Football Manager 2011

I recieved this game on the 4th and have been playing it all day, I must say I am sooo impressed.

Interface:
Fm 2010 greets you with an improved user interface, with it laid out particularly well. I can't say much on this point, but the screen is "filled" out more with conveient, for example, messages are grouped together into the day it was given and more information is presented without having to investigate further, for example a scout report of a player is much more convienient.

Live chat:
The addition I am very immpressed about is the live chat with players/staff/agents etc. It is far better than I expected. Each player/staff is different and you have to carefully negociate and handle problems and it presents a thrill aside from the actual matches. The most important thing is that so far, it hasn't really been repetitive, some agents are very stubborn or impatient and reaching an agreement can be a challenge.

Training:
The training has the addition of being able to focus on one aspect of a particular players game. For example, an intimidating Balotelli is pretty tall, I selected that his "attribute" be focused on to adapt to my style of play, as his heading attribute is quite modest to begin with. Again the interface for training is far better, with relevant pieces of information merged into one screen play.

3-D matches:
This is a vast improvement, the animations are much improved and overall graphics are impressive, it is better than I thought. I actually enjoy watching every match now :) You can also distinguish each player in each team when playing against them.

It is hard to draw out negetives of the game because it is vast improvement. However press conferences are as boring as ever but Fm2011 has a "team setting" feature whereyou can set your assistant manager/coach to automatically arrange friendlies, renew contracts, attend press conferences and much more. It removews those repitive, tedious tasks.

The Football Manager series was great to start with. I love it. And every year it seems to make a few little tweaks to make it that little bit better.

I'll be honest, 2010 is the only version which I thought was a bit of a backward step. For some reason I just couldn't get into it. Something wasn't quite right.

However, this years version is an absolute joy to play and marks the biggest step forward for the game since it started.

I'll be brief, as I'm sure you've already read the blurb describing the new features. Basically, the whole interface just seems to flow better. There's more substance to it, and yet it's easier and more intuitive to get around. And some of those small tactical details that only the hardcore pay attention to, such as training, and staff meetings, are suddenly so much more obvious and appealing.

All the new features are fantastic, as I'm sure you'll find out, but the one that has impressed me more than any other is the presence of agents. It makes contract dealings and transfers so much more interesting and realistic. In fact the interaction overall is massively improved. Rather than just clicking on something and waiting for a player to moan to the press, you can actually have conversations with players, journalists, staff members etc. Brilliant. It all makes it feel much more like a state of the art game rather than a glorified (albeit amazing!) spreadsheet.

Oh okay, one more thing..... the matchday preparation is also an totally brilliant feature.

Well done SI! This is the game I've been waiting for since I played 1st Division Manager on my Atari more than 15 years ago!

I have been a fan of this game since it was Championship Manager 2 and bought it every year. Every year the development team try to make improvements that make the game more realistic, which basically has meant adding more elements to each release.

In recent years for me that game's fun aspect has all but gone. I've just installed the game and played it over 2 nights so far, and I've not even started the first season yet.

The addition of the agent in transfer negotiations is a good one, but some of the player conversations are quite frankly, pointless and ridiculous. I asked one of my players to dribble more down the left flank as he was a left sided midfielder. His response was "I don't think that will improve my game". I advise that I'd like him to try it all the same and he says the conversation is finished as it's not going to well. That kind of thing is quite frankly, laughable.

The matchday press conferences seem more full of pointless questions that go on and on, so I'm quite happy to leave it to my assistant which makes that feature fairly redundant.

I don't think the complexity of the game is improving it at all. For me that best parts of the game were always searching the transfer market and the game itself.

The other annoying thing is that with every successive release, they move features somewhere else. I know you find them eventually and things become more familiar again, but you want to play the game, not spend time searching for things that you used to know the location of.

I don't know if I'll ever become as addicted to this game as I did years ago when SI was just a small concern. In trying to make improvements to the game this time, they've failed in my opinion