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Championship Manager: Season 03-04 (PC CD)
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| Description:
It's perhaps unsurprising to kick off a review of Championship Manager Season 03/04 by instantly declaring it to be the finest football-management game on the planet. But, frankly, it is, and this latest seasonal update improves the game still further. The objective is still the same. Taking charge of your team of choice, you're charged with meeting the expectations of the team's supporters and directors, while balancing the books, the highs and lows of your playing staff and hopefully winning a few games into the bargain. Plus trying to hang on to your job, of course. What's always lifted the Championship Manager games well ahead of their rivals, many of whom deliver the same basic setup as above, are two factors. The first is depth. The sheer weight of statistics and complications you need to consider are both staggering and engrossing in equal measure. But that's when the second key factor kicks in: accessibility. With a finely tuned user interface, this is a desperately easy game to get into, albeit packed with an immense and highly addictive long term challenge. It's a real achievement that the player is rarely left stuck and bewildered by the wealth of information they're presented with. This new version brings a few extra goodies into play as well, alongside a much-needed polish and tidy-up. Goal of the month and season competitions are incorporated for instance, along with live cup draws and expanded international sides. More importantly, factors such as the training and media segments of the game have been clearly tightened up, and the various statistics have been brought up-to-date. A predictable conclusion, then: Championship Manager Season 03/04 is a superb game, and without question the best in its field by some way. It does, however, come with one caveat. Once you get into it, there's a real possibly that your social life will come to a crashing end. Don't say we didn't warn you. --Simon Brew
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5/5 |
A Fine End To A Fine Series
(January 13, 2007) |
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he Championship Manager games have long been regarded as the best football management games around, this is reflected in the amount of games published and sold.
Incase you hadn't already known, this game puts you in charge of club from many leagues. You pick the team, buy the players, sack the staff and a whole lot more. But I'll go into further detail of that in a minute.
The basic gameplay is excellent. I've been playing Championship Manager for 6 years now, and there are only a few days when I haven't played it. The games are addictive as anything, and the easy-to-use interface means that you can play this complex game with ease. You can play this game in different ways, for example, you could take a small team up through the divisions, you could take a big team to bigger things, you could just have a game there for a quick challenge or one to try out new tactics, players and training schedules. I also find that you can play this while doing other things, especially if you don't mind moving slowely through the game. Often I find myself playing on the Xbox, watching a movie or doing my coursework while the game is running on the computer.
Once again, we find that every player at every club from more than 40 leagues are present; all scouted and included. This totals to some 200,000 players in the game, yet alone all the regenerations. The data updates are one of things that makes this game what it is. It is so comprehensive, it's the Oxford Dictionairy of sport/simulation games. The stats for each player have changed since the last game, and we find more suited stats for the players, which have been researched to the max.
The game engine has only had a little tweak since the previous game, but it stills runs very well, and you'll have no problem adapting to it if you've never used one before. In the demo, the 2D Match Engine was quite blocky and sluggish, but this was only a demo and has been fixed. A lot of bugs have been fixed from the previous game, CM4, which was released and shortly followed by an enourmous patch. This, thankfully, hasn't happened with CM03/04, but you can download the data updates like before.
The interaction with your team, staff and the media has developed nicely over the past few games, and now we have a level nearing total realism.
Tactics can now be finely tuned for each team, giving team instructions, and a whole host of player instructions, down to what you want them to do for a free-kick (you could ask them to disrupt the wall for example). Some people have already created tactics that will make you win, no matter how poor you team is, by expoiting the match engine. However, there is nothing better than working hard on a tactic, perfecting it, and watching you team win game after game.
The same happens with training, in which you can create as many schedules as you want, and combine many different sessions. A bar graph is now present which shows the effectiveness of your training schedule within different catagories (Attacking and Fitness for example). It can take quite a while to get your desired result, but getting it right and training up youth to become world class is something you just need to do, again, giving the player some enjoyment.
And isn't that what games are about? Enjoyment?
Transfers are now more detailed, giving you more options on how to obtain a player. Co-ownership has given people the opportunity to share players with other teams, but this can only be done in Italy as far as I can tell. There are more extras to go into transfers, like league goals to pay another £500,000 or whichever.
The staff, finances and fixtures have all been improved, giving more odds and a better look at the finances of your club. Showing you more info than just gate receipts.
Unfortunatly, the Championship Manager series as we know is basically gone, with the contract between Eidos and SiGames coming to an end. Both are going seperate ways, with SiGames creating Football Manager 2005 and Eidos creating Championship Manager 5. To be honest, Eidos have no chance of competing with SiGames this time, since all they have is the name.
But for a finale to a series, you can't get any better. |
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5/5 |
why get anything else its wicked
(February 01, 2006) |
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This is an outstanding game the 2d matches are great as you can tell if a players playing well and the crowd(noise)are involved as they sing chants.The best thing about this is hearing the uproar when youre team score and it feels as though youre in a football ground.The transfer market is superb and the new training programme really shows how youre players are doing in training.thumbs up. |
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5/5 |
Great Game
(October 17, 2005) |
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This game is fantastic! The best one! The 2D pitch gives a good idea of what is happening and how good players are, while the transfer system is much more realistic! There are also a wider range of players. People like Jiri Jarosik are good buys to have while there are a lot more young players!This game is the best CM game out! The loan signings are a lot better than previous games and there is less chance of Leigh RMI signing Ruud Van Nistelrooy!! I hope this is helpful! |
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5/5 |
amazing game
(January 06, 2005) |
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this game is fabulous I was a new person too football management game and it was eaesy to understand and you really got addicked too it. The grphics aren't great but there is always somehting you can find out how to do and the more you play the mre you find
Buy it it an AMAZING GAME |
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4/5 |
Good but overrated
(September 13, 2004) |
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CM 03-04 is definitely the most realistic football management simulation on the PC. The database is good, the 2d match AI is quite realistic and the interface is easy to use which is important. But I can't help but wonder what all the fuss is about. The 2d match engine, albeit with a good level of realism, really in this age needs to be a 3d engine. It doesn't have to be something graphically rich like TCM's FIFA engine - but an inclusion of a 3d engine, albeit a simple one is in my opinion needed. Also the game is quite slow and graphically it is a bit of a bore. It just gets a bit boring to play after some time in my opinion. The best management game would be the graphics, 3d engine and fun factor of TCM combined with the realism and realistic AI of CM. Now that would be a game. |
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