I’ve won titles and cups, and I’ve been sacked following a relegation that was more surrender than battle. I’ve found young stars at bargain prices, and built a team of overpaid ego-machines who are ready to down tools as soon as the going gets tough. After tasting success and failure, I’m ready to tell you wot I think about Football Manager 2016 [official site].>

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The year is 2035. I am the manager of Leeds United.

I have Football Manager 2016, but I’ve been struggling to find an entry point. Starting a new FM career is a little like starting a novel you know is going to take you a year to read. I started careers at Manchester United, sighed, and closed the game down; I already knew too much about that story. I started a career with Portsmouth, sighed, and closed the game down; I knew so little about that story that I had no hook to draw me in.

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Football Manager 2016 [official site] is out this Friday, but before we publish our review, Adam and Graham decided to gather in the RPS dugout to discuss this year’s tactics, transfers and press room meltdowns.>

Graham: I think I’d be pretty disappointed if I spent 35/$50 on Football Manager 2016.

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That feeling when you finish a long series of books, or a television series, and say goodbye to the characters for the last time. Closing a world, pulling down the shutters and knowing that it has run its course, is a peculiar sensation. Indeed, it can provoke a sense of loss. How utterly ridiculous I felt last week when I mourned the ending of tens of thousands of tiny football-men, each of which is little more than a pile of numbers and behaviours. BUT CAN ANY ONE OF US CLAIM TO BE MORE THAN THAT, I thought, as I uninstalled Football Manager 2015 [official site] and prepared to move on to the beta for the new model.

I’m very bad at goodbyes.>

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every weekday of the year, perhaps for all time.>

As Football Manager 2016 edges nearer, Football Manager 2015 [official site] begins to fade into the rearview. How did we feel about the last yearly iteration of the longrunning management game?

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Did you know that you can have children in Football Manager [official site]? Spend enough time in the managerial game and a player appears in the youth ranks of your club, a ‘regen’ who shares your family name. It’s your son, that, and he might go on to be a star. In previous installments, Junior was made up of a random assortment of stats, as likely to be the next Bruno Cheyrou as the next Zinedine Zidane. In this season’s release, you’ll be able do design your son for the first time.

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As soon as club football starts again after the summer drought, my mind turns to the next iteration of Football Manager [official site]. In an ideal world, it’d be released to coincide with the first kick of the season (for me, Bury away at Doncaster on August 8th) but with the late closure of the transfer window and (maybe) the need to check that Memphis Depay isn’t a figment of Louis Van Gaal’s imagination and that Falcao isn’t going to Do A Lazarus.

It’s done when it’s done, and this year that’ll be November 13th, with a beta available around two weeks before that date. Along with the usual improvements, updates and tweaks, there’s an intriguing new game mode – Create-A-Club – and loads more.

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Football Manager 2016 might be just around the corner, but if you’re anything like me, you’re probably following the new football season and wishing it was here already. Thankfully, Football Manager 2015 [official site] ships with a database editor that has let the community update the game with all the summer transfers. There are two ways to update your game so that Raheem Sterling is at Manchester City, Joey Barton is at Burnley, and David De Gea is… still at Manchester United.

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An entirely objective ranking of the 50 best PC strategy games ever made. From intricate wargames to soothing peacegames, the broad expanse of the genre contains something for everyone, and we’ve gathered the best of the best. The vast majority are available to buy digitally, a few are free to download and play forever. They’re all brilliant.

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You know, if you’re longing for deeper, stat-heavy, party-managing RPGs, you might not go far wrong with a sports management sim. Beneath the sporting veneer lie all the tactics, behaviours, and numbers you could hope for. Sports games are other games in disguise. I was only taking the piss a little bit with that FIFA demo post calling it real-time tactical action, you know. Football Manager has a fair few fans here at RPS, and now its makers are getting back into ice hockey.

Developers Sports Interactive have revived the long-dormant Eastside Hockey Manager series [official site] with a surprise new game which launched onto Steam Early Access today.

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