Improving the games from an successful serie? I think not.
User Rating: 4.6 | Championship Manager 5 PC
This game is, as the title implies, based on the other games in the Championship Manager series. These games have undoubtly been the best manager simulations for soccer fans for ages and now it’s time for another edition to hit the shelves. This game is also a lot quicker when it comes to loading times have been a promise. To be honest, it's alot faster than the older versions. Took only about 20 seconds to create a new game with 4 leagues... I just had finishing pouring up milk. Hmm yes, that was the good stuff. As always, you choose a team of your own and will manage it to glory. To do this you will have to spend money on players, keeping your team happy, training schedules must be well put-together and a working tactic along with other factions. The best part of the CM serie have always been the incredible amount of information you get on each player and team and this game doesn’t make any difference in that part. Still providing tons of information for all of us crazy strategic players that want’s to know everything. The above doesn’t seem to matter at all when it comes to the matches. The matches are being shown in a 2d-pitch. The 2d-pitch have been improved slightly and now looks sort of 3d-ish and is supposed to give you a better overlook on the match. You can choose if you want to see the whole game, just the highlights or ”quick match” which is an incredible quick match. Almost like simulating one. Highlights and Quick Match offers the same downside, you cannot make any tactical changes unless you paus the game or in highlights, something happens. The reason for this is that the clock speeds up until an highlight is happening and there is no way to paus it in this ”middle time”. Being able to make tactical changes during the match when nothing is happening is one of the most important things, no? Ah well, you can do these changes whenever you want though if you watch the full game. Here you can choose to watch it in real speed, 2x, 6x or 60x. Real, 2x and 6x is way too slow to watch a full game and 60x, well, 60x says it all. So much for using tactics and substitutions... If you think you could live with that, there are a few more downsides worth noting down. One player only. This means no multiplayer online, lan or 2 players on the same computer. This came as a total letdown for me as playing with my friends is one of the funniest things to do. The news system works like before, except that you literally gets bombardedwith press messages and all of them includes the same thing "Inter hunt's *insert player name here*". I got around 10 of these each week if not even more. I wish I could email the press telling them I don't care and, there is no way you can answer to these media reports like you could in FM. As I wrote in the beginning of this review, the game has been increased when it comes to the speed and I noticed that it wasn't just the loading time. One season can easily be played in under 3 hours (mainly because of how the matches works) which make the game seem more like an arcade game than a simulation. In the end, this game doesn't grow on you. After playing it for awhile you just simply quit and go back to FM 2005. However, if you are into quick games and don't have the patience to sit around browsing through vital stats that actually affect the outcome of your matches, this could be something for you. For the rest, stick to FM. CM 05 just isn't worth it. 
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