The great football manager game from Electronic Arts and Bright Future FIFA Manager 10 just received the Update 2 today – one that should be installed using the auto-updater as soon as your game starts. The full change list is quite impressive and it proves Bright Future’s commitment to delivering a simulation as close to reality as possible. Read on to find out about all the fixes and improvements brought in by the FIFA Manager 10 update 2:

New Features Offline Mode:

– huge database update (database of 24/11)
– option to either load the latest EA database or the Editor database (e.g. with your own data) at game start
– various new player pictures (focus on Coca Cola Championship)
– new Hall of Fame player pictures of retired players in the UK (only very few, but will become more in the future)
– new live ticker text
– complete historic league results of the Bundesliga since the very first matchday back in 1963
– additional historic league results for France and Italy
– better handling of widgets in resolutions like 1440×900 (move your mouse pointer over a widget to see it completely)
– improved website headlines
– pre-selected half-time talks (save some mouse clicks)
– option to switch off the display of song titles in the main menu

New Features Online Mode:

– new “Away from Keyboard” feature
– if you join a running game, you now get the status of the game, that is, at which point of the week the other users currently are (e.g. the main menu or a matchday). This way you can quickly estimate how long it will take you to actually join the game.
– click on a game in the game list to see its participants
– the market value of the next auctioned player is given on the transfer market overview screen
– team levels and the current matchday are now part of the match screen
– the timeline icons (goals, cards, substitutions), already used in the offline mode, will now also be seen online
– you can add another manager to your friend list directly from the respective manager info screen (available by right clicking on your avatar in the main menu)
– option for the host to set the maximum number of humans players
– date displayed on all menu sub-screens
– manager points on friends list
– manager points comparison happens more often
– option to turn off the profanity filter
– draws with no clubs of human managers are skipped

Fixed Bugs:

– 3d match improvements (better and more varied shots, more realistic number of cards, improved passing, improved goalkeepers, defenders react faster, more realistic handballs, improved 1 on 1 against the goalkeeper, more realistic back passes)
– several small Action Mode improvements
– various tuning efforts (e.g. tactical education, loss of acceleration for older players now slower)
– improved website (e.g. added a second club name to transfer news, manager info if you click on a picture)
– about 140 different other bug fixes in total
– about 40 graphical improvements and screen layout changes (e.g. Player Training Progress)

You can also check out my FIFA Manager 10 review here, while the download completes.