Despite the better efforts of Beautiful Game Studios, they just can’t top the excellent work of Sports Interactive. Ever since the split that resulted in the legacy of the Championship Manager name moving away from SI, Championship Manager has clearly slot into a firm second place. Nevertheless BGS are still trudging on and are lining up one of the best, on paper, feature lists the series has boasted so far.
Not only have they primed Championship Manager 2010 to come out at the start of the football season (To take advantage of the early season hype) but CM2009 has a full 3D engine to stay on level footing with FM2009. Although it has to be mentioned that last year FM2009 came complete with a 3D engine but eventually most people opted to turn it off. So whether the inclusion of a 3D engine within Championship Manager is a good idea is yet to be seen. Still on paper the engine sounds impressive with it’s 500 individual player animations and stellar looking visuals.
A set-piece creator, something that is absent from Sega’s management simulation, is to be introduced. Offering the manager a chance to create custom free kick and corner plays. Again I’ll have to question whether this will be a key integral feature for the game but in theory it sounds promising. You can however picture ways to cheat the game by exploiting glitches through set plays so heavy testing is a must.
Scouting networks have been improved with new interactive maps that allow you to easily monitor where you are putting in the most money and where you have the most knowledge. Clearly a massive improvement over simply telling your scouts what area to scout and then just viewing knowledge through bar graphs that are tucked away behind menus. In-depth scouting knowledge that comes with a natural risk-reward factor when signing players is easily an improvement on the old system.
FIFA 09 introduced a concept called Live Season in which the game data would be updated to naturally follow real-life form and skill within the game. Championship Manager have taken this and spun it in a unique way. Rather than just a mid-season update, BGS have opted for monthly and consistent real-life stat and competition updates.
So if your team only had two points from eight games and three key injuries after a couple of months, you’ll take charge of the same team in the exact same situation at that exact point in the season. Although this might not update your save concurrently by using real-life situations, it will provide you with some interesting scenarios to play around with after.
Championship Manager 2010 might still be away off from closing that gap but they are definitely homing in on the competition. The prospect of live season updates, in-depth scouting knowledge, custom set piece implementation along with a decent looking 3D engine all sound good on paper. If the fundamentals are here and these new unique features are executed on properly, Championship Manager 2010 will easily move up the table.
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