Championship Manager 4 Review

Written by: Darren Cartledge Posted: 7th January 2008

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Sports videogame review

Championship Manager 4 Details:

	Sports
	PC
	Sports Interactive
	Eidos

Out Now

N/A

Sports Interactive are one of those groups of developers that can’t seem to do anything wrong! I mean how many of us could take a near perfect football management game and make it immerse the player to new depths, we’re not talking ocean variety here we’re talking deep space. In fact before you start playing decide what the wife gets to keep because by the time you finish, she’ll be long gone with Juan her Spanish lover.

Sports Interactive have always had to be careful when releasing new versions of Championship Manager, us followers of the series are a strange bunch, change too much or too little and we’ll stick with our older version. For Sports Interactive it’s all about balance, especially with Championship Manager 4 and it’s debated “2D match engine”.

Championship Manager 4 adds new levels of depth to the series. Obviously the game features all the new rules that were introduced at the beginning of the new season including the new “transfer window”, but Championship Manager 4 goes further then that. The latest game in the series gives you a real feel for your team. Player’s are no longer the drones they were, they now have personalities and feelings which they convey through their agents, the media and the player information screen.

You can also create custom training schedules to help tackle weaknesses in your side, as well as issue player specific instructions during the match. The games transfer system has also been tweaked a little and offers a wider range of options for you to use, when trying to entice a clubs prize asset away from them. It also lets you know how far away you are from attracting the players to your club. Player’s agents will tell you directly or through the media exactly what they thought of your contract offer.

Of course this review would not be complete with out mentioning the hotly debated “2D match engine”, so does it make any impact on the series? Well, yes it does and you’ll be pleased to know it vastly improves the game, and you’ll wonder how you ever managed your team without it. The new 2D match engine, lets you watch your team in near real-time and instantly see any weaknesses and react accordingly, you’ll be pleased to know there’s no more waiting around to make changes you can do it straight away.

One flaw of Championship Manager 4 is how daunting it must seem to new comers. The sheer number of managerial option’s, may lead to a new player over looking something important and ending up with a disastrous run of defeats which prematurely ends his career. One can’t help feeling it could have benefited some sort of tutorial or introduction to show new players all the ins and outs.

For those who fancy a change from managing their favourite club or those who simply fancy a challenge, you’ll be pleased to know Championship Manager 4 is the biggest yet with over 39 national leagues and over 200,000 players. So there’s always going to be a challenge there for even the most hardened gamers.

Championship Manager 4 features an all new interface, luckily for us veterans the traditional views are still available, or we might be lost. Style wise Championship Manager 4’s, interface is cleaner and menus seem better placed and more accessible then before. The 2D-match view is nothing spectacular graphically it simply shows the pitch from a bird’s eye view with coloured dots representing your players.

The Championship Manager series has always had an exclusion of sound, except for the crowd cheering, nothing has changed in Championship Manager 4, but what little sound there is fits nicely.

So the boys and girls at Sports Interactive have done it again. They managed to push the most successful football management series that little bit further, without it losing its all ready massive appeal. Just enough new features have been added to give it a little more depth that keeps us gamers coming back, even in the face of constant defeat.