Manager mode, growth system and challenges
We kicked off our FIFA 07 experience with Manager Mode. The menus have been given an overhaul and are superbly designed, both in terms of visual impact and ease of use, and make navigating through your squad, league tables and the transfer market a much more pleasurable experience.
Once again you’ll be able to delve in the transfer market and pick up those bargains (there is now a currency option so you can choose Euros), send scouts out to watch players, manage the club’s finances through contract negotiation, sponsorship deals, selling players or by raising the price of match day tickets. You’ll receive internal memos and news during the season, from reports on player progress to the dreaded vote of confidence from the board of directors. There’s plenty of variation in the memos you’ll receive, and your decisions can affect the team and the fans morale. For example, we received a memo saying that the fans were keen to be more involved with what is going on behind the scenes of the club. We had a list of four options to choose from and we chose to post videos of the players in training on the club’s website. There was a more expensive option of constructing seats at the training area so fans can watch, but we’d just spent shed loads of cash on purchasing Jermaine Defoe from Tottenham, so had to settle for a cheaper option. The decisions made from these choices often have a knock-on effect and you’ll receive further memos that indicate the mood of the fans based on your choices.
EA have included a new system called growth status. This works through training and match experience where they receive points based on their growing experience. This means that you can slowly nurture a youth team player or try and create a balanced squad by being liberal with you’re your training orders and making sure that all players are given some time on the pitch. We tested out the new system by making sure we brought on substitutes (even if there was just 1 minute left in the game) and found that those players that weren’t good enough to get a place in the starting line-up would receive growth points because they’d played a few minutes on the pitch. It’s a good way to introduce new players and bring their rating up and means that you don’t always have to search on the transfer market when you can build up your own players just as easily.
There are a number of options on match day, and once you’ve set up your team, formations and tactics, you can choose to play the match, watch the watch or simulate the score. EA have introduced the ‘Visual Sim’ which means that can watch the match through text (aka Football Manager). It’s a nice addition to the game, it’s faster than playing the match but also allows you to stop the action and jump straight into the game at any point. We went 2-0 down before half-time so decided to play the second half ourselves and managed to secure a point right in the final seconds!
Through playing matches you can unlock some of the FIFA challenges, such as scoring a hat trick or by defeating a 4 star team with a 2 star club. There’s also a range of master challenges where you’ll need to beat more difficult challenges such as winning a game without ever being caught offside. The range of challenges can be demanding but add another degree of replay ability to a game that is full to the brim with things to do.