Championship Manager 2006 Review (PC) By GhettoBandit

9 / 10
01 May 2006 at 21:58

Review by: GhettoBandit

When buying Championship Manager 2006 I felt that it was just going to be like the previous installments of the game but after 5 minutes of playing it I realised that Eidos has taken this to the next level.

After installing the game; which is so easy to do that I got my 6 year old sister to do it whilst I washed the dishes, the same menu comes up with things such as 'Start New Game', 'Load Saved Game' etc. You can choose from a range of new skin colours to have from an ordinary blue to a blue gel. Apart from that little addition it's basically the same as the previous installments so those who are familiar with Championship Manager should find no problem with starting a new game.

When you've chosen your team you want to manage, there is a new option labelled, 'Club Benifactor', this is simply a way of having more money to use on transfers, wages etc at the beginning of the game, once you've started the game, grab the information book which comes with it and open it to page 6 and this will give you a detailed walkthrough into choosing your starting 11 and actually playing a match, this is useful to people who have never played Championship Manager before or are having trouble navigating their way around.

The controls are slightly difficult to get to terms with after many years of using spacebar to continue the game or submit a transfer. There is a new option to the 'Continue' button which enables you to jump to the next important decision as a manager you have to entail, just by pressing the right mouse button as opposed to the left. This saves you having to click time and time again.

When playing a match there are new options which let you speed up the game play by a considerable amount, so if your looking to do a season in just a few hours then you put it up to the max whereas if your someone who enjoys watching the ball being passed around, the tackle being lashed out or just enjoy watching it in normal time then leave it as it is. All the other options which you'll see basically do what they say so you shouldn't have much trouble thinking whether or not you should see what the players are called or whether or not you'd like to see the replays of the goals.

The Quick Search option took me a while to find but if you look into the top right hand corner of the screen you'll see a box which a magnifying glass inside it, click on it and a box will come up where you can type in the player/team/nation or staff your looking for. If you like to spend your time looking for squad players then the way you should do this is by going to 'Player/Staff Search'. In here you can put in all the attributes, price range, age etc which you are looking for. The scouting option is also a lot more sophisticated than past games with the options being laid out in a way which makes it easier to choose the age, nationality of the players your looking for.

The only thing which pulls this new installment of Championship Manager back is the fact that some players cannot be found on the game, such as the teenage sensation Freddy Adu, this is partly due to licenses not being obtained for the American football leagues. But without these players the game isn't really complete so for this reason I have given the game a 9/10.

Note to Eidos:

Get those licenses you need and I might just give you a 10/10 on the next copy of CM.

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