Introduction to CM3

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Championship Manager 3 is the pinnacle of soccer management sims. Sure, the graphics are extremely plain and boring, everything is text, but there’s something about this game that keeps you hooked, and going back for more. In fact, the reason why I only typed this up now is because I’ve been too busy playing it!

The concept is simple, pick a team to manage, and try to fulfill the club’s wishes, which are usually to end up as champions! CM3 is a highly detailed game, where you can pick almost any club and find almost any player.

Once you’ve picked a club (I’ll use Leeds in this case), your job is to check out your squad, see their strengths and weaknesses, and look for players that could be useful to your team, on the transfer market. Finding players is a bore most of the time, and don’t you even think about buying all the best ones straight away. Each player has his own value, and of top of that you’ve got to pay the wages, the club, etc … It’s a thinking game, this one. If you can’t be bothered finding players yourself, leave it up to your scouts!

Then comes game time. Select players from your squad, a couple of substitutes, select formation and tactics, and it’s off to the match! There’ll be a few pre-season matches, and they are mainly for practice. In the game, CM3 gives you stats like no other game has given you before. Ditching graphics for text commentary has worked unbelievably well, detailing exactly what’s going on the pitch, and who’s affected.

Half time comes, and you can check out how tired your players are, their effectiveness, passes they’ve made, successful challenges, headers, etc. CM3 is astounding in the way it reports all of this information to you.

Come home, start the season, qualify for the tournaments, get more money, and so the game goes on. Like I’ve said many times before, this game is amazing in how much information it provides you with. Each attribute a player has is covered, their form, their history, their value, and the injuries they’ve received, who’s interested in buying them, your financial status, the transfer market, there’s nothing the game hasn’t covered.

Championship Manager 3 is one of the most addictive games around, it’s just got that something extra that none of the other pathetic attempts as soccer managements sims have. So, what are it’s bad points? Shoddy graphics. Well, they’re extremely basic. No players kicking balls around, just colorful backgrounds and lots of boxes to click on. Also, it’s quite slow, even on a monster of a PC.

However, these factors shouldn’t affect your decision in buying the best soccer management sim around!

For: Addictive, extremely informative, fun gameplay. Every little detail is represented.

Against: Basic graphics, slow, and the fact that I can’t even buy Viduka with 20 million pounds. I’ll nab him one day.

by dcmagus