FIFA Manager 12 (PC DVD)

Having played the demo for this and FM12 I decided to go with FIFA Manager as I have not had this game before and I really enjoyed the demo.

Overall I feel that the although this may lack the depth in terms of leagues this is more enjoyable to play and have already done 2 seasons with Liverpool.
What I do like that FM12 does not is that You have camps such as pre-season camps and youth camps which Football Manager does not have but will probably have sooner rather than later.
You can also do things with your money that you earn like buying houses or buying shares in other clubs.

This is a little bit different to FM12 and may lack the depth but is an enjoyable change if you have played Football Manager alot.

I keep wanting to like this game. The basic foundation is there for an addictive game with unlimited replay value, but year after year, they're only able to put bandages on the areas of need.

I've played several previous editions, so when I fire this one up, I'm both pessimistic and hopeful about improvements and real paradigm change. Naturally, some of the cosmetic stuff has had a lot of attention paid, and this year the dashboard screens look better than ever. You look at some of the fine detail and you see they've paid attention to what people have been asking for in some ways, like adding squad evaluations, or sprucing up the locker room speeches. Hooray for this stuff, they clearly put some work into it, and it's nice to see these changes/upgrades/fixes.

But this isn't a patch, it's a full-price game. I expect to have a full-price purchase worth of game, and this is just nowhere close. And speaking of patches, it is the usual story of EA/Bright Future releasing this game while it's not ready - I've played it for one day and already I've identified two bugs that affect gameplay (sometimes when a played is sent off, you can't sub his position for the rest of the match). This is EA's m.o., and it continues to be infuriating.

But I'm willing to step away from expectations and just look soberly at what this game delivers per se. The main thing you'll want out of this game has nothing to do with visuals or layouts or options or excitement - it has to do with emulating the job of a football manager. And for that, this game rates one single star, because it simply cannot deliver that functionality. Why not? Here are two reasons right out of the gate: 1) If you play the same match in the three modes (3D, text, instant) you will get three results. I mean, if you repeat the same match a number of times in each mode, you'll find a pattern to the results that will not match the patterns from the other modes. The ratings are different, the scores are higher in some modes, etc. What that tells me is that if I want to manage a player, he will not be the same player from one mode to the next. That's like saying that Messi is going to score 30 goals when you watch the whole season, 25 if you listen on the radio, and 20 if you just read the scores. How can you know what kind of value he has for your club if there are three different ways in which he might play? And I found that teams were rated with much less variety in 3D mode, so a pattern of mediocre progress stems from that, which encourages me not to play in that mode and therefore not see what players are actually doing in a match. This is just folly. And 2) there continues to be absolutely no reality to the 3D mode. There are still players that break away and don't shoot - I'm sorry, but there is no professional striker that is going to break alone on the keeper and then pass backward or run off to the side in order to wait for teammates to arrive. And yet this has happened in most games (playing with a low level squad). I also witnessed my team break three men alone against the keeper and not score - I don't care how poor those three players are, they will at least get a shot on target, if not a goal... and yet my players (rated in the 40's) only managed a shot into the side of the net with the keeper minding the post. The amount of decisions that players make that are absolutely false is amazing - I don't care if a player is rated a 1, there are just things that he will not ever do, and Bright Future has yet to figure this out.

So to sum up, this game is just not worth it - at any price. Because it will seem like a decent challenge, but by the time you figure out that it's not giving you an honest shot at what it's advertising, you've already invested some time and effort, not to mention cash. That, combined with the unacceptable lack of real progress is just deplorable. After all these years, this feels like it's Microsoft releasing another service pack for Windows 98 - there are only so many times you can keep building on the same stinking pile of code before you switch over to something that doesn't infuriate you. Unlike Windows 98, I really did want to like this game, but apparently they're still years away from making it worth the money and time.

Fifa manager 12 is a great game, I would thoroughly recommend it. It has some nice similarities to Fifa 12 and is very user friendly.