First of all I must make a confession – the first championship manager game that I played was CM 97/98, or Championship Manager 2. I spent many a happy night playing this, the absolute god of football simulators, on my trusty 486 computer. One day, having hit a new low in my managerial career, I was desperately scouring the dugout forums for some tactical tips and ideas for new talent. In the process I stumbled across a free download for Championship Manager Italia game.
First of all I must make a confession – the first championship manager game that I played was CM 97/98, or Championship Manager 2. I spent many a happy night playing this, the absolute god of football simulators, on my trusty 486 computer. One day, having hit a new low in my managerial career, I was desperately scouring the dugout forums for some tactical tips and ideas for new talent. In the process I stumbled across a free download for Championship Manager Italia game.
Knowing that this was a CM series 1 game I wasn’t too interested but thought to myself “it’s free, so what have I got to lose?” I downloaded the game, (a total breeze even on what was a dial
up connection in those days), brewed up a coffee and installed it. 2 hours later, I was hooked! Don’t be put of by the simple interface; this game has a lot to offer! The game set up is very simple and, when I recently installed it on a Pentium PC, it took all of 4 minutes from start to finish! A big plus for me is that you can either play with real players or ask the game to generate new players with random skills. This latter option is quite a challenge, as you tend to assess players on pure skill, history and ability rather then their perceived real world value. In some ways it is more interesting than using real players but if what you really want is Batistuta in your squad then you’ll prefer the real player option.
Another great plus is that you whiz through a season and can experience the agony of success of failure several times over in one night! Actually, there is nothing better to do on a rainy afternoon than build up your squad and go for glory over a few seasons. The tactical options are fairly limited as you can only really set formation and passing styles but I really do believe that the way you mix your players up has a very important impact on the outcome of games. You really feel that the decisions you make change the game as I have played matches where I was behind at half-time but, with a few judicious changes, was able to win the game! Scores are realistic, with several 0-0’s, 1-1’s, 2-1’s etc which surprised me because one aspect of the championship manager 2 series that irritated me was the unrealistic scoring engine. Finally this game is all about picking players, setting formations and winning matches – there is no fiddling about with endless tactics or setting the price of match day hotdogs.
All in all, Championship Manager Italia is a top football simulator and has a lot going for it with a solid interface, quick game-play, a good database of players and a realistic match engine. If you are hankering after the days when football simulators did not need the latest processor to crank out one league or are just plain fed up of spending half a day just setting up training schedules, then this is the game for you!
