Here we go Boyz, it's the FM09 Demo Impressions (release: 7PM EDT) Impressions thread
 

Rather nice of the FM folks to release their demo on a night we get an extra hour, huh?

From SI Games, this is what will be available when it goes live:

More demo information - Sports Interactive Community

wrong forum ass :p

Whoa, it's Daylight Savings weekend already?

you think we're going to consign a NEW GAME thread to the Soccer Games ghetto? GTFO! :)

hahaha

DEMO IS UP ON STEAM!!!

(search for football manager)

not sure about gameshadow - it appears to have crashed

good DL times on steam ( < 20 mins for me)

FM2009 Demo Live on STEAM

linky?

You can download it through Steam. It looks like the other links have melted down already.

Ok, file downloaded & installed.

Starting a game, with Fulham, for fun to start.

Ok, I get a "Welcome to the Club" message from Mohammed El Fayed, the owner of Fulham, a brief background on the team (a brief history on what the team's done), the standard team report with the breakdown of the key player on the roster (for Fulham its Andy Johnson)

And then, it's time to make a decision. In fulham's case, the goal was "Bravely attempt to avoid relegation". I think we can avoid it, and got 6 Mill in Transfer money, and 975K a week in wages.

This is the new Transfer Rumors screen, the national papers roundup of what my fellow Premier League folks are looking to do

Something nice. I had made offers for a couple players who were rumored to be available via loan.. so I made bids to loan them for a fee.. they rejected them, but instead of a flat reject, they came back saying what they were expecting.

damn, I like that transfer rumor screen. Immersion FTW.

Press Conference time: Let's see who attends:

FourFourTwo, The Sunday Mirror, folks from the football section at The Guardian, The London Paper, and The People. 18 People from 14 media sources. Yikes.

1st question: Is Fulham my dream Job?
Answer politely: I am pleased to have the chance to work here.

2nd Question: What's my tactical approach
Answer: I'll be looking for sensible attacking play.

3rd Question: On my man management style.
Answer:I may occasionally get involved, but by and large there needs to be a degree of trust.

4th Question: How involved in the day to day running?
Answer: As much as my time allows me to be.

5th Q: Asking how much upheaval I'll bring coming in.
A: Players and Staff will all have an opportunity to prove they're worthy of staying on.

6th Q: What can we expect on the transfer market?
A: I take the neutral: I don't expect any one tendency to dominate here.

7th Q: Is there an uphill struggle to keep Jimmy Bullard at the club (Sunderland are interested in him)

A: Not going to comment on outgoing transfer rumors.

8th Q:Recent reports have linked you with a move to Boca striker Martin Palermo, are you prepared to go on record with your thoughts on this story?
A: It could be true, yes.

End of Press Conference.

Response to press conference:

Alex Donovan was not giving much away as he met journalists for his new press conference as manager of Fulham. A journalist from FourFourTwo chose the main focus point for the conference, asking "You sit here as the new manager of Fulham. Is this your dream job?"

Donovan's response was "I am pleased to have the chance to work here."

It is thought that the Fulham squad would react well to Donovan's handling of the question.

I haven't playe a new FM since 2006, so this is a big jump. I love the team report, where your AM gives you suggestions of who you can pick up to improve the team.

Right! Who leaked my transfer bid to the press!!!


The day after, four Premier League teams place a bid on him. OI! GEROFF! I had him first!

I like the "set your expectations" thing as well. Don't know if that was an earlier add, but pretty cool.

From a match in progress. Check out your assistant manager's feedback (one of the game day info tags you can turn on)

Well, first crash. Hit a player link, and now it is locked up.

Download took me only five minutes. Am I missing the spot you put it in windowed mode, or does it not exist?

Ok.. I have to start playing this series.. I mean, I coach soccer and yet I don't fully understand the real soccer leagues..

Where is a good place to start as a n00b?

seeing A LOT of injuries early. 5 in one match, all 2 weeks +

it's in visual options, in the display resolution drop-down

Yay! Thank you! And it looks like you don't have to add -small_screen to the command line to get it to work, which always annoyed me.

holy shit at the 3d match view screenshot

Depends on what you want to get out of it. Do you want to see life in the lower leagues? go with a mid table league so you can fail or succeed? Take a team where you can buy and sell the best players in the world like it was going out of style?

The reserve team coach asking you which first-team players are available for the reserves before their match is an awesome addition.

damn you all. here i am playing my fm08 game into 2032 and i see this. now i must dl

anecdotally - WAYYYYY too many injuries I got going on here. 4-5 per match, that are keeping guys out for long periods

First impressions of the 3d game....eh. I think I like the dots better. There seems to be a lot of standing over the ball, and the action is not very fluid.

I'd say start as Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, or Liverpool, to get yourself familiar with competing in the different English competitions, plus Europe at the same time.

I guess I want to start out somewhere where there are no expectations.

:D

fortunately the 2d view is still there for you - but man i love the 3d

Heh. Take a mid to higher level team in the English Premier League.

Everton, Liverpool (natural rivals, there!), Man City (loads of money, they just got taken over by UAE Billionaires), Sunderland, etcetera. Those teams have a good chance of winning games (and keeping you interested!) but not so good thatyou feel like the team's winning DESPITE your managing, not because of it.

may also seem like a lot of standing around because you don't have "show entire match" selected and instead have "key" or "extended"

No, I'm see a little of standing around during the play. I can tell the difference. I watched a good portion of a game "live." It just isn't very smooth.

I actually want to start at some real low team who never wins or never expect to wins.. learn the game and then move my way up!

Who would that be?

The asst manager feedback in the game viewing screen is such an awesome addition! I may buy the game because of that improvement alone. One of the problems I had with the last FM was that I sometimes found it hard to judge how well players were doing with my tactics and what adjustments I should make. (I'm not particularly good at FM and my knowledge of soccer isn't that deep.)

fair enough. i've noticed a little of it, but i just shrug it off as "a 1st-gen problem" i guess

It was a pain in the ass to try and actually open this game from my desktop

I'd recommend this too. You'll get a team that's involved in the European competitions right away, that has a HUGE budget so you can experiment all you want in the transfer market, and then later on if you want a bigger challenge you can go for a lower division team or whatever, but you'll have the basic mechanics down.

Looks good so far. Only problem I have with the 3d is that the match information screens should have a minimize button as they take up a lot of the screen if you have the match stat/player ratings/asst manager feedback screens all open at once. Havent noticed any smoothness problems.

MArc:

I just had it lock up my computer, the Steam version. I attended the trialists game and then at halftime clicked to leave the game and that was that. I received a windows error msg and then couldnt do anything anymore and had to restart the cpu.

and a reload took me all the way back to day 1 so Ill note some other things Ive noticed that are perhaps happening because its a demo. The tactics wont let me save edits to them, I made a 442 away and when I went back to it after saving it was morphed by someone.

I'm not sure about that, really. But I wouldn't worry too much about expectations in the demo. But if you want to play with the intent of "moving up" you can do what I do: hit "randomise" until you get a team in Blue Square North or Blue Square South, the lowest English leagues in the game.

Shrug.

I always thought there was a lot of standing around in soccer.

3D view.......SWEET!!!!

Even if it is choppy, that is a huge addition. I was going to skip this years version, may have to reconsider now.

Maybe. The one that stood out was a 0-0 match just starting the second half. The GK got the ball and just stood there. He held the ball an extremely long time until finally a striker from the other team came up to challenge him, and he kicked it right as he got there. I've seen that in games where a team is ahead and your killing time, but not in a tie game right after half. *shrug*


I'm just not crazy about it. I like some of the additions, but I think I'll wait till next years version so they can fix any bugs and such. The first generation of their new engines are usually not up to snuff. Since I can only find my 2005 version, I think I'll try to hunt down a 2008 version cheap somewhere to tied me over.

I can't believe I may have to upgrade my video card for a text sim...haha.

The demo isn't allowing me to watch in 3D due to limitations with my current card. :)

haha well that probably makes this a no buy for me.

Getting about 765KB/sec from the main sigames link. Nice!

I miss being able to give side arrows on the tactics screen, the 4-3-3 I like to use isn't as effective without them.

I'll echo everyone else who says there are a ton of injuries occurring.

I don't mean this to rip on Marc or SI, but the problems I'm reading about here are exactly why I wait for a couple of patches before I really start playing. The match engine will go through a lot of tweaks over the next few months, and the crash problems will almost certainly be addressed. Unfortunately, when the full game is released in two weeks or so, these problems may still be there.

I applaud the efforts of the SI team, and it looks like they're really moving forward, so I intend to purchase. I'll just wait until January or February. Don't worry, Marc! You'll get my money!

I'm not worried about bugs and crashes in the demo. I'm just interested in checking out the new features. I think I'll probably wait until the first patch before buying as well.

I started out with the Maidenhead Magpies, mostly because of the name. I know everyone suggests starting with a big club, but I think there's advantages to learning the game with a smaller club because it reduces your tasks in the beginning and you don't deal with having to figure out all the Cups/competitions at the very start. You have no money for a transfer budget and the wage budget is pretty much at the limit, so I'd play through the first couple friendlies with the team you have and get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses. Be sure to move up the better players from the reserves to the senior squad to fill out the roster so you can field the starters and 12 reserves in the friendlies. Once you've played a couple games you can try to cut some guys loose who aren't up to par. You might be stuck with some of them though because of contracts and no one wanting to transfer them in or the team not wanting to pay for to release them on a free transfer. Once you've freed up some wage budget, you can sign a few players to shore up weak spots.

Depends on the game in question ...

Friendlies that sort of thing is very common as it is in the higher level leagues esp. in say Italy or when there are mismatched teams in the Premiership and the team in question wants to waste time or pull a player out of position ...

Just to check though - 2d mode is still working ok yeah?

Might I humbly suggest you purchase FMH09 PSP while you wait ;)

I didnt have any problems with injuries during preseason but I did have a freeze. :(

Also no problems with a choppy game play

When will this be out. I have a road trip to Nawlins coming around Xmas and this may be just the trick for the road. When did you say? :)

Yes the 2D version runs fine...a bit choppy but again, it is likely due to the age of my computer (although I do run XP with over a gig of RAM).

Very good chance I was going to upgrade my graphics card anyway...this just makes me more certain ;)

EDIT TO ADD:
I am really disappointed I can't start a season with Cambridge City now that they were relegated out of Blue Square South. What happened to them last year Marc? Do you still support them?

I haven't played for a few years, and I have to say, this version is really pulling me in.

Here was a surprise. The last time I played I found it too easy to advance by loading up on coaches to really train your team to best advantage. I tried to add just ONE extra coach, and the board canceled the deal on me. Cheap bastards!

I found somewhat of a disconnect. after a game in which we lost the wrap up said that the fans we're "disappointed" and booing yet under the 'match confidence' screen it says the fans are still happy in regards to the outcome. I believe this existed last game too and had hoped that they wouldnt contradict eachother going forward.

Me too. My first version of wwsm, 2006, I started unemployed and CC offered me the managers job. I accepted the job and led them to promotion to Blue Square Premier while both my starting strikers were injured. I had a striker by the name of Duffy that scored 7 goals in my last 5 matches to carry us to a first place finish.

So, when I bought v08 I started with CC again being familiar with the club and league. Not finding them playable was a big disappointment.

MR, when you get the full game you could do like I did with my first wwsm, start unemployed (not really an option with the demo capped at 6 months) and wait 'til you are offered a job. If you don't set yourself up with a huge reputaion\experience you will be offered a lower league job.

I liked it because you take over a club in mid-season that is probably struggling or at least not playing up to expectations and also has some history and current player stats to look at to help you evaluate your roster.
This, too me, made it much easier, as trying to go in "cold turkey" and evaluate your team using only ratings you really don't understand can be both time consuming and frustrating.

Whenever I type something in it will frequently double type the letter even though I just hit it once. It took me a couple minutes to type my name in because it would always add an extra letter like I hit the key twice.

You must be playing as Boro then. Sounds almost tame.

me too, its a real pain in the ass.

I noticed that too! But I figured it was just me typing so fast!

I always started with Lancaster.

Yeah, just checked and absurd hardware requirements for a rudimentary 3d view push this to a not considering.

System specs..
BFG 8500 gt 512 mb ram
amd 3500+ 2.2 ghz
2 gig ram
xp media center edition


My first impression is I really like the 3d. Not world class graphics but then I wasn't expecting that. But the 3d does a good job of showing a football game in a realistic fashion. I like watching from the elevated camera, really gives a good feel for the spacing and the timing of the passing and players trying to run into space.

I also think the more you watch matches in 3d the more detail your eyes will pick up on. While watching my first, and still only, match played I was only seeing the big picture, ie ball movement and space being created and closed down. Then as the match progressed I started to notice the tackles being made and seeing the fouls just before the ref stopped play. Also noticing fouls that I thought should have been called but the ref let the play go on.

I chose Crystal Palace as my starting place and my first friendly was against CP Baltimore (are they really affiliated with CP?) in Baltimore. Went with the games default 4-4-2 tactic and more or less was dominating play but went in 0-0 at the half. Went to attacking 4-4-2 to start the second half and ended up going down 1-0 when CP Balt. was able to get a pass over the top to their striker who beat my second string GK. Shit, down 1-0 to a low level club! Oh, the shame.

At the 80th minute was able to equalize and then at the 87th minute I had a great goal to take the lead. Ball moving down the left and my left wing caught up to it just as it was getting to the goal line outside the 18yd box. He tried to cross it and I'm thinking from that angle he'll have to bend the ball back into the pitch. He crosses it and it actually went over the top of the net bending back into play where my striker on the far post headed it in for the winner. Coolest FM goal I've ever seen.

I know some don't like the 3d and to each their own but I would have paid just to add this to my wwsm2008 game.

2d is still included. and not sure what the hardware requirements are, but it runs on my laptop, which is like ~1.5 years old

And the reason should piss you off.

However, the club was encountering financial difficulties and the club's City Ground was sold to an Isle of Man company called Ross River, which was linked to Brian York, a man who had briefly been a director of the club. The then board announced that it was to scrap the first team and make the reserve team into a feeder for Cambridge United. This prompted the formation of a supporters' trust, who within weeks had taken over the running of the club. The club took Ross River to court, where it was ruled that the club were victims of fraudulent misrepresentation and bribery - the former Chief Executive Arthur Eatham having taken a £10,000 payment from Brian York, though the original deal was not overturned.

In April 2008 the City Ground failed an FA ground inspection. As a consequence Cambridge City were automatically demoted from the Conference South to the Southern League Premier Division, despite the club appealling the decision

The City Ground issue is working through the courts, the most recent decision is that the Club gets to stay there through 2010 rent-free (I think, rent-free), and they get 50% of any profit from the sale/development of the City Ground property (the ground was sold for 2.2 Million pounds, and appraised at 12 million)

I'm aware that 2d is still included. There isn't enough new in this series from year to year to warrant a yearly purchase for me. 3d is new enough to warrant it, but the hardware requirements are too steep for me. I don't have 128 MB of video card memory and it isn't upgradeable on my laptop. Therefore, I have no interest.

Seems like a silly amount to require for what it is. Just my opinion.

ETA: between the utter disappointment with FM Live and now this, I'm probably done with this series. Someone come and wake me up when there is a decent american football sim with at least a 2d animated view, I guess.

Sigh.

Well, that really sucks. I've never seen them play other than a few video clips from their sight but it's amazing how a game like FM will get you to the point of actually caring about a team and what happens to them. I hope they can work something out and someday make a comeback.

They'll find a place to play after 2010 (probably at the Abbey Stadium where Cambridge United play.)..

I'd love to see City back in the Conference (almost as much as I want to see Cambridge United back in the league system)

I do hope the demo is missing some things like the people in the stands (perhaps because of the team Im running....anyone running a big time team and see people in the stands?) Why are the players on the bench all spread apart like they are?

When are you coming to New Orleans? We'll have to get together if I'm not out of town visiting relatives.

As far as the topic goes, I'll also be waiting for the 1st or probably 2nd patch. Last time I purchased, I bought it at release and got burnt out on the problems before the first patch or two came out. The year I was REALLY hooked on this series, I bought it after 2 patches were out and it just was so absorbing. So, I'm going to try to recapture that magic. It also helps that I'll have my new computer around the time that it will be out so that means a lot more countries than I could run now.

Were coming Dec 19-26 or so with a ton of family so Ill have to let you know whats going on. I know the 19th were actually staying in mobile at the isle of Capri and then coming over the next day. My bro's putting us all up at the four seasons in the French Qtr so were absolutely stoked. I think he's having a surprise wedding.

6 freakin injuries in one game. i cant even get my others guys healthy to field a full team now this shit. im down to one striker for the next 3 weeks

y'know, Marc, the injury thing is kind of shocking. You did have a Beta team right? How was that missed?

yeah - the injuries are out of control i'd say - but other than that i like what i see, and i'm confident that can be fixed pretty quickly

They were relegated because they failed a ground inspection (didn't come up to scratch) not because of their league position ...

Cambridge City F.C. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

PS> I have a soft spot for them because I lived locally to them for several years (Royston was just down the road from Cambridge) and I loved how informally setup the club was (you could go along and have a pre-game lunch there and the manager would come in during the lunch and discuss his team selection with you :D) ..... however I'm actually a Brighton supporter.

Might I make a suggestion? Add detail levels to the 3d view so that people without the newest video cards and no option to upgrade can play your game.

i'd think MJ4H's suggestion would be pretty do-able - at least in a post-release patch if not in the release-version

I don't know if this is what you're talking about but in the display and sounds part of the preferences there is an option to select the graphical detail in the 3D match view.

Thank you!

Which league are teams like these in?

Sounds like a good idea to me.. thanks!

I need to get some demo time in to see if it's a purchase for me.

The issue would be whether or not this made it possible to run the mode on older video cards. Just running it in lower detail for people with newer video cards doesn't solve the problem of cutting off a large part of the userbase unnecessarily.

It has been years since I've followed or even seen a FM game and I was very impressed to see the very immersive screen shots.

Same here.

The last time I played a FM game was probably back in 2004 or 2005. The new screen shots and such look amazing.

I checked out the requirements for my laptop (I doubt I'd play too much on the desktop). I don't think I can run the 3D view, which I can live with, but I was wondering what kind of performance people think I'd have with the following specs:

1.40 GHz Celeron Processor
2 GB Ram

I am not sure if anything else is all that important. The laptop's video card isn't much.

Here's another new feature: Trial Day. All the out of work players get invites, so you can see em work, and offer them jobs (this is for if you're running a lowerlevel team, a good way to see if there's any talent worth a free transfer)

I agree, City was always my choice of lower league team, hoping they can turn it around.

they're in 2nd place in their new division, and if they go up, they will make sure that the field is up to FA requirements (the lawsuit took all their time and money)


http://www.cambridgecityfc.com/

here's a YouTube video on it


YouTube - Cambridge City FC Saved

Its out the 14th of November I believe ... or thereabouts.

I get a thrill from watching seeing a well-placed through ball setting up a one-on-one to my striker in the 3D view.

Any tactical tips that you guys have found effective? My defense is really solid but I'm having to rely on corners and free kicks for a lot of my goals.

um, no, ebbsfleet sucks under my tutelage.

Downloaded and played for about 45 minutes last night. FM09 was always going to be a purchase for me, I passed on ’08, but after playing the demo I’m pretty excited. I’ve only watched 2 games, but the 3D matches are great.

I was a little worried that my machine wouldn’t handle the game, but it seems to be working just fine. Does anyone know if that will change with the full game installed as opposed to the vanilla demo? I usually don’t play with many leagues going, 10-12 at most.