The match engine aside, there will be more than 40 different leagues, youth teams, completelyreworked training, and the ability to delegate several tasks. With Ray we’ve been very lucky in that we now have an employee of Sports Interactive rather than people just doing us favours." As Vaughan says: "We’ve always traditionally spoken to players, managers, agents and anyone else who will talk to us to find out as much as possible - and make sure the game is as realistic as possible. Erstwhile Liverpool and Republic of Ireland midfielder, Ray Houghton, has for the past 18 months been employed as director of football, studying the match engine and pointing out any obvious tactical anomalies. It’s the obvious way to allow people to analyse things further."Īs for the minutiae of tactics, rather than relying on guesswork, SI has gone to the professionals. It gives people improved feedback on what's happening in the game, why they’re letting goals in, why they’re scoring goals. However, Marc Vaughan, developer at Sports Interactive says: "It's a natural evolution. While it's not exactly the FIFA engine -as recently used by EA in Total Club Manager- it still represents a sizeable leap for Champ Man, and is a fundamental change that will inevitably irk the purists. And while it's a brave new world for Championship Manager, the reasonably playable Ultimate Soccer Manager employed a similar method with some degree of success. Basically, it's a moving version of the tactics board so beloved by Andy Gray on Sky Sports. you won’t need to peruse our hardware section for a new 3D card, but we can confirm the existence of an optional 2D match engine which will run concurrently with the traditional text commentary. OK, so 'graphics' might be stretching the point a little. So what have they done for this fourth version proper? Only gone and added a graphics engine. For more than a decade, the game has enraptured a generation of virtual managers through the simple medium of words. The success of Championship Manager, however, has always been built on a basic unmoveable foundation: no graphics. After all, were it not for the invention of the toilet, we’d still be hanging our clinkers out of a first floor window of a morning. Nevertheless, it inexorably creeps up on us and engulfs us in its terrifying newness. These are to be fair, no better or worse than in the last game, but whatever they have done here resulted in increased load times as you went from screen to screen which was annoying. You could see how your players were working on the pitch and you could get a better idea if your tactics were working or not.Īs well as this new engine, the overall look of the game had gone under a few changes. However, back when this was released this match engine was a game-changer. I know if you are looking at this in 2020, you will wonder what the big fuss is. The big addition to Championship Manager 4 is the new 2D match engine. It is very addictive and if you are a football fan, you will be well and truly addicted to this game. One where I play a Premier League team and another where I play as a lower league team trying to make it to the top. The way you go about this is up to you, but I always like to have a couple of games going. The goal of this game is the same as it has been in all the other games and that is to be the best football manager you can.