I am a huge fan of the Football Manager games, evidence of this can be found in my review of FM09, and I was excited to discover that Sports Interactive were adding an additional Live version to the popular series. There is little doubt that SI had plans for an MMO version of their highly successful series but their recent partnership with SEGA would certainly have helped in getting this idea off the ground. If Football Manager Live is to be a success it is essential that SI turn to their current fan-base for support. Fans of the series will wonder how FML differs from FM and if the differences are good enough to warrant the required subscription fee and I hope this review will help answer those questions.

I must admit that I don’t like the FML trailer, to be honest it does my head in, and if that was the only thing I had to go on I would avoid this game like the plague. I understand what they were aiming for, buy this game so you can play against some mates and call them retarded knobs, and while that’s obviously a lot of fun I found the trailer irritating. One thing the trailer succeeds in doing is accurately describing this game as the fantasy football version of Football Manager.

After you’ve signed up, you join an available Gameworld, pick a name for your team, choose your team’s Home and Away football strips from a selection of designs and colours, sign your starting squad of players, and decide which FA suits you best. When you have all that out of the way it’s time for you to properly experience the world of FML and by that I mean spend a bit of time chatting in the Lobby. It would be correct to describe the GW Lobby as little more than a chat-room but it’s less random than most since everyone at least shares an interest in Football although don’t think for one second that the common interest leads to less bickering. I enjoy a good bit of Football banter so I feel at home having a debate with everyone, the Manchester United fan from Newcastle, the Newcastle fan from Norway, and the strangest thing of all is that Leeds fan who actually admits to living in Leeds.

Those making the jump from Football Manager will soon realize that while things appear to be more simple on the whole you don’t have it so easy in one aspect. Hiring coaches to take care of your dirty work has been replaced with a one-man-band deal and you are faced with a selection of skills to learn. The help room is soon filled with newcomers who want to know how to remove/add forward runs for their players and since I’m on the subject I might as well use that skill as an example. You must first Tactics to the required level, then learn Individual Player Tactics, and then learn the Individual Player Forward Runs skill. The skill system can be daunting at first because it’s far removed from what you’re used to but it will very quickly become second nature. I could sit here all day describing everything in detail but I’ll instead offer you this link to the FML Manual – http://manual.fmlive.co.uk/

I would like to take this opportunity to mention a couple of people I met while playing FML and in order to conceal their identity I shall alter their names so that no-one will ever know who I’m referring to. Harry the Hard-on, who has now left the Larsson Gameworld, is a little muppet who would sit in the Lobby and spout a seemingly endless amount of crap in the hope that someone would pay attention to him. The Linginator, bless his little cotton socks, is a harmless lad who has an uncanny ability for signing talented superstars and squeezing the life out of them before throwing them aside like used condoms. His track record is the thing of nightmares and he may appear to be a train-wreck waiting to happen but you better watch out because apparently he’s just one player short of perfection. It’s a shame that only a few of you will ever get to meet those particular individuals but the great thing about FML is that every Gameworld comes with its own set of interesting characters.

The mods in any Gameworld appear to be a mixture of nice guys and irritating twats but anyone familiar with Internet forums will be more than used to that mixture. There are also “chat helpers” on hand to answers any questions you might have and they will try their best to point you in the right direction. Big Jim, Chris, and Mark are three of the best chat helpers in the Larsson GW while Shevez winds people up and Reesy is the resident con-artist.

I highly recommend FM Live to any fans of the FM series, fantasy football, and the great sport in general but most of all this will give you the perfect excuse to make a few new mates and sit until the early hours with them having a great laugh. I can certainly vouch for the fact that through FML you can make some new friends and I’d like to give a shout out to, in no particular order, Jon, Dan, Per, Bill, Tom, Christer, Kenneth, and I’d like to thank the Academy for…right, enough of that nonsense, I’m off to play more of the game!

The official FML slogan is “play, win, rub it in”, how about something with less rhyme but more dedication, “play, don’t lose for ages, severely rub it in” – http://www.kakaflopped.info/

I’ll leave you with some wise words from the Linginator himself – “goal is coming”. He was correct.

9/10

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