For those who don’t know, Sports Interactive (makers of the original Championship Manager) recently split with publishers Eidos who retained the ‘Championship Manager’ trademark. Sports Interactive went on to join up with Sega to produce the ‘Football Manager’ series which is, quite rightly, considered the ‘true’ successor to the original Championship Manager series. What about Eidos and the in-name-only Champ Man sequels? Well these games have been met with lukewarm reviews and ratings. However, Eidos has beaten Sega to the punch when it comes to bringing football management to a handheld with Championship Manager for the PSP.

Graphics N/A

Since this is a text-based management game I find it almost impossible to give the game a rating in the graphics department. I can say, however, that the screens and text are fantastically crisp on the PSP’s screen and easily readable. The 2-D in-game engine consists of a birds-eye view of the pitch with colored dots representing players. It’s nothing spectacular, but it does give you a general idea of what’s going on in the match. You don’t HAVE to view this 2D view and in fact you can choose to read the text commentary and just view instant replays of goals in the 2D engine. The commentary is generally acceptable however, every once in a while you get oddities such as a player tackling his own teammate!

Those who’ve played the older (Sports Interactive) PC versions of Championship Manager will be right at home with CM PSP as the menus and interface screens are practically identical and incorporate the same hyper-link style navigation between them. One disappointment, however, is that there aren’t many different background photos as the PC games, but this may be due to the storage space of the UMD.

Sound N/A

Much like graphics, its difficult to give a rating for the sound/audio in a text management game. The game doesn’t feature spoken commentary, which is probably just as well since most people view the live commentary of matches at a faster-than-speaking pace, and the crowd sounds are pretty much generic. It would have been nice to include an option to play MP3s off your memory stick while playing but that’s a feature that’s not in many PSP games period.

Options 50

Championship Manager PSP features 55 playable leagues from 12 footballing nations and, apparently, 25,000 individual players. However, despite the small number of leagues you can only select ONE nation to be active! I think this is one hell of a bummer because I really enjoyed the fact that you could select many other national leagues to be active while you’re managing in your particular league. It added a great deal more realism and immersiveness when you can actually see how many goals and assists the Serbian youngster your scout has unearthed has scored this season.

Likewise, the database is a disappointment, not only in terms of the few number of leagues, teams and players, but also with respect to stats tracking and player histories over multiple seasons. Player histories basically begin at the moment you start the game, so if you wanted to see where a 30 year old defender was playing 3 years ago you’ll have to Google him (or look him up in Football Manager on the PC, lol!).

However, to be fair, it’s possible that some of these limitations are due to the power of the PSP system itself, and the fact that not everyone has a large memory stick (sounds dirty, I know). What can’t be excused by lack of storage space is the poor quality of many of these stats – in particular, the game’s finances are completely ridiculous. For example, after managing Mansfield Town for a few seasons I managed to get the Aston Villa job. Imagine my surprise then when the Villa board immediately offered me THIRTY-FIVE MILLION POUNDS to spend on players! Better yet, this was a Villa side whose previous manager had already bought Robin Van Persie, Antione Sebierski, and Kieron Dyer in the preceding season! Yet, a look at the finances page showed the club was in still in the black! I know Villa are to be taken over by a wealthier ownership in ‘real life’ yet I still doubt O’Leary will have that much coin to spend.

On the positive side, having only a single active league is that the game practically flies with respect to time spent waiting for matches to simulate. To give an example, an entire slate of matches in England, from the EPL to the Conference simulates (with statistics for each match and player involved) in about 15 seconds. Of course, if you don’t skip your team’s matches (why would you?) the matches simulate in the background and you don’t have to wait at the end of the day.

On top of the ‘regular’ manager career mode there are a few challenge modes (‘stop team X from being relegated’) which sound nice on paper, but the whole point of these management games is to make you feel immersed in the world of football management so I can’t see many gamers bothering with them.

Gameplay 50

Until Champ Man for the PSP, I hadn’t had the dubious privilege of playing a post-Sports Interactive CM game. After spending seven virtual seasons in the game, progressing from Forest Green, to Mansfield Town, and then to Aston Villa I can see just why this game engine has been hounded by soccer gamers everywhere. There are just too many logic problems (let alone bugs) to take the game seriously, which is a real-shame because the portability of the PSP format makes the game so damn enticing. Alas, some of the problems with the game are so bad they’re funny, here are some (in easy to mock categories);

General Problems

- Either I’m a tactical genius or the game is too easy (I’m guessing the latter) – for each team I managed I was able to win their respective division within a season, and with Villa I was able to win the Quadruple (EPL, League Cup, FA Cup, and the Champions League) with a midfield of Lee Hendrie, Kevin Nolan, Antoine Sebierski and Stuart Downing.

- Shot totals are exaggerated beyond belief – teams will routinely get 20 or more shots ON TARGET per game

- Attacking stats are exaggerated – Wagner Love was my top scorer with 58 goals in 63 games, but that’s not just limited to user-controlled teams – Rooney had 48 goals and Henry had 53 for United and Arsenal, respectively.

- Because of the presence of only one active league you’ll run into the same top teams (United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal) in every bloody competition you play. In each of the seven seasons I played an English team won both the UEFA Cup and the Champions League!

- The game engine (and thus your board, players and the media) only acknowledge clinching top spot in the league, gaining promotion, relegation, or a getting a play-off spot AFTER the last match of the season has been played. So even if you mathematically clinch promotion with four matches remaining, then lose the next three matches, the board will actually voice their concerns, then after the final league game (which I also lost), they suddenly became happy as it was ‘announced’ that the club had been promoted. *sigh*

Transfers and Finances

- CPU to CPU transfers are hilarious here are just a few of the examples in the seven seasons I played;

- Any team will sell. For shits and giggles I put in a $10 million bid for Peter Cech and, to my surprise, Chelsea accepted (even though he was their starting keeper)!

- Finances, as mentioned before, are loony! In my final season with Villa the club had a HUNDRED MILLION POUND SURPLUS and yet refused my request for increased maximum player wages (the max at Villa was $31,000 a week). The reason – ‘Insufficient Funds’. Brilliant.

Bugs and Others

- Scheduling is asinine. Several times I had matches on CONSECUTIVE DAYS! Yup, play on Saturday AND Sunday!

- Randomly your ENTIRE reserve team will be ‘INELIGABLE’ for a reserve match and you’ll be forced to use members of your first team (who will no doubt then get pissed off at being relegated to the reserves, albeit temporarily).

- And finally, my favourite; upon taking control of Forest Green I sent out my chief scout to scour England to find suitable transfer targets. After a few months he got back to me with the following shortlist;

Championship Manager for the PSP is a game that gets worse the more you play it. To be honest, during my very first season with Forest Green I was having a hell of a time – but the more I played and the more I progressed the more problems and bugs I uncovered. As it stands I don’t think I’ll bother playing the game any more, which is a shame because I think Gusto Games and Eidos did a good job of bringing the game to the small(er) screen. Too bad the game is a turd.

Longevity/Replay Value 50

A few weeks at most. As I mentioned before, when I first got the game I was playing it to death (I even took my PSP to work once!) but after finishing your first full season the cracks will start to show and a few seasons more you’ll see there are just to many problems to ignore.

Overall 50

I think the most heartening thing I can get from my experience of Championship Manager PSP is that the handheld format is PERFECT for soccer management games. I love the fact that I can take my management career on the go and with the PSP’s resume function I can stop and start it wherever I want. With that in mind, I can’t wait for Sports Interactive’s Football Manager for the PSP (which should be out in March)

As for Eidos and Gusto’s Championship Manager? Don’t bother with it. It’ll initially build your expectations by over-achieving and then show it’s true nature – as a useless, unappealing turd.

[Insert Everton joke here]

Lavan Chandran