Championship Manager 4

The Good
You can now see your tactics unfurl in a graphical fashion. Training of players is now not just part of folklore, but a real part of the game. Media handling is now a major part of life just as in the real game. The game was rewritten from scratch, so doesn't suffer from ea sports franchise syndrome, ie real changes not cosmetic. The Championship Manager series are just untouchable in the realism stakes. Teams of researchers contribute player ratings to the game which has every football league in the world worth mentioning.

The Bad
When it was released there were an unacceptable number of bugs the worst of which meant your save games got corrupted. This was addressed with the 03/04 release, but a lot of faithful fans were lost due to this.

The Bottom Line
Get championship manger 03/04 the game that this was meant to be.

The Good
First, the style of the game is quite good. The training is more complex and offers great options for your players to get ready for each match and the transfer system is well designed making you in charge of most of the financial aspects of the game. Other good points is the tactics and formations, which can be suited in anyway you want. This gives a fine art of realism to the player, as you try to manage your team to success, whilst avoiding the pitfalls of failure whether it be on domestic or in Europe.

The Bad
The game is quite buggy. Although the player can enjoy a mainstream of playability, the gameplay itself is sharp-infested with errors and bugs; for one, the news columns tend to show a tag error in the script language as well as having errors in the statistics. Minor occurrences happened once or twice where the bug/error kicks in to ruin the match such as changing the scores after half time, and the player's morale is always affected to a minimum whenever you lose a game. Adding to the problems already mentioned, this would make managing a small team to success very, very hard.

From one's perspective, the game is a marked departure from the old CM3 series and adds new textures, style and even a 2D view for every match. That's fine! but on the whole it lacks creativity and depth. As the game progresses, it just becomes increasingly boring.

SI/Eidos have tried over the years with several patches to repair and refine the game. But this would make any hardcore fan of the CM series angry, seeing that any product from its publisher's (especially Eidos) ought to stand on its own. This one doesn't. It just leads to the suggestion that this game was rushed and not fixed.

If only it weren't for the bugs, then I probably wouldn't of have written the bad section of this game.

The Bottom Line
Its a fine game, but as said the problems wouldn't suit anyone whose a fan of this great managerial series nor anyone whose willing to give a try first.