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Championship Manager 5 - First Look Preview
Chris Leyton
09/07/2004
TVG checks out the first glimpse of Champ Man 5 in action...
Having been in development at Beautiful Game Studios for the last year and recently reaching the āpre-Alphaā stage, TVG was fortunate enough to be invited to the first showing of Championship Manager 5 in action.
Having split from Sports Interactive earlier in the year Eidos formed a new development studio with the sole intention of developing the Championship Manager brand. So it was up to the guys from Beautiful Game Studios to convince us that the much-loved series is in good hands, whilst impressing us with a number of new ideas and enhancements that the team have been working on.
Having a clean canvas to work from the team began development of Championship Manager 5 with an extensive research campaign that outlined the aspects that fans most wanted to see improved - naturally this turned up such aspects as Speed, User Friendliness and Accuracy.
Although we were left with the impression that the focus testing and research was mainly aimed away from the true Champ Man fanatics, thankfully the team resisted the opportunity of changing things completely and as such Champ Man fans will instinctively know how to handle the game. That said there have been a number of small cosmetic changes designed to streamline the experience and perhaps to increase its appeal to a new audience and those that lost their way with the series in previous years.
As youāll no doubt realise from the screens, Beautiful Game Studios have re-jigged the main screen considerably, removing the side navigation panel and replacing it with a series of bars that adorn the top and the bottom of the screen; whilst only a small touch, this does allow for more of the screen to be used and results in a less cluttered look overall.
Without a shadow of a doubt the most impressive aspect of the demonstration came from the improvements made to the game code. As fanatics will testify, setting up a game within previous Championship Manager titles took an absolute age; if you wanted improved accuracy and the inclusion of multiple leagues it could take as long as 30-minutes to set up a game. So you can imagine our surprise when the team began a game with the inclusion of 25 leagues throughout the world and the game booted up instantaneously.
Yes you read that correctly, having entered your personal details and chosen which club you would like to manage along with the leagues you wanted to include; actually jumping into the game was only one click of the mouse button away. Quite simply it was too good to believe; it felt as though there was no way that it could be doing the same complex calculations that previous Championship Manager titles had needed to perform. The alarm bells were sent ringing however weāre assured that no sacrifices to data or calculations have been made, and that the resulting increase was simply because the team had been given the opportunity to develop the title from the ground up with no legacies left over from older code.
So no more time to make tea or talk tactics in-between setting up a game, which tied into another new feature that the developers have incorporated, currently dubbed āconstant gameplayā. Whereas previous Champ Man titles stopped the player from interacting with the game whilst it was processing data, Championship Manager 5 allows you to carry on playing even whilst itās processing matches. OK so we know that there was a āhackā in previous Champ Man titles that occasionally allowed you to double-click during the processing time and be able to interact with the game whilst it was loading, however this was never an official feature and couldnāt be relied upon to work every time.
The team were keen to state that they had heavily researched what fans wanted and that loading was a constant bugbear amongst the community, although itās likely that this aspect will endear itself more to newcomers and those that lost touch with the series a few years ago ā“ certainly we know of the odd Champ Man fanatic who used the processing time to think about forthcoming matches and tactics, whether or not this will appeal to that type of player remains to be seen.
For the Champ Man fanatic however there were more serious issues that needed rectifying, particularly in the areas of Scouting and Training. Whilst itās hard to say whether or not these have been drastically improved without going Hands On with the game, itās fair to say that the initial impression is one of improvement, particularly compared to the tangled mess that they became within Championship Manager 4.
Whereas in previous titles you simply sent scouts out to different territories, players now have more control over their scouts and can send them to not only different areas of the world, but also select which particular position theyāre interested in and filter attributes to ensure you get the player youāre after. Although you can be very specific towards determining what type of player youād like to find, scouts will still use their common sense and identify promising players ā“ so whilst you may be looking for a new keeper, if your scout discovers the next Zidane heāll be sure to let you know.
So the presentation moved on to the issue of training, and one particular area that held the most interest for us. Thereās no doubt that even the most hardened Champ Man fanatic lost patience with the training system within CM4 and assigned it as a task to the assistant manager, however Beautiful Game Studios have incorporated radical changes to ensure fans can make the most of this feature and align it more closely to older CM titles.
Once again the training is broken down into a table structure with each individual day broken up into different time allocations. Players are free to choose individual training regimes and assign these to individual players, but you can also specify an automatic routine and opt to choose between a Light, Medium and Intensive workout. Once again itās an issue that needs Hands On before determining whether it works or not, however the initial impression is hopeful whilst enlisting the assistance of Charlton Athleticās 1st team coach Mervyn Day should ensure the accuracy and authenticity of this feature.
Another aspect that has been improved through the invaluable assistance of Mervyn Day is the area of tactics. Certainly itās a similar system as before, allowing players to instruct where they want players to run; however now wannabe-managers have the ability to select where they would like to āFeed the Ballā ā“ making it possible to build up elaborate match tactics such as telling your speedy forward to run into space, where your talented midfielder will attempt to feed the ball if he gains possession. Certainly this is one aspect that weāre desperate to see how effective your decisions prove to be in the actual match, however weāll have to wait until we receive code before deciding on this.
Moving onto the actual game where CM5 once again utilises a 2D match engine, and as you would expect the guys at Beautiful Game Studios have incorporated one or two changes to make it their own. The pitch is now viewed from a slightly raised angle instead of a top-down perspective, allowing players to see a slight degree of depth and whether or not a pass is along the ground or up in the air ā“ itās a small change but one that we particularly enjoyed.
The match remains very similar to CM4, with the same selection of options and the ability to watch a game in its full 90 minute duration or skip through it in the blink of an eye. The ability to watch where the action is unfolding through the āAction Zonesā feature has been tweaked, resulting in the field now being split into nine different areas instead of the usual three; the result is that players now have a better understanding of exactly which players are performing and which players are being beaten by their opponents ā“ again itās a little change but one that appears to have a profound impact.
Whilst we were only privy to one match being played, it did appear to offer an authentic replication of a game of football; that said the resulting 14-3 score-line and a few odd player movements highlighted the importance of the playtesting and balancing stage that the team are currently moving towards ā“ CM fans can rest easy in the knowledge that this will be addressed and that the final build will feature far more accurate score-lines then the match we witnessed.
Sadly the demonstration failed to reveal whether or not we can expect more in the area of management interaction with players and the media; although we were told that this is an extensive feature of the game and based on a number of personality attributes granted to each player, which helps to determine how players deal with the media, how they react to discipline, etcā¦
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