I've not really been keeping up to date with the general happenings in the world of football for a while, other than following Leeds of course.
I've been keeping an eye on the Premier League as the season opened this year and one thing caught my eye. I think that Mancini must have played FML ! Man City have a squad which is full of all the FML cheat players.
Aguero was pretty much a one man team for me on FML, but not only do they have him they have Balotelli, Dzeko and Tevez - all of whom were prime time cheat players which would make a team on their own. If there wasn't enough they have a proven corner hack in the guise of Micah Richards. Looking at their squad it's almost like a role call of the FML greats ! On paper they are my bet to win the league.
I've not managed to get into FM11 at all since FML ended. I don't really know why, the series has lost something for me. It seems a bit sterile and lacking personality and I find the interface to be very clunky. I installed CM 97/98 for a laugh yesterday and reckon the interface on that is actually better than the new versions... I'm sure everyone received a very bling bling email highlighting what I assume are supposed to be the best features for FM12, all of which are massively uninspiring. I mean, lets look at a promotional video
FM12 gameplay footage
really ? Is that seriously an official video ?
Anyway with a 'SI' of disappointment, with all this gloom in the world of football management, there's still one hope. Can the community make a decent game ? There's some positive rumblings and a lot of work going on with Ultimate Football Live.
Ultimate Football Live
There's some really good ideas and discussions going on over there - I just hope whatever comes out doesn't try and copy FML and all it's failings too much. I think they could pull it off. Whatever is used as a "ME" doesn't even need to be that strong to start with imo, as long as results are fairly logical it can be built on, and i'd guess the ME would be the hardest part to build.
I think it was on one of the very early CM games, maybe CM1 where the loading screen used to say something like "made for football fans by football fans" - i'm paraphrasing as I can't find it now. I can't actually find any reference to this anywhere so I might have made it up, in which case maybe use it as a tag line :p
It always put a picture in my mind of some random fans just making a game which turned out to be great. Here's hoping for another.
