Football Manager 2012: football management game

To the uninitiated – including many football fans – Football Manager makes little sense.

It represents the beautiful game turned into a behemoth of statistics and charts, but this latest edition in the series, which has been around since 1992, isn't just more comprehensive than ever, it is also more comprehensible.

In the past Football Manager did little to explain itself to new-comers, but this has now changed. An easy-to-follow tutorial guided us through all the key tasks and showed us where to find what we needed. Before long, we were able to play the game with ease. It is at this point that ‘just one more hour' turns into six more hours and Sunday afternoon disappears.

There is a definite event horizon when it comes to Football Manager games. That is to say, a point at which we found ourselves inexorably pulled in, unable to escape from its labyrinth of numbers, letters and symbols.

The main changes have come in a streamlining of the interface, which certainly needed it. By its nature Football Manager is a complicated and fiddly game, but this latest iteration has undergone a minor, but significant facelift.

To give one example, preparing for a match is now a seamless process, with one task moving neatly into the next right up until kick-off. Consequently, changing tactics, match preparation, player instructions and the like is now easy to do.

Interacting with players and coaching staff has been improved too. If a player needs to focus on a specific aspect of their game or a skill in training, then a coach might suggest it. This felt like a clever way for the game to point out some of its many extra features and it encouraged us to go in-depth and explore the various options.

Elsewhere, the 3D match engine has been tweaked. It felt more fluid and realistic, with new animations and camera angles both welcome additions. It might not be quite like watching the real thing, but it does a good job of replicating the action.

This game is widely available for around £25 and that really is a bargain. While the changes from the last version aren't groundbreaking, they are substantial.