#Championship Manager 99 00 Full Game series

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. And don't forget, this is the patched version. The more you play it, the more they keep coming, with CM5's bugs proving a mix of comical, niggling and fatal. Half-BakedД¬hampionship Manager 5's Got More Bugs Than An Entomology Convention. If BGS remains in existence, no doubt patches will continue to appear thick and fast, but unfortunately, you can't polish a turd. It was never going to match Football Manager 2005, but the signs are that it could at least have been competent. It's a sickener all round, not least for the developer, who, given time and testing could feasibly have produced a decent game. 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. 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. Had we received this disc out of the blue, we would have deemed it unreviewable and perhaps knocked out a cautiously noncommittal preview. The bottom line is that CM5 simply isn't finished.

#Championship Manager 99 00 Full Game series

This alone is enough to make you lose interest, but the more you play the game, the more it begins to fall apart, with a series of flaws and bugs appearing on a regular basis. Attempting to enjoy a tangible match experience is something of a game in itself, as you find yourself trying to second-guess the computer by switching off the highlights mode partway through the second half, and manually guiding the match home through a combination of double-speed and six-speed. The action cuts off in the middle of a goalmouth scramble, goals are even sometimes missed, although interestingly the whole thing slows down in order for the referee to run half the length of the pitch in order to book a player.ДЄny tension is taken out of the experience, and the game can go from 60 minutes on the clock to full time in the blink of an eye, thus scuppering any plans to bring on substitutes or make tactical changes. However, this is where things begin to unravel, as the game's definition of highlights appears to differ drastically from the accepted norm. Apart from the absurdity of the idea of watching an entire football match played out by dots, none of the times seem to be particularly accurate and are all largely pointless anyway.ДЄs we said ages ago, the obvious thing to do is to include a highlights mode, and thankfully this is the case. An array of options is available for your viewing pleasure, and you can watch the entire match in either real-time, double-speed, six-speed, 60-speed or simply go for the fast result. Bad Cover VersionД¬hampionship Manager 4 introduced the concept of the 2D match engine to the series, and this is retained here, but at a slightly jauntier angle. Elsewhere, for all the bragging about having attributes rated out of 100, there is an option to revert to the traditional out of 20' score too. Not exactly a revolution in the medium, but it does give you something to do during matches apart from drum your fingers. As for the other claim of constant gameplay', this simply means that you can continue tampering with your squad and so on while the game is processing results. So far, so predictable, and the game chugs along at a similar pace to its predecessors.ДЇor all the claims of a quicker game, it's not vastly speedier, whether with just the one league loaded or the full complement of 26 nations. Give or take the aesthetics and clunky interface, the layout will be largely familiar to fans of the series, and initially comes across as an Argos version of CM4. The obvious thing to do would be to simply to copy Championship Manager 4, and as far as is practically possible, this would appear to be the case. In plain English, it's a stinker.ДЇollowing up the definitive football management game from scratch was admittedly an onerous task, but it's one that the now ironically named Beautiful Game Studios set about with good intentions. It's the oldest trick in the book and one that's particularly prescient here, as those who have already bought the game will attest. Following months of rumour and counterrumour, a release date was suddenly announced, and a review copy followed shortly (as did a patch), albeit comfortably too late for this review to deter early buyers.

The brutal facts of an all-new Championship Manager from an all-new developer.

We've discussed the politics ad nauseum, now we're down to the facts.