Had we received this disc out of the blue, we would have deemed it unreviewable and perhaps knocked out a cautiously noncommittal preview. The fact that it's actually on sale in this state is little short of a disgrace, and is a damning indictment of the unprofessional nature of the games industry. It has been well publicised that the finances of CM5 publisher Eidos are in a parlous state to say the least, and it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to suggest that the company simply got it on the shelves before the end of the financial year in a last ditch attempt to save the company.
It's a sickener all round, not least for the developer, who, given time and testing could feasibly have produced a decent game. It was never going to match Football Manager , but the signs are that it could at least have been competent. If BGS remains in existence, no doubt patches will continue to appear thick and fast, but unfortunately, you can't polish a turd.
Eidos, you have dropped the ball. The more you play it, the more they keep coming, with CM5's bugs proving a mix of comical, niggling and fatal. And don't forget, this is the patched version. For starters, how about the same news story cropping up twice in a row? Or the fact you can happily select supposedly ineligible players even if they're on loan elsewhere.
No more than a minor annoyance? OK, imagine how you'd feel if you watched your team win a cup-tie and were then informed you'd been knocked out of the competition. A bit of a pisser? Then try sending your scout to watch a player and you're greeted with the attractive screen of death shown here. Now say bollocks. Despite Being billed as the battle of the brands, the head-to-head showdown between Sports Interactive's Football Manager and Eidos' Championship Manager never materialised, with CM5 now slated for any time between January and June of According to brand director John Webb, "The PC release of Championship Manager 5 was deferred from October in order to allow for further development and refinement of the game.
Whilst the game is in good shape, we believe that it will benefit from additional improvements to further increase its competitive edge. Most importantly, however, you can now split the interface screen into two panels, meaning, for example, you can watch a 2D match while keeping an eye on live league table updates - good for end-of-the-season crunch games.
Handling reporters is now a vital part of being a modern manager, and Sports Interactive is revamping the media aspect of its game as well. You can now receive more newspaper-style text reports on football goings-on, as well as giving you the opportunity for 'mind games'. This is ideal for publicly winding up other managers and unsettling their teams - as Alex Ferguson did so successfully in causing Kevin Keegan's famous "I'd love it!
Agents are also becoming more important, so you have to quickly learn what type of character your players' agents are when doing deals with them from easy-going to hard bastard. Leeds United fans will also be glad to know that it's going to be harder for teams to go into administration - but you might have to put up with the interference of a chairman, who could start selling players behind your back if you're in dire financial difficulties.
Sports Interactive is successfully working towards its goal of making the ultimate sports management sim, but the company is also aware that a huge part of football is the people and the interaction of personalities. With more unique characteristics for the players, the realistic media element and the increased opportunities for in-game rivalries between players and managers, could Football Manager be the world's first sports management RPG?
We ll find out more this summer. Following months of fevered speculation, it's now been confirmed that Sports Interactive's new football management game will be called Football Manager. As surprises go, this was up there with night following day and bears defecating in woodland. Word had already spread that a classic name had been acquired, and those who have wasted over two decades of their lives with this sort of thing managed to hazard an educated guess.
The work of the hirsute Kevin Toms, it was something of a revolution and is directly responsible for the creation of a genre. You may also remember Toms as the face that graced numerous cheap-looking ads for Addictive Games in '80s magazines. For the uninitiated, a condition of Sports Interactive's previous deal with Eidos was that the publisher would always retain the Championship Manager name. And with the long-mooted split finally coming, SI was forced to come up with a new title, whereas Eidos has come up with a new team to develop Championship Manager An unprecedented occurrence for the games industry, it's now an interesting test case.
To make a musical analogy, it's like The Beatles being replaced by four session musicians and continuing to make records. In all but name, the new SI game will essentially be the latest iteration of Championship Manager.
As Oliver says: It's the engine that we've been working on since the year dot, which we're just improving on as we've been constantly doing. It's an evolution of the game and we're continuing the evolution, that's the way we see it.
As for the unique split, he says: It makes it interesting. We certainly see it as a challenge. It's not been done before, the whole same engine, different name' thing, but sometimes you have to freshen things up. We've been developing Champ Man for years, so maybe it's time for something fresher. Things can go on for too long. Getting the message across is a marketing challenge, and one that's already under way.
I don't think we're expecting things to happen overnight, says Oliver. It took us a long time to get to the situation we had with Championship Manager.
However, we're confident that if we concentrate on making the game as good as possible, which is what we've always done, then that'll be the winning factor. A Week Is a long time in football, never mind a year, but this budget release of Sports Interactive's first Football Manager game is still a must-buy for lovers of the beautiful game.
Previously responsible for the legendary Championship Manager series, SI took their stats-heavy recreation of football management and radically designed the interface to make negotiating team changes, transfers and other stuff far more intuitive. CM only has around half the leagues of FM, but the ones that are there are fairly accurate.
Player stats are mostly solid, while results save for the odd ludicrous one generally reflect the real world. An option to inject more funds into your team is an excellent addition, allowing you far more freedom in the transfer market than in FM The new match engine is also a success, with players making intelligent runs, keepers fumbling stinging shots and tricky wingers bamboozling defenders.
It's often a pleasure to watch matches, despite the ball pinging around with a little too much gusto at times. Strategically, there's also been a leap forward, though your tactical changes during a game don't always seem to make all that much difference. Overall, the game looks and feels about 70 per cent realistic. There are plenty of nice touches on display, including performance reports for players you've shown an interest in , player politics and pre-match articles that introduce your forthcoming games.
What's more, the debilitating crashes of CMS now seem to be a thing of the past. However, the game is still far from perfect.
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