The core gameplay is unchanged. You start in control of your chosen club as the pre-season kicks off, and then have to set about managing your squad through the upcoming seasons. First off you have the option of watching your squad play a training match so you get a handle on both the players and, if you're new to the game, the match day controls and nuances. Your assistant manager helps via useful pop-ups to guide you through the nuances of player interaction, and can even pick your team and set the formation for you if you're feeling a little lost.
While there is nothing quite as major as a new engine in this year's game, there are plenty of refinements to every area of Football Manager 2010. The most obvious upgrade is the game's overview screen, which brings together your news feeds, in-game mail, upcoming fixtures, league tables, transfer information, and a summary of your current squad status. This is a vast improvement over previous home screens, which traditionally focused on your mailbox. The old mailbox still exists as your hub of interaction for much of the game, providing your means of interaction with your fans, management, players, and the press, and is little changed from previous iterations.
The lack of music or an in-game MP3 player for your own tunes is something of a shame. The amount of time you can spend poring over statistics and watching loading screens would be made much more enjoyable with customisable music, especially since the amount of data presented onscreen does not lend itself to running in windowed mode. The crowd effects could also do with a little more variation; while it's great to hear the crowd cheer at your goals or gasp as you rattle the woodwork, it does seem rather out of place during an intra-squad training game.
Football Manager 2010 is the closest you're likely to come to managing not only the club of your dreams, but almost any professional football club you can imagine be it a Premiership high flier, a new franchise in the MLS, or a team struggling in Japan's second division. While none of this year's additions are revolutionary, they result in a game that adds depth for veteran players while also becoming more accessible for newcomers--it's a great game that's accessible to anyone with the slightest interest in football from any corner of the globe.
WOW... WOW... WOW...
* Compelling gameplay
* Astonishing breadth of players, staff, and teams
* Improved match engine
* Clearer backroom staff advice
* Option to change tactics from the touchline is great
Bored... Bored... Bored...
* Match engine is still ugly
* Audio options are limited.
By Alex Sassoon Coby, GameSpot UK Read More . . .>>