on the tin, but the tin is a bit rusty and redundant now. It’s a game that fans will enjoy, although they should probably stick to the last game as its practically the same, just with a few minor changes to the interface and live substitutions. It lacks anything innovative or original, making it lose more credibility.
