FOOTBALL MANAGER 2012
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The principle of Football Manager is simple - you are cast into the role of Manager of a football (soccer) team of your choice. You are responsible for transfers, coaching, PR, team selection and convincing the board of your vision in order to set the budget.

This year's iteration (2012) is, incredibly, once again pushing further to represent the vast detail of the football world, with hundreds of thousands of players, tens of thousands of clubs, and leagues from every inhabited continent on earth.

As a manager, you must assemble your team over time; players may be transferred or developed through your youth system, coaching staff are also hired and fired, and the latter's role in the former's training is under your total control too. You can also decide the areas in which you wish your scouts to concentrate their efforts, with the scout reports providing excellent feedback and good estimations as to player ability and attitude. All of your non-playing staff will give you regular feedback and their advice during 'back-room staff' meetings.

The Players themselves are represented by dozens of statistics (broken into Technical, Mental and Physical sections), genuine historical information about the player up to August 2011, and representations of his character and attitude. There are several tools available to compare players - plus many views in the User Interface can be customised anyway - so you can really track down your perfect player each transfer window. As there are many levels of standard in the game you may offer players an array of contracts - appearance-only deals, youth, part- or full-time contracts too.

For those of you who have played previous years' iterations of Football Manager, you will notice the new interpersonal interactions are much more varied to the point where Managers, Players and Press all respond with particular 'tone of voice' inflections (such as Calm, Aggressive, Reluctant, Passionate etc.) as well as a greater range of potential responses - this includes chats with players, team-talks, team meetings and even when dealing with the press. Different people respond to different approaches to the situation, making friends and raising morale becomes a balancing act. Personally, I feel it has added a new vitality to the game.

Another of this years' improved features is the 3D match-day experience - presented in a Sports-TV style with replays and plenty of angles to view from. The player animation is excellent, and this years' new stadium/crowd effects are really good. As the manager, you can easily switch to a full-blown tactics console to adjust about every imaginable aspect of both team and individual tactics, or you can issue quick 'Shouts' from the touchline to influence how your team is playing.

Another of Football Manager's advantages is the customisation of your game - from Non-League patches or Player Facepacks, to custom leagues and UI Skins - which improves the 're-playability' of this game. I do however wish to raise a word of caution - this software requires Steam activation. For those of you unaware of Valve's Steam distribution system, it is perceived as very invasive and restrictive by some computing groups and some even class it as malware.

Overall, this is a very fine Football game, with huge depth and detail just like the real footballing world. With it's vast scope it is engaging as well as challenging, giving weeks of game-play which, if allowed to suck you in, will disappear very quickly! It is not surprising that this is the market leader in the sports-management-sim area as the quality is there for all to see.