Championship Manager: Season 03-04 (PC CD)

The objective is still the same. Taking charge of your team of choice, you're charged with meeting the expectations of the team's supporters and directors, while balancing the books, the highs and lows of your playing staff and hopefully winning a few games into the bargain. Plus trying to hang on to your job, of course.

What's always lifted the Championship Manager games well ahead of their rivals, many of whom deliver the same basic setup as above, are two factors. The first is depth. The sheer weight of statistics and complications you need to consider are both staggering and engrossing in equal measure. But that's when the second key factor kicks in: accessibility. With a finely tuned user interface, this is a desperately easy game to get into, albeit packed with an immense and highly addictive long term challenge. It's a real achievement that the player is rarely left stuck and bewildered by the wealth of information they're presented with.

This new version brings a few extra goodies into play as well, alongside a much-needed polish and tidy-up. Goal of the month and season competitions are incorporated for instance, along with live cup draws and expanded international sides. More importantly, factors such as the training and media segments of the game have been clearly tightened up, and the various statistics have been brought up-to-date.

A predictable conclusion, then: Championship Manager Season 03/04 is a superb game, and without question the best in its field by some way. It does, however, come with one caveat. Once you get into it, there's a real possibly that your social life will come to a crashing end. Don't say we didn't warn you. --Simon Brew

I have only so far played it for 5hrs solid and not yet got pass half way in a season but even so I am hooked so much so that my CM 01/02 programme and my saved games has be finally removed from my hard drive. This latest version is not so bewildering for any new convertee to this series of management games as to cause them to lose interest after a short period nor does it fail to provide something new to Old timers like myself. First impressions count and for me at least this is the game that CM4 should have been


Champ 03/04   January 7, 2004
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

Fully updated squads and leagues for the 02/03 seasons, and the fact that a lot of the small bugs and annoyances found in pre Enhancement Pack CM4 have now been eradicated make this almost on par with the legendary CM 01/02. The game seems to run a lot smoother and quicker, some of the games more technical aspects like the Training have been narrowed down and is now available on a single screen and a handy form screen is available for each player detailing all of his stats and ratings for games gone by. The tactics screen is pretty much the same although the present 4-4-2 formation now has some arrows set on the two central midfielders which I got shot of straight away, however in the individual player instructions screen it is now possible to allocate a pre determined set of instructions to a player depending on their position, so you can go to your striker go to individual player instructions and set him as a striker and the game will automatically put instructions on that player for a player in that position, long shots, forward runs etc.

The Transfer market seems a little better with bigger clubs more willing to let their fringe players go on loan and lower league clubs not demanding ridiculous amounts for their players, well in my experience I managed to sign Stuart Downing on loan from the Boro even though he was valued very highly and I signed Sunderland target Jonathon Stead for around 200K. It is also nice to see when loaning people the option to set a transfer fee so that you can purchase them if they play well, this was feature that was supposed to be implemented in CM4 and was not, I am looking forward to snapping some youngsters on loan and signing them for knockdown prices if they’re any good!

The 2D match engine seems a lot better in my opinion, the football that is played seems a lot better with more short passes played along the ground and even some decent through balls being played through now and again. There are also different pitch textures so you can tell the difference between say Old Trafford and some field the pub team uses on a Sunday. The names of the players can now be seen more clearly as they are surrounded by a shaded box and small images now appear in the bottom right of the screen to indicate yellow cards, red cards and an offside flag when your player strays into an offside position. The text appears to have been updated a bit and when you substitute a player who has a low rating the commentary will often come out with something along the lines of “He can have no complaints about that” which makes the commentary feel that little bit more realistic. Also in addition to major injuries meaning your player needs to substituted CM 03/04 sees the introduction of minor injuries during the match which are indicated with a small green cross next to the player in question.

The media appears to be presented better with a more professional approach taken with the reports, they now have the feeling of something could be written in a daily paper, other than that I cant say I have noticed a massive change in the media but I definitely like the new approach. There is also a new goal of the month feature where you can view the top three goals scored in that month and the computer does seem to choose some fabulous goals, although I have one dispute with one goal of the month winner, as it was scored against me…and the runner up was better anyway.

Overall CM 03/04 looks very good indeed it seems to run quicker and more smoothly, it has all of the nice features of CM4 and a few make a welcome return such as: Past meetings information screen, Live Cup draws, create nicknames for players and managers and a Pre-game editor.


Back on top again   January 9, 2004
R. J. Crack (Telford, UK)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

I must admit I was a little concerned about buying this game after the disaster of CM4. But finally now I can put away my old copy of CM 01/02 and play this little beauty.

All the things that bugged me about CM4 have improved - for example now you can actually sell players you don't want for a reasonable amount and you have enough wage money to sensibly develop your team, without having to rely on the low-paid Scandinavians.

I love the 2D engine 'cos you can really see where it's going right or wrong, and the generally intelligent movement of the players would be most welcome in a playable match engine like FIFA. You see everything here if you play long enough - rebounds of the post, great double and triple saves, lobs from well outside the box, back passes which fall short and let the forward in; each game really is different... and the excitement when you score a great goal in the dying minutes is every bit as real as when you're watching the real game.

If you've never bought a footy management game then you simply have to buy it to see what all the fuss is about, and if you've owned an earlier copy it's time to through away your other life all over again. You're gonna love it.