So, another year another iteration of the phenomenally popular Football Manager franchise, this time the 2014 edition. Sad as it may seem, the annual release of Sports Interactive’s opus really has become the yearly harbinger for the end of the year, a sign that Christmas is on the horizon. For its numerable fans, the year isn’t really complete until the game is released. Hell, on a personal level it makes a small milestone, as its predecessor, the 2013 version was one of the first games I reviewed for Zero1gaming.

This time round I had a beta copy of the game to get to grips with a couple of weeks before its release on 31^st October, just about enough time to properly get to grips with a game of its size.

The first thing that really hit home for me as I was setting up the game was a question: how do you really review Football Manager? I mean, it’s widely regarded as the seminal game of its genre; the World of Warcraft of sports management games if you will. How much are they really going to change it?

The answer, oddly enough, is not much, but at the same quite a bit. To clarify, what I mean is the core game has remained the same as it ever was. Oh there’s plenty of tweaks and changes to the background mechanics and engine, for sure. The match effects and the way all the calculations and formulas are all enhanced and improved, as they always are year on year. But let’s be honest, you don’t massively care about that do you? I don’t think, in the grand scheme of things we even really notice that on a conscious level do we?

No, that main way we experience the game and, unsurprisingly, the aspect of the game that has seen the most refinement is in the user interface and the ways in which we interact with the game. Cue the clichés of ‘evolution not revolution’ and ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ but in the case of Football Manager 2014 these things apply. The game didn’t need much change, so Sports Interactive obliged by not make a whole host of major changes, just a bunch of tweaks and refinements.

The most graphically-inclined change is the usual increase in match-day graphics, with player models, weather effects, crowds & stadiums and all the other regalia of the visual experience getting an upgrade. I haven’t the hardware to properly test the graphics at their maximum settings, but can confirm that my 3 year old laptop can run them adequately on mid-range settings with no performance issues, so the game seems optimised to work on all but the most retrograde rigs.

Indeed, when it came to performance, the whole game felt a lot smoother and slicker from last year’s outing. The 2013 edition brought us the most significant shift of recent years when the game moved to a more flashy-looking interface, with animated dashboards and skins. The downside was that this obviously took more RAM and processor resource to run than previously, which made the game run noticeably more clunky on my lower-mid range computer. This year, however, while the slick dashboards remain and, if anything, seem more elaborate, the game flows a lot smoother and quicker on my laptop. Whether this is better optimisation, witchcraft or just my imagination I don’t know, but it certainly seems to me Sports Interactive’s tech team have been up to something.

Speaking of the display interface, there has obviously been a focus on customer feedback and a conscious effort made to erase all those little inconveniences that were noticed by every FM stalwart. Did you ever find it annoying having to skip to a separate screen to participate in a pre-game press-conference? Well good news! Now it’s done straight from the email window in your inbox screen! Same thing with player conversations and all the other aspects of the game where you had to do that sort of thing. Not major changes, but they’re nice and when accumulated over hundreds of gaming hours add up to quite a bit of saved time (and if you’re reading this, chances are you’re a 1000 hour FM/CM veteran).

Board interactions have been expanded, with you being able to negotiate what targets you are evaluated on as part of your job. You’re no also able to leak things to the press to try and get your way, which is fun in a Machiavellian way, if a trifle risky.

The tactics are, as ever, more detailed than before, with new player roles now available and team instructions streamlined, but in a good way. Team instructions now take a lot of the roles that overall team sliders did before, giving your more reactive and intuitive feel for how you’re setting your team out.

All in all, what can I really say about Football Manager 2014? It feels like lazy journalism, but it really is true that if you like the Football Manager games, FM2014 is for you. It’s basically FM2013, but made better in 1000 little ways that add up to a much slicker experience.

Football Manager 2014 remains as it always has been; glorious for its fans and baffling for everything else.

Let the games begin!

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