Football manager 2017 review
If Juventus has dominated the Italian Serie A in recent years, winning it five times in a row, in the portion of the videogame world that regards football the record of the Old Lady is very little, since there are those who collect successes by now decades.
We’re talking about Sports Interactive, studio behind the Football Manager series that managed to wipe out any type of competition. Even those of a certain importance, such as FIFA Manager for which EA Sports has raised the white flag in 2014.
As for some time now, Football Manager 2017 remains therefore for this year the only representative of thickness in the historical genre of managerial football, where the fruit of the fatigue of the group led by Miles Jacobson has established itself with undoubted merit.
However, the laws of the market teach that the absence of effective competition can restrain growth: a risk that for an annual brand as Football Manager becomes even more pressing, accentuated by development times that open and close in a few months.
After seeing a few days ago the news of fm 2017 on paper , it is therefore time to find out what kind of experience the Islington guys have cut out, beyond the inevitable update of teams and leagues to the 2016/2017 season complete with a simulated Brexit .
Football Manager 2017 is a solid managerial experience, which however lacks particular novelties
COACH LIFE
In a title that has as its flagship the amount of information that populates its database, having the opportunity to enjoy effectively all that it has to offer is not so obvious.
Already from Football Manager 2015, the developers undertook a process of redesigning the game interface, which led to the definition of a management experience optimized overall.
The path then continued during these two years, and we believe we can say that it now finds fulfillment in football manager 2017 steam. Any element you seek is now within reach of one – maximum two – clicks from the main menu, which therefore does not hide more areas impossible to find.
At the same time, the developers have focused on how the game submits all the data we need, completing the migration from a predominantly textual representation to a more graphic-oriented one, and therefore more comprehensible from a first glance.
Just to give some examples, the old reports of the observers on the next game now show clear indications on the type of opposing training to be expected in the field, as well as the injury assessments show us clearly if a player can be deployed or not, leaving little space to ‘interpretation. In Football Manager 2017, more visibility was given to the staff, in particular as regards the various advices that its members come to give us.
At regular intervals, the evaluations of trainers and observers are presented to us in a single screen placed in our inbox, from which to decide with a simple click whether to listen to one or more recommendations among those that are made to us.
This is a big step forward compared to the cumbersome procedure that was in force until last year, which actually discouraged the player from making use of the opinions of the collaborators.
Speaking of incoming mail, among the news this year we find the section dedicated to social networks, designed in the mind of Sports Interactive to simulate the feed of Twitter, where to read the reactions of the fans and follow footballers and teams from around the world .
After having looked at it from time to time at the start of the game, we can say that we have completely forgotten it over time, as the reactions posted were quite predictable and without any impact on the other components of the game.
NEW YEAR, OLD PROBLEMS
The innovations regarding the interface are also accompanied this time by a series of interventions on the various aspects of the game, starting as usual from the agreements with the players. The Higuain affair teaches us that every single clause of a contract is to be evaluated with extreme importance to avoid being unprepared: Football Manager 2017 reflects all this by introducing pre-contractual discussions, as well as a series of new conditions to be included in the agreement .
At this point it is necessary to speak of the criticisms that are cyclically moved to the Football Manager on duty: although they are often motivated by subjective standards of realism, to which the game should adhere to each of us, it is evident the presence of problems historians still unsolved.
In the specific case of Football Manager 2017 we noticed some injuries too much especially in training, although fortunately we are far from making the career unplayable. As for the prices of the cards instead we report conflicting experiences, divided between cases in which the expressed evaluation was all in all fair and others in which the cost tended to rise excessively.
The economic problem is accentuated when we agree with the contractual terms with the players, often too demanding for their age or for their actual importance in our rose. We close the paragraph with the dialogues, both with the players and with the press.
After the long video presentation we had hoped to finally see something new, but at the end of the day everything looks quite disappointing: usual lines of dialogue not interesting, and usual desire to send the deputy to answer repeated questions up to nausea.
