Show Notes
Joe and Big Sid talk Football Manager from Championship Manager 01/02 to the FM26 disaster. Big Sid has been playing for 25 years. Joe started with FM12 and the San Marino Challenge, spending a year building a lower Italian league team into Champions League contenders. Both have lost relationships and jobs to this game. FM26 launched in early access and immediately got review bombed on Steam. The new Unity engine brought performance problems. Menus take five minutes to open. Big Sid has a 4090 and still had problems. The UI overhaul moved everything around, breaking muscle memory from years of previous versions. Sports Interactive told people to give it 20 hours to adjust, which is absurd when most people quit games in 10 minutes if they don't like the feel. FM25 got cancelled months before release. Miles Jacobson said it wasn't good enough and he wasn't having fun. The community questioned whether FM26 would also get delayed, but Sega's release schedule meant it had to ship. Maybe they should have delayed it anyway. The transfer system improved with a recruitment hub for planning squad building. Women's football is in the game now with 14 playable leagues across 11 nations. The men's game has 100 fully playable leagues and around 800,000 players including coaches and scouts. The match engine got better with more natural player movement, but the trade-off was PowerPoint transitions between menus. We talk favorite saves and legendary players. Big Sid runs journeyman saves, starting unemployed with Sunday league experience. His go-to tactic is the 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress. Joe gives himself one coaching badge and prefers building from nothing. Freddy Adu dominated FM05 saves. Lorenzo Kryzite bossed midfields as a lone defensive midfielder in FM12. Shane Long had one year where he was inexplicably the best player in the game. Joe once reloaded his youth intake 100 times to get his own kid as a regen and turned them into a national team player. Big Sid says let them cook. FM26 needs time and iterations to fix the performance and UI problems. Or just play FM24, which got delisted from Steam. You can download it if you already own it but can't buy it anymore. Tell us what your first save is in a new FM or which wonderkid you remember best. https://criticalmovespodcast.com
More from Critical Moves - Strategy Gaming
Anyone can now build and release a strategy game, but is that good for the genre? Al is joined by Jack, Adam and Drexy to debate whether free engines, asset packs and crowdfunding are producing the next Manor Lords or just a flood of forgettable releases. Along the way they ask what “indie” actually means, why Civ clones keep flopping while a ten person studio can thrive on a million sales, how publishers and fandoms shape what gets seen, and whether discovery is down to developers, press or streamers. Join the discussion on our Discord at the link in the description. More from Critical Moves Podcast: Web: https://criticalmovespodcast.com Forum: https://criticalmovesforum.com Newsletter: https://criticalmoves.beehiiv.com Spotify: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/spotify Apple: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/apple Amazon: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/amazon Discord: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/criticalmovespodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CriticalMoves_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/criticalmovespodcast Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalMoves Critical Moves examines strategy games through weekly Friday episodes and Monday news updates. Six hosts across multiple continents analyze recent releases, forgotten classics, and industry developments without the typical podcast theatrics. We cover real-time strategy, 4X civilization builders, turn-based tactics, and hybrid games that blur genre boundaries.
Drexy is joined by Dastactic to talk to Elliot Gibbs of Code Force, the designer and programmer of Distant Worlds. They cover how the series began as a side project, the thinking behind its detailed resource and logistics simulation, and the rocky launch and long road of Distant Worlds 2. The conversation then turns to the Shadows Rising expansion, including shadow ports, Lone Pirate play, cockpit mode, smuggling and the new trade system, before a look at the Securan and Naxxilian factions planned next.
Al and Drexy talk to Dan, solo developer of Imperium, a spiritual successor to the 1995 cult classic Ascendancy. They cover the game's modular ship design, hybrid real-time/turn-based combat, 21 alien species, a rebuilt diplomacy system, and an honest look at how AI tools made a six-and-a-half-month solo passion project possible. More from Critical Moves Podcast: Web: https://criticalmovespodcast.com Forum: https://criticalmovesforum.com Newsletter: https://criticalmoves.beehiiv.com Spotify: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/spotify Apple: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/apple Amazon: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/amazon Discord: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/criticalmovespodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CriticalMoves_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/criticalmovespodcast Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalMoves Critical Moves examines strategy games through weekly Friday episodes and the occasional video essay. Six hosts across multiple continents analyze recent releases, forgotten classics, and industry developments without the typical podcast theatrics. We cover real-time strategy, 4X civilization builders, turn-based tactics, and hybrid games that blur genre boundaries.
Critical Moves hits episode 100. To mark the milestone, Al is joined by regular co-hosts Drexy and Jack for a big debate on generative AI in game development, plus a special guest: Ben, known to many as Battlemode. The panel gets into whether AI is good or bad for the games industry, why developers at GDC are growing more worried about it every year, whether players actually notice or care if a game was made with AI, and where the real ethical line sits between using a tool and stealing someone's work. Along the way: the Shadow Empire AI art controversy, the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 story, Stardock as an AI power user, and what happens to art when you can no longer tell if a human made it. Thanks for sticking with us for a hundred episodes. If you enjoyed the show, like, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs convincing.
Jack hosts this week with Drexy and Joe as they run through a stack of strategy adjacent announcements from Gamescom and BlizzCon. Topics include Lego Skylines, Paradox's new post apocalyptic title Afterworld, the surprise reveal of Humankind 2 and its civilization switching mechanic compared to Civilization VII's recent anniversary update, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Tactics (aka SixCom), Ubisoft's Heroes of Might and Magic III remake, Warcraft III Reforged's new campaign, a wave of Blizzcon reveals including Starcraft and Diablo 5, War for Westeros, Worms Galactic Tactics, Transport Fever, Conquesta and more Total War: Warhammer 40,000 chatter. More from Critical Moves Podcast: Web: https://criticalmovespodcast.com Forum: https://criticalmovesforum.com Newsletter: https://criticalmoves.beehiiv.com Spotify: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/spotify Apple: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/apple Amazon: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/amazon Discord: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/criticalmovespodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CriticalMoves_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/criticalmovespodcast Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalMoves Critical Moves examines strategy games through weekly Friday episodes and Monday news updates. Six hosts across multiple continents analyze recent releases, forgotten classics, and industry developments without the typical podcast theatrics. We cover real-time strategy, 4X civilization builders, turn-based tactics, and hybrid games that blur genre boundaries.