When it was announced that Football Manager 2009 will have 3D view mode, it quickly became one of the most anticipated game in the history of series. So what? As a CM Revolution editor, Football Manager series and football I had the right to think it was, considering the possibility to participate in beta testing the game. It was not so bad then, frankly, the game was much better than its final version. Nevertheless, I run the game and I started playing. This is where things got a bit tricky.

Recently, I have released news that Championship Manager 2001/2002 is available for download. So I downloaded it, installed the 3.9.68 patch and started playing with my beloved Wisla Krakow. I would like to point out here that this is the game that I used to play some time ago continuously for several hours. Except my favourite Wisla Krakow, I played also KFC Uerdingen, with which I won major worldwide trophies. After I run the game a couple of days ago, I could again feel the joy of beating opponents by using merely two tactics throughout a few seasons, signing players on easy transfers from the Balkans or Brazil and coaches with coaching attributes at 20. Football Manager 2009? Well, I also run this game, hoping the latest 9.2.0 patch has changed the game for better, hoping that my enthusiasm will grow while I play, understand its tactical complexities and finally become a perfect manager who knows how to win games. I was wrong. I quit FM 2009 after an hour of play, run CM 01/02 and a feeling of bliss came over me again. Wait a minute. The new version of Football Manager is so feature-packed, it has 3D match engine, press conferences, completely new and re-written transfer system… and graphic bugs and slow gameplay which is twice as low as in the previous game version (I would say it was three times before the release of patch).

And that is just the point – the playability. Where has it gone? What is the difference between CM 01/02 and FM 2009? Well, these are completely different games. Therefore, comparing the in-match text commentary with 3D match engine, game interfaces and number of features makes no sense. It seems that during the transformation from one game to another, a package, on which a label reads Playability, has been lost somewhere. How is this possible when the new game version is… so close to being perfect? There are three things that makes this game imperfect in relation to this playability factor.

First of all, time. I do not have much time for playing. Work, future family, home and many other activities consume a lot of time. I need a game in which I will be happy with the transfers I make and in which I will won trophies with a superb tactic. The game that enables me to do so is Championship Manager 01/02 , NOT Football Manager 2009 . I think FM 2009 has become a game that is addressed to those who do not work or study yet (although it may be half-truth for the latter), have not set up families, in short - for loners who prefer to stay at home rather than go out. Only then you will be able to spend 30 minutes between league matches. I want success, I want to succeed quickly. Does it mean FM 2009 is a bad game? No, it just means that spending a lot of time preparing a team for the next match is actually killing the playability.

Secondly, options. One of my friends said there are so many options in a new FM that they are difficult to grasp. He does not have any idea what the results will be if he changes one of these slider-controlled options or he leaves them as they are. Things get even more confusing when we look back at all the reported issues concerning wrong players’ positioning on the pitch and not following the instructions set by the sliders. A multitude of options confuses me so much that I do not bother about the sliders but download tactics in which somebody already had enough time to work them out. I guess Piotr Sebastian, the most talented tactic maker I know about, will probably be an exception in this matter. To conclude, the more sliders in the game, the more it becomes a football simulation that just an enjoyable game for the gamers.

Finally, the 3D mode. This is something that SI have been working on for 3 years, so it is reasonable amount of time to think of this feature as complete fully working. Unfortunately, it is not. My opinion is that they have thought about it for three years and worked for only a half so that the result is as usual – patch coming out every moth with another one going to be released in February. Going back to the match engine – looking at players running after the ball backwards, turning round and not knowing what to do, injured players remaining on the pitch… well, maybe the match engine itself has not changed a lot in comparison with the previous game version, but the 3D mode has made it repugnant. It would be to see the match engine implemented in the text commentary displaying on the screen, just like in CM 01/02, but there is a minor issue that makes it impossible. Let me give you a hint to find out what it is all about.

When playing a match, try to follow the text commentary at low speed and compare it with what is currently happening on the pitch. Let’s take an example – when a corner kick is taken, the defenders kick the ball away where there are no players from defending team and one of the defenders from attacking team tries to intercept the ball. What the text commentary says? Well, it says that the defender kicks the ball away, which is correct, but then it says – X is trying to intercept it. Who? How can a player who is on own half try to intercept the ball which is on the other end of the pitch? You can spot plenty of similar issues in the game. Another example: X scores a goal after the brilliant team move. A brilliant move? No, it was just a free-kick.

Football Manager 2009 was to be as close to real football as never before. Well, that may be true, but my enthusiasm for getting familiar with the game has weakened dramatically. I have problems with tactic analysis, I do not know what option is for, the graphic card in my laptop is a crap, I have no time for a longer career, but still, I do want to play. I want to enjoy the game. For now, the game I can enjoy is with CM 01/02, not with FM 2009, and frankly, I doubt if I will ever enjoy playing the latter. To conclude, here is another quote of my friend from editorial staff – “The only reason I run this game is for checking graphic addons”. My experiences with this game are similar and I am aware of the fact that we are minority. After all, you may have more desire to play the game than an old fart like me.