Perenial football management sim is available to pre-purchase on Steam
It comes out every year, looks almost identical to the previous year’s iteration and non-players will wonder why people get excited. I am, of course, talking about the new Football Manager game, imaginatively titled Football Manager 2014. SEGA has been good custodians of Sports Interactive’s long-running management sim, so let’s peer inside the virtual dressing room and take a peak at what’s in store for the new season.
The 3D match engine is getting an overhaul, which I’m sure will be nice, but we all know it’s under the hood where the crux of the game is. With that in mind, Sports Interactive is promising a rework of the tactical engine, along with more realistic contract negotiations, interactions with your club’s board and realistic transfer transfers. So you too can have a player that clearly doesn’t want to play for your club but you don’t want to let him leave (inset your Rooney, Suarez, Bale joke here).
What’s really piqued my interest is the integration of Steam Workshop support. Having only just learned of the existence of custom leagues and scenarios created by the community, it seems like a stream of user mods on Steam Workshop would extend the game’s life considerably. Until Football Manager 2015 comes out, anyway. If you pre-purchase on Steam now, you’ll get access to a beta that will release two weeks before the full game launches; all your saves will carry over which is always nice with this sort of thing.