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"Worlds Greatest Football Management Sim Comes To Xbox!"

I am sure that it was with considerable relief that SiGames finally released an Xbox version of CM, not just because there was at last a console that could cope with games of this size and complexity, but for all those, like me who had been plodding along with their PC CM games running at very low speeds due to processor / RAM restrictions.

The game is ostensibly a standard port, with the Xbox effectively being a dedicated game PC, but there are several key differences which affect the overall quality of the game.

The basic premise of the game is the same as it ever was, guide a team of your choosing from a large number of available leagues (see a PC FAQ for the complete list) and guide them to the ultimate honour of continental cup glory (oh come on, noone sees the World Club Championship as a serious competition!). You can select teams from all over the world and of all sizes, as this port keeps the feeder leagues that came with the PC version such as the Conference and the Swedish Second Division. Also present are the fog of war (!) and the ability to use made up names for a real challenge.

Once you have chosen your team, it is up to you to control the day to day running of the football aspect of the club. You have to pick the players for your squad and then decide on the match day team (and the reserve XI as well if you so desire). You are in charge of all transfers, contracts and liaisons with the board and FA over matters such as transfer funds, stadium size, match postponement and referee complaints. It is also up to you to decide on the manner in which you discipline your players and, if you believe them to be in the clear, what action to take against the respective FA.

The level of challenge is pretty much the same, and all the leagues and cup competitions which existed in the PC version are brought to the Xbox. However, there are a number of elements which have changed significantly which directly affect the way the Game plays.

Firstly, due to the limits of Xbox processing power and RAM, you can only select three leagues. This is a pain considering that if you want to manage a Conference side say, you have to select both the English League as well as the Conference. This means that you have already selected two leagues, which does rather limit your choices.

Furthermore, even though you can select leagues to run in the background rather than the foreground in order to speed up the game, these background leagues still count as one league selected, even though the PC manual always insisted, for the purposes of calculating the speed at which the game would run, that a background league equalled half a foreground league. However, you can switch leagues from background to foreground as you wish during the course of your game if you wish to move countries.

One further problem is that there are not the same number of players in the Xbox version and who is generated at the start of the game depends on the league/ s you select. Even though this was the same on the PC, given that there is a smaller player database in the first place, the differences are even more marked. For example, if you select the Japanese league and Play as Antlers, you will find yourself in the Asian Club Championship. This is obviously great, but the only clubs to have any real players are Antlers themselves, who have a full squad naturally and Suwon Samsung Bluejays and one other South Korean team who have a smattering of Brazilian imports. Although this is not the case in European competition it gives continental championships in all the other countries a very artificial feel, which is a considerable disappointment if you are an adventurous manager like me.

Graphically the game is identical to the PC, ie it is neat, tidy and functional, but nothing much more, although it doesn't really have to be anything else. The only problem here is that you can only use the Futuristic rather than traditional font, which I think is very naff indeed.

Sound wise there is not much understandably. There are crowd noises that respond to your teams actions, but they are only on if you run the matches on slow or very slow speeds. Oh yeah and there is the option to have a click sound every time you select something. Woooooooooh!

Overall this game is still great, and it was really enjoyable to play a three league game at a decent speed, however, the Xbox's innate computing restrictions inhibit the game which means that it is not as good as the PC version.

Of the two CMs on Xbox, this is probably the best, if only because it is the cheapest. 02/03 is little more than a Data update, although it does feature the South Korean K-League if that's your thing. It's not mine, I still play this game three years later and enjoy it very much.

Graphics: 6
Sound: N/A
Playability: 9
Longevity: 10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/13/04