Is it Perfect? (Championship Manager 00/01 (PC))

Member Name: spreece

Product:	Championship Manager 00/01 (PC)
Date:	08/04/01 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Damn near perfection

Disadvantages: ummmm

The wait was over, as i marched down to my local gaming merchant, and grabbed my copy of the greatest game ever.

After rushing home and installing the game, the first thing that I noticed that was different when I went to start a new game was the different images and pictures that have been added. Shortly after this, I picked up on the fact that many new leagues and competitions had been added from many different countries-both well known and unknown- which takes the total up to a staggering twenty six leagues! Before you actually start the game, there is the option to choose from real players or fictional ones, with the ultimate challenge to your managerial skills being to take a team made up of entirely fictional players to glory, with only your vast tactical knowledge and talent spotting to help you.

It is much advised that you leave this option until you have become an accomplished manager and mastered the game down to an art. Once you get into he game, you get to choose your starting club from the leagues that you have selected to be available to play and also the nationality of yourself, which can actually have quite a big effect on the success of your career. For example: Somebody from England would find it easier to get a job in Italy then someone from, say, Morocco or another 'smaller' nation.

The only people that are higher in control at you in the club are the board, and subsequently these are the people who tell you what they want you to acheive and who you must keep happy if you are going to keep your job or any length of time at all. To let you know how you are doing, they will keep you updated regularly on how they think you are doing at the reigns of their club and how happy (or not) they are with you. A failure to satisfy these people, as well as the fans, who can protest against you being in charge of their beloved club, spells disaster without doubt! So my tip is to make sure that you take control of a job tha
t is suitable to your managerial skills-eg. If you are totally new to the game then there is not much point starting as manager of Yeovil Town and trying to work your way up, as more often than not you will find that you will crash and burn.

When you do get going and have sorted out issues such as how to train your squad and whether you will go with the 'Fitness therory', which is to train most of your squad on fitness with the hope being that they can last the full ninety minutes playing at a higher standard. This of course has a knock-on effect (most things do in this game) and if you adopt this stratagy you may well find the key attributes of your players declining, resulting in a very slight loss of ability. You can of course, make additions to your squad via transfers and this is much advised as every manager has their own ideas of the type of players that they will like and no squad, no matter how good, is not good enough until you can do what Man United can do at the moment-rest practically the whole team and still trounce your rivals six nil!

The media do play a larger part in this game than the other games as they start spreading annoying and sometimes vicious rumours over things such as your relationship with your players at the club and if you are about to sign that top six million pound striker.

Player personalities do play a big part in the game. They all have both visible atributes, which are the ones that are available for you to look at and involve footballing aspects such as dribbling and passing, as well as hidden attributes, which you can not see without entering the built-in player editor with the game, and contain things such as a palyers favourite club and fellow players. This can be vital, as I can always remember the time I signed Edgar Davids for Barcelona on the previous game for a rather large sum of money, only to find that he and Frank De Beour refuse to play in the same team as each other! How they
cope with this problem in the Holland national team is beyond me!

Other parts of the player personalities are things such as the language that a player speaks, as if he can not communicate well with his team mates than your team is likely to produce staggering victories! Once again, my own personal example of this is Sergei Rebrov for Spurs, who is a great player but is constantly unhappy due to his lack of ability to speak English. This problem can be overcome, as after a period of time he will learn the basic language and players can be cheared up with things such as extensions to their contracts or extra wages (as if they dont earn enough already!).

When you do get to play a match after progressing through several mornings, afternoons and evenings, you will find that like the previous games, the match itself can not be viewed graphically but appears in a text-based commentary style, which keeps you updated on all of the key issues in the game. The use of crowd noises is also great, with the different reactions to different players and situations letting you know who is the crowds favourite and who they see as a bit of a villan. To assist you in the match, there are several options around the main screen, such as 'Action Zones' telling you how much territorial advantage your team has gained or lost, 'Latest Scores', which lets you check up on how other teams are doing, and now for the first time a 'Live League Table', which lets you see how the standings of the league will change if the present results remain the same. Outside of the matches, you can do extra things like recruit members of staff you see as being particularly skilled in precise areas and request the board to do things such as expand the stadium and make extra funds for wages available. The F.A. can now also be approached to complain about a referee or request the postponement of a match due to fixture congestion.

This game is the most realistic
game I have ever played, regardless of genre and format, and I think if you enjoy 'God Games' and managerial games as well as football, then this is certainly the game for you. It is certainly the best game I have played in a long, long time and if your PC can handle it, then I suggest that you go out and buy this game right now, especially if you have played and liked any of the previous games in the Championship Manager series. The only bad thing about this game is that it takes a long time to master due to its complexity, and this makes the game difficult to play if you are not commited enough to take time to realy get into it. But if you can, it is definetly worth it as football fans will be amazed on how close to life it is and the 50,000 strong player and staff database gives this game great depth. I can guarantee that you will be playing this game for a long time to come. Now, go buy!!

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