I am very much of a split opinion about Motorsport Manager, it's hard to put everything into words. I'll try, though.
On the one hand this game is *finally* done professionally from the ground up, it has a decent publisher with manager-game experience and it's not merely a rip-off and money-grab like so many other formula racing managers have been in the past decade. The on-trackI am very much of a split opinion about Motorsport Manager, it's hard to put everything into words. I'll try, though.
On the one hand this game is *finally* done professionally from the ground up, it has a decent publisher with manager-game experience and it's not merely a rip-off and money-grab like so many other formula racing managers have been in the past decade. The on-track graphics are beyond lovely for a manager game and the player can really immerse him/herself and feel at home watching the cars race across the screen.
The foundation this game is built on can be considered excellent, but what about the meat and bones, the managing aspect? There it gets more difficult, because I have seen some obvious up- and downsides to Motorsport Manager.
Part of the problem comes from the question of how close the game should imitate the real sport of monoposto racing, more specifically Formula 1 and its two feeder series GP2 and GP3. Motorsport Manager comes without a license, but even a quick glance can tell you that an Italian team called Scuderia Rossini with a German and a Finnish driver are in truth Ferrari, Vettel and Räikkönen. It is that way with many other teams and people as well, just like many tracks are created in a spiritual similarity to their real-life counterparts. While that is quite nice, there is no easily accessible way to change the names database to your liking, which is a feature the developers had mentioned to be included in the game. It is no surprise that the Steam Workshop isn't activated/available for the game either as of yet, because so far the game does not appear to have any modding capability whatsoever unless one is willing to edit the original game files with third party tools.
So far my experience in the game consists of one season at the highest tier, trying to win the world championship with Ferrari and two seasons trying to build a third tier team from the bottom up. Not the strongest team, but I would have won the first race of the season if not for an unlucky parts failure. Sadly it only went downhill from there and neither of my drivers finished in the top three at the end of the season. Some of those races manage to tell thrilling, harrowing and unbelievable tales and in my opinion they're a lot more interesting than watching Formula 1 on TV.
Now the start in the third and lowest tier was a real challenge. If you have chosen the weakest team as I did, then trying to make it competitive (without being fired in the second season) is a hell of a job, but at least so far I have had fun trying to beat the challenge I set myself. I fear it'll take too long to get anywhere.
That doesn't sound so bad, but there are sadly a number of minor and some major issues with the game, but let me explain:
x) When you sign a driver, lead engineer or race mechanic you cannot do so for any time in the future. Either you sign an unemployed character after the current employee contract has run out, or you end up replacing your current employee in that spot with someone else, paying either one or two release fees for the person you're getting rid off and the one you hired. There is no so-called "silly season" in the game, where you're able to get a new driver for next year at all. This is a fatal oversight in a manager game!
x) The way overtaking is solved in the game is quite horrible. I don't know how often it has happened to me that my driver was lapping someone else and instead of losing at most 2 seconds of lap-time the other driver was slower than mine, the lap-time dropped by 5-8 seconds. In nine out of ten times your driver will fall out of the "blue flag zone" again, because he's apparently not capable of following a much slower car close enough. This also has the aggravating side-effect of making you lose positions against your opponents often. Of course, this happens the other way around too, with you benefiting from it once in a while, but it's annoying and unrealistic.
x) The 12 minute free practice in the third tier is way too short to actually get a setup going, which the AI seems to be able to cheat with as well. The 20 minutes in the highest tier is better, but by no means perfect.
x) This brings me to my last major issue, the evolving rules of the racing series. If you want to play a game with your favorite series rules (such as race length, qualifying & practice session length, points distribution, refueling, two/three dry tyre compounds) you will inevitable need to play with the politician bonus of 4 extra votes/season. Otherwise you're going to end up being outvoted on some rule you desperately want to keep. Sadly there is no way to suggest a change yourself, so you end up voting a few times per year on random rule changes.
There is a lot more I could mention, but compared to what was listed above it is only minor details. To make a long story short, the game is far from perfect, but it is quite decent and it will hopefully become better after a patch or two.… Expand
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