Game Review – Championship Manager and Real Football Manager 2010

Game Review – Championship Manager and Real Football Manager 2010

First thing first, these are the Mobile Version. Well, they’re just the same actually, so maybe you’re wonderin why did I take these two. Not only one at a time or maybe any other ? well, first off, because the other football managerial game SUCKS. BIG. TIME. There was one where I can’t keep on going until I fired most of the player, and there was the other one where the only time the player’s stamina was full is only at the first match (so I need to keep on going with zero-stamina players for the rest of the season, not to mention the other team didn’t get the same problem) so there’s that.

But this time, im goin to take this differently (afterall, two subjects) this time, we will experience the games from aspect to aspect, from feature to feature from flaw to advantage. So, fasten your seat belt, we’re goin now.

Please take a note : we will try Arsenal as our team. No matter how big your hate for Arsenal, we’ll take them and you’ll like it. Because I’m the goddamn writer.

So, we’re starting a new game. Neat! Where do we go now?

-Squad Monitoring

The winner : CM

When I play RFM for the first time I can’t help but get mixed up. Sometimes I set Diaby as defender, RVP for midfielder, and even Walcott as Goalie. How is that even possible? Because, in RFM, the squad monitoring feature, consist of vertical list with side status bar. And the position button is a bit small, so new player will be likely to get things mixed up, although it definitely is not a big deal for senior player. But CM take things differently. They made a system where the four main position of soccer will never get mixed up. They separate them. A tab for goalie, tab for defender, tab for midfielder, and tab for striker. and all the option we need to see (like, their status, age and all) is already displayed on screen. So, next.

-Formation and team settings

The Winner : RFM

Look, the thing is, when we tried CM, the Formation setting is downright simple. You only need to set the formation, you don’t get many option, you set which player placed where, and you’re done! That’s all there is, as for the team setting themselves is just as simple, and don’t really matter. This is where RFM take place. First, we choose the formation, and the system will help by automatically set the best-suited tactic. And if you don’t have the needed player for some position, you can edit the position to wherever you want. Not to mention that we can tell the player where to strike, where to pass, when to attack, and all, personally to every player. Meaning that I can set RVP to focus on passing while Walcott get ready for the finisher. And I don’t know about you, but RFM is the only Football Managerial game I know where player get “Influence” Points. It determines who’s the best to be Captain. And no, it doesn’t matter that much, even when I put the Captain’s position to certain player which lack of Influence Point, I still win.

-Transfer

The Winner : Draw (no, Draw is not a team’s name, dammit)

So you’ve set the formation and the team setting, now you need some back-up players, right?

First off, in CM, we got 3 main option. Foreign (non-english team. In CM,you can only play as an English team) Transfer List (local, every player that listed as Transferable in league) and Non-League (those poor team that didn’t have a league. Poor guy) and you can search by their position, just like the 4 tab on Squad monitoring and again, every player has their info right after their names (price, ability, and all). In CM, we got a quiet generous transfer funds, and if we got low on money, we can ask the board for more, AT ALL TIMES. And the most important thing, YOU CAN BUY EVERYONE IN ALL TIME. So there’s that, and oh, we didn’t get money when we sell player. Remember that the other team from all English league could offer you a price for your players, and you can label some players as “Not For Sale At Any Price” meaning that they will not bother to try anymore, afterall, some teams are pretty cheap. (they sent me an offer for RVP for 9m? WTH!?) and some players sometimes be an emo and ask you to put them on the transfer list.

In RFM, you may not get as many option and feature as CM does, but the variation of purchasable players are HUGE. You can buy from the French league, Spanish, Germans, even Brazilians and Argentina’s. and not only their main league too, you can buy from their second league as well. Not to mention that there’s a feature of what I call as, “Rotation”. What is that, you ask? Well, it’s the recycling of the recently-retired players. But unfortunately, they’re random. So you winded-up having Patrick Vieira in the middle of the French 2^nd league, got Beckham in some unknown German team, and all. And please note that their ability got reset. And the most important feature? LEGENDARY! Yes, you can buy legends, I’m talking about those old legends, such as Zidane and Platini. In this case, you need to hire Scouts and they will be sent for at least, a month. some times, they come back empty-handed. But when they do got result, it’s freaking worth it! First, the legendary players are in free agent, so you can contract them without having to pay some team, and they didn’t ask for big allowance as well, most of legendaries in my squad only got a couple of hundreds for salary.please note that all other non-legendary player get at least 2m for salary. And their ability is  s high as my best player, and even the cheapest player can be sold as twice as my highest-priced player at the moment. So there’s that. Even though they got their name modified (like zidane to zindan)

-Training

The Winner : RFM

This, again, happened because of CM’s simplicity. You can set the training for a specific condition, but because of simplicity’s sake, you don’t have many option. And only one specific training at a time. Then we have RFM. First, you need to hire coaches. You can hire up to 4 different coaches with different specialty. And things got more specific from here. After you hired the right coach, and fully-upgrade the training place, then you can train your players specifically detailed. You can choose what player concentrate on what training. My RVP concentrated on Dribble, Shooting, and Jump. Yes, you can make up to 3 different training. And each months, the coach will comes at you reporting which player improved the most.

-Finances

The Winner : CM

This time, RFM got the simplicity. The finance menu on RFM consists only one wage budget, transfer budget, and club revenue (which will be used for stadiums and training facility) that’s all there is. While CM got a bit too detailed. And personal. Well, if you click the Finance tab on CM, it actually is more simple than RFM’s. but the magic isn’t there. The magic is, you totally depends on something as stupid as artificial chairman (look, in this part, this game knows every chairman of every English team in 4 different league) so, your pocket depends on how your chairman like you. If your chairman likes you, then your pocket will be really big  (because you can ask for more for more for more) but when they hate you, then it sucks to be you, asking is not even considered as an option. You can ask for many things to a chairman.  Like if you think you can’t make it through the season, you can ask for their generosity. You can ask them to make a training camp, and many more.

-Competition

The Winner : CM

Well, they both has 4 different cups (League, National Cup, Super Cup, and Champions Cup). But it was the menu that makes the difference. On RFM you need to pick a different section first, then different cups. So every aspect stands on its own. But CM is different, first, you pick the cup, then you‘ll get everything you need,  best goalie, best defender, best striker, which team is financially better, which them held the most card, and all. You can take it as reference to get new player. But the main and the most important difference? History. When you complete a season in RFM then the cup will be taken to your room, but what if you didn’t win a cup that season? Then how will you get to know who’s the winner? That’s the thing, you can’t. there’s no history records in RFM. Only your team’s record. Hell,you can’t even know how the other teams looks like,you can only see their players and position. CM didn’t roll that way. First, every winners and runner-ups on every cup will be recorded. And so does the League’s top scorer. And, you can see other team’s information even the one you don’t need to know.

-Kick Off

The Winner : RFM

So, every business has been set up, so you’re ready for the kick.

CM’s got pretty simple (as always) you kick off, you watch how your player doings for the game, then if necessary, substitute them. Done. But how RFM’s roll ? it got quiet simple yet sophisticated. First,before you kick off,you can view the team for the last time. And as the game plays, you can set how your team will be going, aggression, marking, when to attack, and all. And when the round has done, you can make a comment for how they’re going. And if you pick the right comment, their mentality will rise and their games will improve, thus making more score. Actually, for the mentality aspects, CM’s been covered as well. But they do that outside the match. And I personally think that it doesn’t matter. No matter how pumped the player’s mentality is, it doesn’t change their games.

For the gameplay, CM’s got a bit too simple. After Kick-off, you only get to see the score, main aspects (like cards, offsides, and all) The commentary and the over view of the games. Y’know, that one that looks like dots moving other dots while racing with the other dots. That’s all there is. RFM is way more advance. They got real-time view, which means, you can see the player with all their body parts intact and their color is matched with the real deal. You can also see how the goal was made in slow-mo. How cool is that for a mobile game?

-Saves

The Winner : CM

You can save up to 3 different games on CM, nuff said.

-Menu Display

The Winner : RFM

Have you ever seen a café’s menu? CM’s menu is just like that. Just like every other game, it just a menus after all. But RFM take things differently, their in-game menus looks like a city. It has stadium, finance office, news office, training facility, and others. It’s very enjoyable.

-Difficulties

The Winner : CM

No matter how bad your team’s condition at the moment. You still have a very big chance to win In RFM. But in CM? hell no. every match against any big four is a hard time. Not to mention that, penalty doesn’t do shit. No matter how good a player’s shooting point, in CM, every penalty will be likely to be miss. A chance to scored a penalty is less than 50%, and every player shared the same chance.

-Team Availability

The Winner : Draw

RFM actually have more teams and players than CM. but CM do have something RFM don’t.

RFM got many league. English (2 leagues), Italian ( 2 leagues), Spanish (2 leagues), Germans (2 leagues), French (2 leagues), Portuguese (1 league), Argentina’s (1 league) and Brazilian (1 league) and every single team of them is PLAYABLE.

While CM only focused on English league (all 4 of em), you still can buy player from other league, but only from their famous team (so,you can’t buy from un-famous teams, such as, say, real sociedad, auxerre, and all) but it got many teams RFM don’t. such as teams from Dutch league, Scotland league, Russian league, Turkey, and some other that I have no idea where did they come from.

Others Aspects

-CM : you can comment on other team’s player, just like you can tell the media how suck Ronaldo is. and you can also tell the authorities if they has been hard to your players. And media always wait on your press conference before (and some times, after) a crucial game. And this, will affect greatly to how your chairman will look upon you. And you can also held a press conference every Sunday, only 7 times per season. The better the answer, the better the chance your chairman will like you.

-RFM : every game you hosted will make money that you can use to upgrade stadiums and training facility.

-CM : you can comment to your player’s personally. With no limits. RFM can do that as well, but it has limit.

-RFM : RFM got a working wage budget. You got numbers That get up and down,in CM, your chairman will tell you how your wage budget is going. Other than that, you need to count them for yourself.

-CM : every names you saw, is their real full names (players, managers, chairmans), RFM only put the players main names (like only Henry for Thierry Henry, so, good luck if you try to search “Thierry”). Not to mention that sometimes, they modify it (none of the player in RFM’s Bayern Munich is correct)

-CM : every injury will have a clear  announcement of when the players will be ready. In RFM? Every injury is a bet. There’s no official statement whatsoever. You need to guess, and hope that you have a healthy substitutes. Once, Veron got an injury, and when I thought it will take only few weeks, or at the very least, a month, it actually take a full 6 month. HALF. FREAKING. SEASON.

-CM : every news filled with unimportant writing but very detail. Like how the chairman thank you for a winning season, but it takes a full paragraph to tell you that. But that’s just how I like it. RFM is just downright lazy. Every news stands only of one sentence. One short sentence.

-RFM : other team will actively trying to contract you as their manager in the end of every season. CM, however will not going to make your career as a working elevator. You won’t get into another team if you didn’t offer yourself to other team.

-CM : CM’s player search option is way better than RFM’s. RFM is way too simple. You can define their nationality, but not their age. You can define their price, but not their headings. CM’s got all that. You can search player on a very specific clues. Such as, their headings, stamina, handling, and all. Not to mention that players name on RFM is not very reliable. So you can get things wrong.

-CM : if you have a hard time on choosing which player to buy, then you can ask your coaches in CM, however, their recommendation is only based on your league at the moment. And you can ask about the team’s weakness as well.

So there’s that. I personally prefer CM over RFM because they got many detail we don’t need (heh). And the only reason I play RFM because I can make Zidane give a crossing to RVP while wearing Arsenal Jersey. No words can describe that.

This is the very first time I wrote a review for over than one pages. It was only because these games are my favorite games EVER. I’ve played CM since their very first version (2008) and those games were still on my hand phone up till now. I WON’T DELETE THEM, NO MATTER WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES. No, don’t take that as a challenge.

They’re a very good game, and the best of their genre. No matter which one you prefer.

Thank you for wasting your time with me. I will add more soon enough. Thanks again.

p.s: these are Java based games. They’re actually available for other platform, but they may have different feature than what I told you in this review.