Manage your soccer team’s path to victory

FIFA Manager 12 is the latest version of the classic soccer sim in which you take charge of a club and attempt to lead them to glory.

In FIFA Manager 12 you are responsible for all aspects of the evolution of your team. As coach, you need to take care of the players, organize training, and prepare strategies to help win all the competitions you’re entering.

In addition to the tactical functions of a football coach in FIFA Manager 12 you must attend to other important matters, such as finance, new contracts, transfers, budget, management of image rights of the club, official communications with the press, etc. You don’t have to run everything yourself though, and there are assistants available to automate some of these tasks.

There aren’t many significant improvements to report in FIFA Manager 12 from the previous version, other than updated teams and player data, and graphical improvements to the 3D match view.

On the subject of the 3D match view, the graphics engine in FIFA Manager 12 is a long way short of FIFA 12. Animation can be choppy and up close the players are quite hideous, even bearing a resemblance to zombies with their strange red and green eyes! Bizarrely, there’s no in-game sounds in FIFA Manager 12, which leaves matches feeling a bit flat.

Still, watching matches in FIFA Manager 12 is arguably more entertaining than in Football Manager 2012, and we were very impressed with the in-game interface, which allows you to change tactics and strategy, and shout instructions to the team and individual players without leaving the match.

The also program contains hundreds of clubs, with more than 41,000 players and the top leagues in the world to choose from.

The complexity of FIFA Manager 12 is a bit daunting at first but luckily it doesn’t take long to find your way around the game.