Reviews// Championship Manager 2010

Football - the business - has changed an awful lot since Championship Manager made its debut in 1992. With the sometimes sinister appearance of Directors of Football and 'General' Managers hovering over the shoulders of the team manager (hello Kevin Keegan, Dennis Wise doth lurk behind you with a different team selection...), and seemingly taking away the responsibility for who to pursue in the transfer market and general undermining of power, well...who, in their right mind, would be a football manager? You would!

Championship Manager 2010 offers you the opportunity to assume the role of team manager, along with all the responsibilities that come with it. Granted, the board of directors of your chosen club will let you know if they're satisfied (or otherwise) at regular intervals, but at least you will be made aware of the feedback, and there'll be no boardroom interference in choosing team tactics, buying players et al. No, that's all the responsibility of the manager.

Sure, you will have to delegate certain tasks to others: for example, you can't go scouting around the globe for players to improve your squad yourself, and there are aspects of training and fitness for which you'll have to employ others to administer. At the beginning of your career, everything and everyone you need to get to matchday one in a fit state is at your fingertips. If you overlook something, CM2010 will point it out to you, so at least you've been made aware that you haven't selected a sufficient number of substitutes or assigned penalty-taking responsibilities. If you choose not to make any changes, the saving grace of all football management games - auto pick - does it for you.

CM2010 has been taken apart and put back together with great care by developer Beautiful Game Studios, and there are no bits left over. Indeed, and unlike an Ikea-bought wardrobe, there's a lot more than initially meets the eye once the game's installation and multiple screens of sponsors are gone. CM2010's release date means that some of the later deals in the summer transfer window will not be featured in the game, but post-release, a September update is available from the game's [url=www.championshipmanager.co.uk]official website[/url]. There's little doubt that, come winter, and the end of the next transfer window, there will be another downloadable update.

Beautiful Game - unlike some developers - has remembered that real-life football comes in 3D, and has implemented an in-game match progress screen using all three dimensions! After you've selected your team and its tactics, you can watch the match play out on screen. No boring panels of text here, Brian. Similarly, there is no real emphasis on the tickertape feature so beloved of other football management games; just a briefly visible and unobtrusive comment when a significant event occurs. The in-game action looks a little Sensible Soccer-esque, if the Sensible teams were a bit taller and had gone on a proper footballer's diet instead of having chips with everything, the little fatties that they are.

A novel feature, one that's new to the Championship Manager brand, is CM Season Live, wherein you are invited to take control of a club during a selection of mid-season points, using real world data. At the time of writing, there have been no CM Season Live updates available to download, so unfortunately I cannot tell you exactly how it works.

The upshot is that there will be clubs from the top 10 European countries available to save from the ignominy of a relegation dogfight, and teams to propel to promotion, play-offs or European competition. When the download becomes available, I'm gonna go for a team marooned in mid-table mediocrity and see where I can take them. At least if I avoid relegation, I will not get the boot.

Hopefully. After all, if your favourite team is top of the league at the end of say, January 2010, the only way is down, so don't risk it. That's part of the reason that I elected to take charge of Kotka, Finland club, FC KooTeePee - the nearest phonetic to 'cutie pie' available in CM2010, incidentally.