Football Manager 2013 – Review

For many students Football Manager stopped being a game a long time ago, it’s a way of life.

With standard playtimes going well beyond a hundred hours, Football Manager has a habit of taking up all your time, to the point where you’re fitting writing essays and attending socials around the game. Like FIFA, Football Manager has an appeal beyond the standard gaming audience, and while some will attack fans as spreadsheet obsessives, its popularity can’t be questioned.

Over the years, the game has become more and more expansive, from detailed press conferences to contract negotiations with hard-nosed agents and Football Manager 2013 certainly continues in this trend.

With this march towards to realism, could it be the case that the fun of the old Championship Manager games has been lost, the ability to run through a season on a rainy afternoon (it can take up to 5 hours just to get through pre-season), taking your local team from the Conference to the Champions League.  Worry not, because Sports Interactive is aware of this problem. Enter Classic mode.

Classic mode cuts through complicated training regimes, masses of staff to hire, and lengthy press conferences, and replaces them with a stripped-down, bare-bones game. It lets you run through a season in 8 hours, and you’re only ever a few clicks away from your next match.  Classic mode isn’t perfect; it lacks the reward of taking over every aspect of a club and turning them into an unbeatable powerhouse. Plus, when you are losing, your options to turn things around are limited, gone are the team talks and specific opposition instructions. Still, Classic mode is a welcome addition.

As well as Classic mode, SI has imported the Challenge mode from the handheld versions. It sets different scenarios, such as a mid-season injury crisis or rescuing a team from relegation when they’re bottom of the table mid-season. The game ships with five of these challenges with more to come through DLC. They’re good fun, and a great demonstration of just how bad things could get for Liverpool this season.

Along with two new game modes, FM 2013 features a revamped online mode and worldwide leader boards allowing you to compare yourself with fellow managers online. The user interface has been improved in a way that cuts down on clicking between screens, while making the menus more visually pleasing. Similar improvements have been made with the match engine improving both form and functionality. FM 2013 is the biggest update to the Football Manager series since the leap from Championship Manager, for fans of the series it is a must buy.