Football Manager 2016

The finest game Sports Interactive has released. Games released annually tend to feel incredibly similar year on year, but a lack of progress isn’t something that can be claimed here. Yes, at its core it’s the Football Manager we know and love, only this time it’s a treat for the eyes as well as the head.

Football Manager 2016 may not be a huge overhaul over previous titles but the game feels a lot more accessible for anyone to pick up and play. Sports Interactive continues to show why Football Manager is the most dominant of sports management sim.

Is it worth releasing your Football Manager 2015 and transfer in Football Manager 2016, yes it most certainly is. Prepare to lose many hours to the footballing phenom that is Football Manager 2016.

With two new modes and a ton of improvements and additions, Football Manager 2016 is another great entry into an already stellar series.

Every year, Football Manager takes a step further, and its always a meaningful one. If you are interested in the managerial aspects of soccer, this is, and will always be, your home.

Football Manager 2016 is the cornerstone of a new era. The game we already know gets many little improvements, and Create-A-Club and online Fantasy Draft modes, despite some restrictions, are a precious and welcome additions (and addictions) to the game.

The foundation with its accurate statistics and believable correlations is as rock solid and convincing as always and on top of that you’ll get the best match presentation in the series’ history – which doesn’t mean that much if you consider that only a few years ago they still used oversized dots. Nonetheless this is the stuff that soccer fans’ dreams are made of. Who would have thought that animated spreadsheets could invoke more emotion than the latest FIFA or PES iterations?

Football Manager 2016 is still a great game for every football fan. It brings some interesting additions, but at the same time there are some issues that Sports Interactive should finally tackle really hard.

FM 2016 is the biggest and deepest game of the franchise so far, but it's up to the FM 2015 player to decide whether the changes, tweaks and improvements we've seen this year are enough.

Football Manager 2016 makes accessing the more complex features easier: it's both deeper and more user friendly.

Football Manager 16, although not terribly innovative, is improved in almost every aspect compared to its predecessor. Better UI, friendlier tactics menu, more realistic 3D engine and transfer negotiations are among the most important improvements. Moreover, the adaptive AI offers a new level of challenge while also the “create a new club” and “fantasy draft” bring in some fresh air, albeit the lack of solid new gameplay ideas is apparent.

Football Manager 2016 makes you care about your team just as much as in the real world, providing the most realistic football manager experience to date.

It’s the best football managing game around, no contest. Every year it gets better too, with refined mechanics, more complexity and steps in the right direction. Some historical flaws are still there, unfortunately, like unrealistic values for some players, or boring press conferences. Iron out the kinks and it will become perfect.

Football Manager 2016 feels a little thin initially, but as players dig deeper into the experience, they will find that it offers the best expression of the core mechanics that has defined the series for the past few years.

Football Manager 2016 has many improvements, adds new interesting modes, has deeper statistics, and is full of content. However, still some classic issues remain in terms of visuals and sound.

Football Manager 2016 refines its bases with countless tools like the Prozone analytics to make you the best manager ever.

There’s not much new here in terms of ground-breaking additions and improvements, but Sports Interactive’s efforts are just about enough to offer an improved experience and a more fun game compared to last year’s release.

Still untouchable on the footy front—but shelf life and that inconsistent 3D engine chip away at its tender Achilles.

The franchise hasn’t changed much since 2014, or 2013 for that matter, but there’s a reason actual football clubs still use Football Manager as a scouting tool: its realism. Trading tens of thousands of incredibly realistic footballers will simply never be boring. [jan. 2016, page 082]

Football Manager 2016 is still a good game and this time, Sport Interactive tried something new (New Magager creation screen, Touch Mode etc.). But it needs a real rival.

This year's combination of small improvements and innovations creates an excellent experience, that helps the newcomers join in. The veterans will be on other hand pleased with clarity and overall balance. It’s not a revolution -thankfully- because revolution could cause more harm in the moment.

Football Manager 2016 is back with a vengeance, thanks to the good restructuring of existing features. There is not so much new in this game, but it is definitely improved.

On the hardest levels of difficulty, I win more than 90 per cent of my games in titles like NHL, Madden, FIFA and NBA, but there I have the ability to more directly influence how the games play out. Here, it is about strategy, development and then learning the complexities of the game. This can make it difficult to find success, but I have found that it can be attained if you are patient and willing enough to stick with it.

Football Manager 2016 is an incredibly complete (and complex) football simulation. The amount of detail and depth is just staggering; too bad that the newest and potentially most innovative part (the narrative-multiple choice ridden one) is just confusing and not fun.

Football Manager 2016 lacks of ambition to be one of the main episodes of the Sports Interactive series. It's the most complete FM we have though, and it's consequently the best till next year.

Football manager needs some real competition. Their developers make only small changes every year when we expect they focus, for instance, on the graphics engine. However, the game is still very powerful an very enjoyable.

Football Manager 2016 is complete misery, heartache, and bouts of pure anger – directed at a bunch of numbers. But I love it.

Football Manager is still the king on the hill of sports simulation games. Though FM16 is predictable and takes no chances with its established recipe, it delivers an infinitely repeatable game that is both very entertaining and wickedly addictive.

Few game franchises have ever gripped like this one, and its symbiosis with the real sport remains rather staggering. For those who recall the heady days of Championship Manager, but who became alienated by the increasing complexity of its Football Manager replacement, FM 2016 represents an opportunity to come back. Your loved ones and work mates, however, may regret it.

A microscopic improvement on Football Manager 2015, that is as addictive and engrossing as ever but seems to have run out of steam in terms of new ideas.

Interestingly, Sports Interactive has said it plans to sell a standalone version of Football Manager Touch, with a release date of "sometime before Christmas." If you’re the same kind of Football Manager player as me, you may be better off waiting for that. For now, you can find Football Manager Touch here in Football Manager 16. Many of the new features--the Set Piece Creator, Create a Club and a lightly tweaked tactics UI--are available in Touch while almost everything I dislike has been cut. This, coupled with the fact that the match engine feels just a little bit more Joachim Löw than Tony Pulis this year, was enough to draw me back in.

Solid. Dependable. This edition of Football Manager has set itself up not to concede, and to make occasional expressive forays into new territory. The scattering of innovations (hilarious character creator aside) are worthwhile, but some old, persistent quirks still rankle.