LifeisXbox’s Football Manager 2022 review | November is over but there still is one game that sees the light of day every year in this month. I’m talking about Sports Interactive’s Football Manager. In Football Manager 2022, you gain almost complete control over a football club when trying to lead them to glory. I have reviewed a few other managing games in 2021 but this is the one I’m looking forward to every single year, so let’s see what it offers.
Football Manager 2022 is another fantastic addition to the Football Manager series. The game keeps developing every year and doesn’t disappoint at all.
ℹ️ Reviewed on PC | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we liked!
- Manage almost everything | For the ones who are unfamiliar with the Football Manager series, it is a game where you take control as the manager of a Football Team. From here on you can decide wich players you want to buy or sell, create tactics, decide who’s gonna play the next match and make tactical changes during the match and a lot more. What I personally really like about Football Manager 2022 is that it isn’t purely about football, you literally have to think about everything. For example when you are doing a press conference you can’t be an arse to the reporters because you don’t want to get on the wrong side of the management board. Basically every step you take you have to think two steps ahead, how will this effect my career and the club I’m managing? What makes Football Manager 2022 different from games like FIFA is that you aren’t actually playing the matches yourself. You still have control over substitutions and things like that, but once you started a match it’s up to the game engine to provide you with a acceptable outcome. But as I already mentioned, Football Manager and other managing game are more of a challenge due to being in control of everything and in my opinion that adds a whole new layer of fun to the game.
- Graphics & sound | Football Manager 2022 looks spot on. The game did look good in previous versions, but with this year’s title the game really improved and I’m very happy to see that Sports Interactive keeps trying to make everything more realistic every year. There are 2 major areas that can be seen seperatly while looking at the graphics. The first one is where there isn’t a match playing and you can develop a tactic or search for new players or do whatever you want (this can be seen in the screenshot above). This has always looked good and on point, and that is no different in this year’s edition. Secondly, you have the football field when a match is actually happening (as seen in the screenshot below). Here are the changes for the better happening, and no it isn’t as realistic and sharp as FIFA games but Football Manager focuses on other types of gameplay and for that this looks just really good. Soundwise the game doesn’t offer much, you can turn on sounds when a match is happening so you will hear supports chant and hear a whistle being blown when the match has started but thats almost everything there is. Football Manager games are ideal for putting on your own music.
- New features | Every year a new Football Manager game comes out, and every year there are a few new features or updates that make the game better then last year’s edition. This year the game lets you create your own custom dashboard where you can put on the information that is the most valuable to you, some new roles to give to your players so you can make your tactics even more on point then they already were, a new way to do staff meetings so you can pass on and manage tasks even more perfectly and a few more. Sometimes the changes that are being added aren’t much but in the long haul they are very helpfull, as is with this edition’s updates.
- Game modes | Football Manager 2022 offers a few different game modes to play. First of all, you have the standard career where you take control of a club of your own choice. Secondly, there is the Create a Club option which lets you create a club from scratch and compete in a real competition. Beside these 2, you have 2 online modes. One is a online career which is the same as the standard career except here players from all over the world manage a team in your competition. And last but not least is the Fantasy Draft. Here you can create the team of your dreams and compete against friends for ultimate domination.
Somewhere between
- Licenses | There is one thing that is always giving me mixed feelings in Football Manager games and that is the license restrictions. Most of the competitions offer real club names and logos. But with every sport game some of the teams have exclusive deals with certain games so for example Manchester United is called Man UFC. You can still clearly make up which team you are playing against, and the player names are real but it still feels like something is missing. Luckily there is a creative community who upload logo packs and realistic names so you can still get the real deal.
What we disliked
- Repetitive | The only problem there is with games like this is that in its core, the game will be the same every year, with just a couple of new features and updated squads. The same thing goes for Football Manager 2022. If you really love football, managing games and want to stay up to date and play with the newest teams and players, I say buy it every year. If you don’t care for the updated teams maybe buy a Football Manager game every 2-3 year since nothing really changes.
How long to beat the story | There is no story.
How long to achieve 100% achievements | 50+ hours
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