A Football Manager 2018 Story: The Hoff Part 1

It all began innocently enough, Jose Mourinho was sacked for no reason, to allow an unproven 23-year-old with no managerial, coaching or professional footballing experience to take over at Manchester United. The fans were more confused and bewildered than angry. The manager’s name was Shaun, and all he really wanted was to improve upon his predecessor. He even started sharing his progress online, going through the results of his games for each month.

Football Manager 2018: The Man Utd “Challenge” Part 8

February was a decent month, we beat Sevilla at home in the 1st leg of the last 16 of the Champions League and we maintained top spot in the league. 

Football Manager 2018: The Man Utd “Challenge” Part 7

January was a good month for us, regaining top spot and going 3 points clear of Arsenal. Getting knocked out of the FA Cup wasn’t good but at least we can concentrate on just the League and Champions League. Our good league performance was acknowledged as well.

Football Manager 2018: The Man Utd “Challenge” Part 6

The busy December period was, well… poor. Now we are in January with 97 million to spend, I have a few players in mind but it may be better to go after them in the summer. Harry Kane, Andrea Belotti, Lewis Cook are the 3 main players I’m interested in, but with Spurs and Torino both looking unlikely to get European football we can get them for less money in the summer. Anyway, on to the matches this month, away games at Chelsea and Tottenham are coming up and they’re the only fixtures I think we’ll have trouble with.

Football Manager 2018: The Man Utd “Challenge” Part 5

The busy December period is upon us, with some good performance and a little luck hopefully we can nail down top spot in our Champions League group and also stay top of the Premier League. Also in the last part, I said we would need to be well beaten by Spartak to lose top place, well… that isn’t true. Just losing would be enough, which I didn’t realize till it was too late. We have the Manager of the Month award to start the month, unfortunately, we came 2nd behind Wenger.

FIFA 18: The Immersion Problem

There’s been a lot of talk on the blog recently about FIFA and microtransactions, which after reading I thought “Hey I know, I’ll do a blog about FIFA”. That’s because we here at I Can’t Believe It’s Not Blogger can’t stop, It’s a serious problem but for now respect our addiction. Seriously though microtransactions are obviously bad but they’re not fully to blame for a why game series is getting worse or why a game on its own is bad. Even in FIFA, the microtransactions can be completely ignored, even more so if you’re a career mode player as they’re not a part of that mode, yet. I feel the main problem with FIFA has been around for a while, it’s been more noticeable in last few years where the game hasn’t changed too much and that problem is immersion, or as I like to call it, The Immersion Problem. 

To Hammer Home a Point

On Sunday I wrote a post titled ‘Why Have FIFA Games Got Worse?‘, the purpose of this article was to try to pinpoint what has caused this decline that I perceive as happening (I’m sure some disagree). After a brief talk with the blogs other resident words guy, he made his feelings on the topic clear, pointing to microtransactions as the downfall of the series. This links into EA neglecting other areas of the title – such as career mode. Also, evidence backing up this point of view is clear through the numbers: each copy of FIFA released in 2016 made $121 off a $60 initial price tag.

Why Have FIFA Games Got Worse?

For long-term followers of the blog, you may have noticed a couple of things about the two resident writers of the blog. Amongst the heaps of negatives, you may have noticed we are massive football fans, as such we love our football games… naturally, well to a point. You see, I’ve played football and sports games for a long old time, I remember playing FIFA ’98 and Tiger Woods PGA tour on Play Station 1. My co-writer has owned every FIFA game since like ’98 or 2000 or something (if this is wrong, I’m sure he’ll correct in the comments) – that is until this year. This year we both decided to take action for a trend that has been worrying to us, and perhaps all too apparent to those outside the sphere of football titles, and not buy this year’s instalment of the FIFA series. That is not to say we have not picked up sports games this year, we both have Pro Evolution Soccer and of course Football Manager. But something had to be done about FIFA…

Football Manager 2018: The Man Utd “Challenge” Part 4

It’s part 4 of the Man Utd “challenge” and so far it’s going well, I even won manager of the month in October. Hopefully this month we can win that again, if we hit our target of maximum points then I’m sure we will. 

Football Manager 2018: The Man Utd “Challenge” Part 3

Welcome back to the Man Utd challenge we are in October now and this month we have some big games including the Manchester derby in the league as well as Liverpool in the Carabao cup. At the end of the last part I said I wanted 6 points from our 3 league games and 6 points from our 2 Champions League games so hopefully, we can meet those targets.