Amazing Depth, the best management sim around, BEWARE, you have to be die hard to get the most out of this game.
Championship Manager let’s you step into the manager’s shoes and you control every aspect of the club, overlooked of course, by the board. CM4 is simply amazing because of its detail. For example, when you make yourself a manager, you have to make a profile, and this includes your favourite football team, your age and country of origin. It is the equivalent of Oblivion when it comes personalising your character.
CM4 has many leagues that I didn’t know even existed, it contains players from U-19’s level, and has full profiles for them, you are simply astounded by the quality and volume of details in this game.
You can overlook this all via your managers desk, which tells you reactions to your transfer bids (you even have to deal with the press, and you eventually learn why managers hate them), the happiness of your own players, and of course the boards happiness. If the boards not happy simply my friend, you are screwed.
The great thing about CM4 is how free you are, how you can take risks, and also the feeling. He feeling when your team wins the league or get’s promoted, it’s simply marvellous.
The in game system is amazing, it normally uses sentences to display what is happening, however when your team tries a tactical move (which you can nurture on the training ground, via the training mode) it will go into a 2d view with little dots as your players, once again simple, effective and gripping. Hell, you even control the people who train your players. The simple fact is CM4 is what Halo is to FPS’s, what Pro Evo is to footie games, it’s what MGS is to the stealth action genre. You cannot own a PC without this. That said you will only really enjoy it if ou are a true fan of the “beautiful game”, I know many people who don’t like football but love PES, this would not work for CM4
In total Cm4 is a great game which has took the genre “management sim” to a whole new level.