Can you compete with the best? (Championship Manager 01/02 (PC))

Member Name: fluidfernando

Product:	Championship Manager 01/02 (PC)
Date:	09/02/05 (1129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Extremely addictive, Superb accuracy, Detailed

Disadvantages: A bit dated now

Championship Manager 2001-2002

Championship Manager has reigned the football management world for several years now - and again hasn't failed to disappoint. Championship Manager is a simple game in where you control a football team, and try to take them to the top of the league.

There are SO many details in this game it is incredible. You can play leagues not only in France, Italy, Spain, but many other countries like Greece, Turkey, and USA.

The game runs on my 166Mhz PC so therefore this game is versatile and will run on most computer specifications so those with poorer spefications can still run the game. Each save game will increase in size along with time, and will tail at roughly 80Mb for 2 leagues. The game itself takes up 200Mb RAM.

You can control so many aspects in this game. Along with the obvious in picking players, buying and selling, etc, you can dictate a training system, hire staff, scout next opponents, scout for players according to what you want including region, position, age, etc.

There are hundreds of thousands (I think) of players on record in the game - and it is incredibly up-to-date. This edition is quite old now, but you can go to the developer's website and download the latest patch to correspond with today's news.

International jobs can be accessed as well. There is a cheating way to do this, but I won't say how! Otherwise you have to earn the top jobs by winning championships and earning a global reputation. Believe me, getting these jobs are not easy - and is it sometimes good to manage a poorer team to give you a challenge!

There is an increased interactivity with the club board. You can ask for more money for transfers/wages, ask to expand the stadium, and even issue ultimatums if they don't agree with you. However, the board are not always understanding, and you can find yourself out the door the following day!!

You can compare two players with each other. This is done by seeing the attributes of both players, and it displays who is better in each situation. This is very useful when you are looking to buy players to replace your current one.

On this note, buying players of a high quality isn't easy either. Players will often refuse if they are very happy with their current role, or their club is rivalled to yours. You really have to work hard to get the players you want and this takes a lot of time. However, with the international transfer windows and the Bosman ruling in place - these players now become easier to catch.

CM is very famous for its simple interface and lack of visuals and sounds in matches, and this remains the case. The CM01-02 version has the same interface as the previous versions. This has good and bad points, good being that those who've played the previous versions will find it easy to get around, and a bad point is that it is plain and needs a change. During the match, you can still only view text commentary and the sound with it is simply crowds and is fairly substandard.

Media coverage and supporter participation is very frequent in this game. In almost every game you will have a comment from someone or other. The players who are difficult can be disliked by others and induce player unrest.

The foreign players who are homesick can be sent home for a couple of weeks to get themselves together, but sometimes this doesn't help and they may never come back!

In real life, there are some players more injury prone than others, and this is incorporated well into the game. Those players can be sent for rehabilitation / surgery. Again, this sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and the players can be unavailable for up to several months.

If you feel that a referee has performed badly in a match, you can complain to the country's football association!!! Be careful though, as you can be fined for this, and often the reply is just that the football association will watch the referee's performances in the next few matches. Also, you can ask to postpone a match - but again this rarely works.

My overall rating for this game is a 5. It's longetivity seems endless (it even calculates how long you have been playing for and amusingly comments on it), and the realism of the game is second to none. Believe me, there are so many more features of this game I have not mentioned and it would take me years to write them all out!

CM has done it again and in my opinion will continue to reign for many years to come! (as Football Manager now of course!)

<-*->

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