Championship Manager 2010 Review

Sounds pretty good value for 1p.

The player and media interactions in FM can be repetitive to the point of frustration anyway. I might give this a try later in the year when it drops in price.

Cannibal it can't drop any cheaper than 1p?

Can they please hire a new UI artist.

It still looks cheap.

Cannibal, it's going to get more expensive later on in the year :)

Yeah the GUI is pr ugly

Fm2010 for me this year. I've been on FM2007 for the last 3 so its time to upgrade!

Though I do wonder, does it have a Mac version?

Penny hats.

Cannibal, come back and read the comments! CAAANNIBAAAAL!!

somebody help me get this - i've never played FM - you don't actually play football in this game, right?

if so, shouldn't something like that rather be integrated into a fifa/PES game, akin to Madden's franchise mode? or maybe i'm just totally missing the point

Cannibal's post has made me smile :)

+1

HAs anybody figured out where to get their CM download if they took advantage of the £2.50 offer? I didn't get an email or anything

Login on the Championship Manager website here - http://www.champmanstore.com/shop/index

Then click on "Zone 3 Download Area"

You should then see a link to begin your download.

Just login to champmanstore.com and it will be there, I set mine downloading before coming into the office this morning :)

EDIT: Beaten to it!

Didn't the last FM get 8/10?

it looks like its getting somewhere.....shiny button overkill mind you makes the candy coloured menu look as cheap as it first was.

think these guys should focus on something like a mobile version...diversify from the market which they seem to be forever second best

Remember to download the launch patch when you start the game. It can be grabbed by selecting September 09 and then download.

Thought it was just a (very nice) database upgrade, but it's actually a whole list of bug fixes and match engine tweaks as well. Hopefully they've removed the hilarious 'Goalkeeper scoring from corners/free kicks' setpiece bug that the demo had (look it up on youtube for some light amusement)

EDIT: Also, kudos for the payment method. This is the first management sim I've bought in almost a decade because of it (albeit for £3.00 total)

EDIT 2: Patch notes say - 'yes'.

What no mac version? Hhmmpf I'm not playing it then, shame really, it sounds like it could actually playing if you can buy it for a penny, and some of the new features sound interesting. Ah well , I shall have to console myself with the conumdrum of which free fm2010 gift I want for my pre-order.

Cheers Venatio, Scuzz and WJF for the info

These are videos of the demo of the game that you just gave an 8 out of 10, saying how realistic the match was. It must have improved about 300% in the last few weeks then...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpFVXwoai...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2U3domLi...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ3lv2eBh...

The demo would have been about two months before release, at least, you moron.
Guess what happens during those two months? Bug fixing. Lots of it.

norm - try reading comments above you before posting. I've already mentioned they've fixed the GK bug.

There's no denying the match engine still has kinks - wierd animations, a few bizarre movements and the 'force field' goalie punches to name a few - but it's still pretty good.

The option to watch your training sessions really gives you a feel for which players to pick without having to mindlessly trawl through numbers. For example - run the sprint training 5 times over 100m and watch the low determination/workrate slackers peel off after the first two laps despite apparently having better stam and pace.

Overall, I'm enjoying it rather more than I thought I would. 8/10 seems fair at the moment.

Good to see this getting a good review. I really like the way they have provided a genuine playable element to training, it's something that has been bizarrely lacking from FM/CM for so long now given it is core to a team's ability and progress. I think it will genuinely add to the game play. I'm a bit disappointed they have ignored the player interaction aspect though. FM's interaction is basically just a charade so there was an opportunity there to likewise improve on it's competitor. As regards the match, understandably, these are complex simulations and I can't imagine ever seeing any such game without some flaws there (I find FM to be as flawed in that regard, with it's own moments of sheer daftness to contend with at times) but it is good to read that there are moments of true immersion when watching the match.

I seem to have a lot more control in Cm than I have in FM. If not in practical terms, in terms of being able to make a tangible difference. The sliders and bars on FM were absolutely no use to me at all.

I'd just like a version of Football Manager that's less horrifically hard.

Nicely balanced review. I agree with praising BGS for genuinely innovating, because that's how we get a better football management game (and indeed, Football Manager) in the long run.

FM still has enough quirks and omissions to make this a decent alternative.

I think we'll probably get a solid FM10 which will remain the better game despite not innovating or adding to the basic game nearly as much as BGS have done.

Based on the demo, there's nothing I can really argue about here. It is a fairly decent management experience, and the match engine is rather lovely to watch. Not so great at the actual game thanks to some issues in the demo, but I'll see when I fire up the game over the weekend how things have improved.

More needs to be made of its continuous gameplay and completely modelled gameworld though. Pauses and isolated leagues don't cut it.

UI in this AND FM is so very, very dated and cheap looking.

The last footy management game I played was FM '07, but I saw this review and grabbed it on the way home last night. Got it from Game, it's £14.99 instore (but £24.99 online, oddly).

I'm lovin' it so far and the match engine's surprisingly cool to watch things play out.

No idea if it's better or worse than the last two FM's, it seems 'snappier' though. No arguments on the 8/10 so far, need to play it more to see if it's nearer to the 7 or the 9, but it's deffo fookin' good and well worth the £15.

My thoughts after playing for a few more hours.

The Champ match engine produces some pretty good watchable football, especially if you watch the matches on highlights (the posession football, passing and movement is still pretty awful). The only trouble is I think it's impossible to play the game properly like this, I always watch matches in full - but in this the matches last forever, and although there's some potential for interesting football (more so than FM) it's punctuated by bouts of really clumsy looking stumbling around players side slicing the ball to each other.

It's not as bad as the demo but it still takes the shine off an otherwise great match engine.

However, I think the tactical options make up for it. Takes a while to get used to how to use feeding and runs (sparingly), and I'm not sure if the player instructions are bugged (mine seemed to get stuck on the same ones during matches so you can't - say - take your target man off 'run with ball' if he happens to be awful at dribbling, but that might just be me screwing it up).

Moving players pretty much anywhere around the pitch (ala PES) and coming up with devious passing and moving manouvres is awesome, for example having your big target man drag a defender off right, receive a long ball (a feed from a CB) on his chest and then feed it onto your little man making a run into the box. In FM you basically rely on having your players create chances like that by themselves, if they're not clever enough you can't tell them to do it, they'll just play worse. But in Champ, you can instruct your team to play a certain way, and see if they can pull it off - maybe not always, but that's part of the fun.

And seeing the moves in full 3D is great, much more flowing and dynamic than FM (again - watching in highlights mode basically avoids the crappy passing and shows you the bits that look proper).

The transfers are much better in the full game than the demo. Just more realistic seeming. Giggs still got transfered, but that happens in FM too. Not sure why they wouldn't put a 'don't transfer this player' tag on him.

The whole negotiating with clubs and players bit is much better than FM. And it feels more live - if you make an enquiry they send you a quick reply saying 'We'll get back to you'. When you make a bid you get mail back a few minutes later saying if they want to accept straight off or 'mull it over'. They accept your bid later, and you can speak to the player, even whilst other bids are flooding in. This means that there's more of a sense of a marketplace. Also the media page keeps far better tabs on the moves and who's interested in what, and oddball stories.

I think the days pass a bit too quickly because you can't get much done between matches. The friendly matches are quite annoying because they interrupt the transfer window, although you can palm them off to the assman, but what's the fun in that. Scouting takes fucking forever and you have to rescout the same player about 3 or 4 times. I'm sure that's realistic but it means you have to wait a week or more before knowing if you're going to sign someone.

Oh - the major fault of it still is there's absolutely no visual comparison of players (or player profile pics), just the stats, so you're totally in the dark when it comes to really weighing up if someone amounts to being more attacking, or more creative, reading down a list of figures doesn't really cut it and it takes too long). It feels stupid having to ask your assman how good a player is and what his potential might be since you can't tell yourself (and the game doesn't keep track of what their potential might be on a screen anywhere).

Overall... good fun, probably good for a season or two, but I can imagine it lacking the biting realism and compelling nature of FM, and it's way too much work to scout players properly. Worth playing for the player interaction and tactical engine, probably.

Harmonica - the player instructions if changed during a match do not overwrite the tactic. However if you change them outside of a match they will be saved permanently for the next game.

You can save player instruction sets like Target man, using the save/load menu in the player instructions screen.

Finally there is a player comparison screen which is accessible from the Actions menu. Add the player you want to compare and then select who you want them to compare with. A dialog box with the results is then displayed but you'll need full player knowledge for it to be perfectly accurate.

Harmonica,

thanks for all those comments there, makes interesting reading.

I'm confused though about your conclusion - you say the match in CM is more compelling than FM, tactically offers more, that transfers are more involved, scouting more realistic and so on, all sounds like things stack up very much in CM's favour. But then remark it lacks the "biting realism" of FM. But if match, tactics, scouting, selling - and presumably training - are all more realistic in CM than FM, what's left for FM to enable it capture the crown?

How can a football management game which is "lagging behind" in terms of match realism and player/board/media interaction possibly score as high as 8/10? Those are fundamental feature of the genre. If an FPS lagged behind in terms of graphics and weapons it'd get a 5 or a 6, regardless of how innovative it was.

That's actually a pretty neat 3d engine. It's kind of sad to watch fm's stick players floating around in some flat god's green pitch.

Also, better than darkfall.

CM's shitty online store has prevented me from getting this.

While the match engines are good ideas, they still don't have the fluidity of games like PES and FIFA... obviously the future is a fusion between the 2 in terms of management sims and the full game engine of FIFA/PES.... now that would be cool.

@ SwashbucklingStuff, thanks for the player instructions note - I assumed I could save and load them somewhere but couldn't find it. I presume though that the way it doesn't update them during the game is a bug.. especially given it lets you add and delete instructions only for them to reappear if you leave that screen.

As for the comparisons - I'm aware that you can line the stats up next to each other, but that's not as useful and intuitive as the analyser polygon in FM (which even itself could do with expansion), which gives a visual representation of the strengths and weaknesses and overall ability of a player, at a glance.

@ immateriaux, "if match, tactics, scouting, selling - and presumably training - are all more realistic in CM than FM, what's left for FM to enable it capture the crown?"

As marhol says, the match realism is the biggest part of the game. CM10's matches are not as inherently realistic, they are just more dynamic events than FM, because the formation settings don't dictate player roles in the same way that FM's tactics engine does (you can slide them around and *then* pick a role, and you can specifiy on-the-ball and off-the-ball positioning much more precisely), and because of the flexible run arrows and feed instructions, and the added individual player instructions that can be added for each player.

This means that you can tailor your tactics nicely and watch them unfold, but it doesn't mean that the player (or manager) AI is actually as good in and of itself. FM definitely has the upper hand when it comes to having the players and managers control the tactics engine - it's just slightly less flexible than CM10.

However, FM's match engine is a total dog, both in design and performance, and CM10 has it beat hands down. It remains to be seen what the performance of FM10's engine will be like, but based on released videos, it has barely improved in looks in over a year of development (if you count the year leading upto FM09), with ever-so-slightly smoother animation. It also now has dodgy (no doubt CPU intensive) weather effects, and incredibly annoying stupid looking camera flashes whenever anyone takes a shot at goal. SI don't really have much clue how to work in 3D, but the matches are watchable over 90 minutes and play out with a cutting realism overall.

Media interaction is better in FM - but only barely, unless they expand it considerable this year. Player Interaction is about the same in both games. CM10 gives you a chance to speak directly to the players, but it's still not as developed as FIFA MAN, which allows you time each week to hold meetings with upto five players on a varied array of topics.

Yes, CM10 definitely has a stronger training system (it works better than FIFA MANAGER's system which is almost as specific), and the fact that they spent time developing it shows they genuinely want to progress the genre.

Overall FM is more refined and certainly more believable. If you play a season of both it's clear that FM's world is far more accurate, and indeed usually it will predict several of the transfers that happen in real life. But with FM, there's less potential for improvement based on what they currently have - in CM10 you can see that given more development of their current features they could actually be as good or better than FM next year.

FIFA MAN is the total oddball entry. Their match engine is still miles off being as accurate as the other two games, although with EA's funding anything is potentially possible.

Eurogamer put me off this game a long tima ago with a silly Carew post. At that time myself and all my firends decided to go and buy another brands game instead. Shame really as we run a University games forum with 1000's of players. Could have made a mint there had we decided to collect money and buy.

Ah well.

You're a bit of a fool, ain't ya jambo?

cheers again for that update Harmonica

If anyone has been paying attention, Miles has been running his gob off about the new (cough) FM2010 of late.

There are absolutely no new features in FM2010. Everything was already in the game.

I really hate SI.