Championship Manager 2008

Another derby clash goes against the former champ

There was a time when the words 'Championship' and 'Manager' meant a great deal to PC gamers. Yearly updates were anticipated with the kind of fervor usually reserved for an FA Cup final. The game never changed year in year out save a few minor tweaks here and there and the customary 'new feature' that was more an assurance that some work had been done over the year than a genuine attempt to improve what had gone before. In truth all effort was invested in making the entire management experience as realistic as possible by way of tweaking what was already there. Sports Interactive were masterful at creating a breathing football world by crucially listening to what fans wanted from the game. SI parted ways with Eidos who as a result lost their annual cash cow. SI now sits aloft alongside their Football Manager series with aplomb, spanking Champ Man every season.

So each yearly edition of Champ Man is now greeted with curiosity: to see if Eidos and Beautiful Game Studios can bridge the gap and recreate a genuine football management experience.

They haven't managed it. There's a lot to like about this latest venture, the match engine looks lovely (more on that in a moment) and the depth of player data is fairly cavernous. The addition of ProZone, while gimmicky, does offer the kind of analysis of a match that any decent manager should be privy to. Eidos managed to secure Opta (the firm behind the statistical analysis of the Premiership) to calculate every shot, miss, save, throw in and free kick that happens throughout any game your team participates in. The level of information for any one player in your squad is beyond comparison in any other game of the genre. You can play back goals and chances, manipulate camera angles to better see player movement, focus on one player's contribution to a match along with countless other tweaks and features. Whether or not all this is actually necessary to enjoying Championship Manager is open to debate - I'd hasten to guess that some rather anal gamers will get something from ProZone such is the level of detail it offers, but most will eventually ignore its inclusion.

The aesthetics of the match engine are excellent, featuring animated nets and players (animated in that they're Subutteo men who jump, lean, dive, etc) as well as multiple camera angles depending on what you're preference is. It makes for a sense of genuine match day event (visually at least). Unfortunately it all starts to come apart when the game begins to play. Part of the reason Football Manager's match engine remains relatively basic is because Sports Interactive put most emphasis on making players move and play the ball in a realistic fashion. Beautiful Game Studios have pinned their hopes on the visuals and it doesn't pay off. Players refuse to move into space or play balls in the direction you'd expect them to be played. While someone less familiar with real football might be more forgiving (they're not likely to be playing this though) anyone with a remote interest knows the importance of finding space on a football pitch, they'll also know that Champ Man has messed this up. As a result you're left with perpetual frustration as your tactical changes have less affect on the game than they're intended to.

There's a couple of other improvements over the last version, including a larger player database, there's the addition of the Australian League, and a multiplayer feature that allows four players to play on one PC - not exactly groundbreaking stuff.

Fundamentally, there's nothing to win players away from Football Manager. Apart from the way the match engine looks (and even that doesn't account for taste) FM does everything better, including the way games unfold during said match engine. The scouting and training systems are better, the player interaction is more in-depth, team talks are in keeping with what real managers might say, media interaction is more realistic and most importantly FM is more authentic. While all of the above remains truth there's no reason why you should plump for Eidos' game. The only relation to what Championship Manager used to be and what it is now is the name. All the talent left with Sports Interactive.

45%

By Gary Flavell