Tazskool

Referees and Match Engine
Current mood: exhausted
Category: Games

Being a referee is a very hard job. If you get things right, it's expected, but if you get things wrong, it can cost a club millions of pounds. If a striker misses an easy chance, it's forgotten pretty quickly, but a penalty against you after a dive gets remembered for a very long time.

It just seemed appropriate, particularly with everything going on in the world of football at the moment, to have controversial decisions highlighted more in the game. Refs have made mistakes in our games before, but they haven't really been brought to the attention of the user in this way before.

But what can you do? We had a feature many many years ago where you could criticise the ref, but very little happened because of it. With post match interviews a part of the game and the real football world, it could be that one of your players complains about the decision in a post match interview. It could be that you're asked your opinion on the decision. Not just ones for your team, but against your team too.

Don't be too quick to complain though. You never know what the FA will throw your clubs way if you do. But then again, you could lose the faith of your players if you praise the refs too much when it's costing the team. Just be careful not to get a touchline ban as those will hurt you greatly, but I'll leave it to you to discover the full ramifications of that.

The match engine has had another year or work from the match team, which includes Paul Collyer and Ray Houghton, and has taken another leap forward. It was already the most accurate replication of football in any simulation, and now it's gone one louder, with lots more match events, improved commentary and is just generally even more lifelike.

There are also some nice new touches, like players warming up on the touchlines, pre-match team talks and more intuitive half time and post match team talks. Match time in the tactics screen, score display in full screen mode (and if you haven't tried this before, it's well worth it – just press Alt+F11 to toggle unless you've changed the shortcut), and lots of other bits and bobs.

Tactically, there's something new too. A pre and during match "opposition team instructions" screen, which allows you to easily highlight players to close down, mark tighter, show onto his wrong foot or tackle harder, so as well as the individual player instructions for your own team, you have them for the opposition too.