FIFA Manager 12 Review

FIFA Manager 12 is the latest iteration of EA Sports’ long-running soccer management franchise. The series has seen a resurgence in late 2000s, and has mostly kept up the development pace of yearly releases while also bringing significant enough improvements to justify buying a new copy every year. After a rather bug-ridden release in 2010, this year’s edition was said to be focused on fan feedback and there are number of welcome changes that do, in fact, take the series closer to greatness. However, all said and done, there is a very distinct lack of new features in this year’s edition, so you may want to consider if it’s worth the price.

As in previous years, FM12 offers players the chance to take control of any soccer club in the game and manage all aspects of its existence. Players are responsible for things like the line-up, tactics and training, signing new players and the extension of club facilities and the stadium, as well as financial management. As before, players are also able to hire staff and assign specific tasks to them, thus allowing you to avoid micro-managing ticket prices, if that’s not your thing. Most of the concepts remain the same, though the financial sections have been reworked a bit to allow for greater flexibility in managing your club’s funds. There is a greater depth to sponsorship levels and relations now, though it’s nothing game-changing. The board now keeps a share of the budget for their own emergency fund, which seems like a needless and artificial way to limit your spending (realistic, perhaps, but not fun in a game).

There are many things to spend money on, too. The FIFA license means that the game features more than 40,000 licensed players, over 10,000 of which come with actual player pictures and accurate stats. The transfer market is as robust as ever, and other clubs now how a much more realistic asking price for players during negotiations. To boost your chances, users can now perform pre-transfer speeches in order to claim their interest in a player and perhaps unsettle or motivate them to move. The best transfer related feature of all is the interactive final day of the transfer window. It’s a fantastic addition which sees players appear on the “trading block” and letting you place a bid on them if you are interested. The prices change as the day carries on, and with no ability to pause the time, it makes for a very fun and exhilarating experience.

Players can also still build out their club’s facilities, and though this year’s interface looks nicer, a ton of rather useless items have been added. Various objects such as flags and perhaps guest hotels bring little to no income, and have maintenance fees with no further impact on the game. In other words, there is no purpose or reason to have them built, unless you wish to just throw away money. Buildings do age and need renovations, and can also be upgraded to multiple levels which brings greater benefits but also rising maintenance costs. The stadium editor is also very customizable, for those who enjoy building out the stadium manually.

Some brand new features this year include the pre-match speeches. This is a somewhat odd addition, with an interface that doesn’t pose a clear explanation of what each option means or if it even affects your players at all. You could now also host a trial day, where amateur players can be put through a series of exercises and you have a chance to sign a local underrated player or two. Finally, if the funds and stadium allows it, you could even bid to host a final for one of the global cup competitions in the game. All of these new features are quite well implemented and work well.

On the field of play, FIFA Manager 12 is still a solid offering. All of the team management areas are still easy to navigate and very visually appealing. If anything, the series has always been known of their great UI and presentation. For reasons unknown, the formation selection has been trimmed this year, so if you want to create anything that doesn’t have the standard four defenders, you’ll need to do it manually. Not a big deal, but there doesn’t seem to be valid reasoning as to why remove tactical options from the game. During play the simulation results are mostly solid, though there is still little feedback why your team can’t put together more than a few victories in a row in the league while they dominate much higher level teams in the cup tournaments. The most notable mode of play, 3D match mode, is still hit or miss, as the engine tries to take into account the management aspect of the game but also create a visually realistic match. For most accurate results based on your management skill, it’s still best to go with text-based play, which is ironic for a title that boasts 3D match technology.

FIFA Manager 12 still features an extremely robust Editor, which means everything can be fully tweaked and adjusted for accuracy. Match Prognosis Tool also makes a comeback, as does Live Season (allowing players to use a daily updated player stat database, for a fee). The online mode is also back, though for whatever reason it was removed from the main menu and takes a hassle to actually find and launch in Windows. All the premium features from the previous year were made freely accessible for all players this time around, probably because there wasn’t much interest on spending real money to get a boost for your team. Players can now exchange various action items in return for their manager points, and there’s the option of creating fantasy leagues.

For fans that have been waiting for a new edition of FIFA Manager, this year’s version is solid enough. There is nothing groundbreaking, but it’s much more stable and bug-free than last year, so at least that’s a start. Some of the new features are neat but not much in FIFA Manager 12 stands out as a must-get feature. But then again, the genre as a whole has hit a ceiling where it needs to begin ironing out the existing technology rather than try to come up with something totally new. FIFA Manager 12 is a solid soccer management sim and well worth obtaining if you skipped last year’s edition.