There (Hell) and back again, a gaffer's tale : CM5 Review

[vyshka]

Well last Friday I got my copy of CM5 in the mail from the UK so I thought I would give everyone my take on it so far after playing around with it Friday night and yesterday.

Reading the CM5 forums you will quickly come to the conclusion that many people are p*ssed off with Eidos right now. I thought some people were quick to slag the game considering they were saying (probably exaggerating) that they had played the game 10 minutes and uninstalled it. It would be hard to really form a valid opinion on one of these games in that short of time. That being said, if I hadn't preordered and have the job I currently do, I probably would have considered cancelling the order.
So enough of that and on to the game (patched version).

Settings:

All leagues
Extra Detail: England, France, Germany, Spain, + 1 other
Team: Man Utd (figured I'd try one of the big boys for once, plus needed
to be able to mess about with the xfer mkt)

Test System:

AMD64 3400+
2GB RAM
160GB 7200RPM IDE DRIVE
Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT (256MB)

Current game status:

2nd in EPL 2 pts back
Made it to CL knockout stage
Late December 2004

Interface:

Many people dislike the look of the interface saying it appears to be right out of the 90's, whatever that means. I don't think it looks too bad. Definitely something that could be fixed with a good skin. The problem I have with the interface is navigating through it. An example being that when I go to view results, and click on one of the games, I have no idea of how to get back to the list of results. Some screens back a browser back type button, and others dont. Most things do not have hyperlinks like they do in FM which is sorely missed. I do like the homepage button which brings up your team roster screen. People have been slagging that hitting continue advances you only one day, but if you right click continue it will go until it needs more interaction from you. Another thing I do like is that you can make custom filters for your roster screen, deciding which attributes to include. That is a feature that would be nice to have in FM if it does not exist (haven't ever noticed it if it does). So I disagree with the sentiment that it will make your eyes bleed, but it could definitely use some functional improvements to make navigation easier or more consistent.

Scouts:

Other than the guy that scouts opposition for me they have been pretty useless so far. Maybe this is because I am Man Utd, not sure. Only in the past week did a scout on a search report that he had found someone for me. When I ask a scout for a report on a player, I have yet to hear that someone would be able to play first team for me. This is with many first team players injured. I have scouted the likes of Shaun Wright-Phillips, Deco, Figo, Beckham, Totti and others while searching for someone to shore up the loss of Scholes to injury. Other people seem to be having an
okay time with the scouts so it might just be the caliber of Man Utd being so good, that the scouts just don't find anyone capable of that level of play.

Injuries:

Maybe its just me, but there seem to be a lot of serious injuries in this game. I havent mucked about with training yet (will do that and add to the review later), and have let the AM deal with it using the default scheds.
Here is who is/has been injured on my roster:

G Neville - 2 months
P Scholes - 2 months
R Van Nistelrooy - 2 months
L Saha - 1 month (started game injured for 2 months then injured again)
W Rooney - 10 days (started game injured for 2 months, then was injured
again for 1 month)
C Ronaldo - 1 month
O Solskaer - 3 months (shin splints??)

I think Alan Smith is the only striker not to get a long term injury. I believe there is another defender that has an injury as well. Other teams seem to get their share of injuries too. Lots of spinal injuries. I took a look at the training schedules and they don't seem intense at all, definitely not enough to be causing all the injuries that take place. Maybe I need an army of physios out there.

Xfer Market:

All of my offers have been rebuffed except for 1. I have offered up to $30 Million for Shaun Wright-Phillips (valued at $13 Mill) and was rejected. This could be due to animosity between Man Utd and Man City. I have made many offers to teams around Europe and the only one accepted was an offer for Landon Donovan from bayer Leverkusen. Unfortunately he failed to get a work permit and had to go back to Leverkusen. I have seen an interesting issue where I made an offer, and player made a counter offer. I accept the counter offer, and the player wants to renegotiate. The screen comes up with the same demands as before. I leave it and confirm, and the player accepts the offer.

It seems to me that there are no masked attributes. You click on a player
and you will see all of his attributes without scouting him. They is
something that should be fixed. What is the point of the scout if you can
see all of this?

Club/Fan Confidence:

I have seen times when the Board has been pleased with my 1-0 draw (I had the 0 goals). I am guessing that is a bug.

The fans at Man Utd have been running hate campaigns against me, so that part of the game seems to be working. I guess 2nd place with all the injuries and into the knockout stage of CL isn't good enough when you are not Sir Alex.

Match Engine:

Here is where CM5 really falls apart. I am curious to know if what is going on on the 2d pitch is what the match engine is actually simulating or the 2d pitch is just a cr*p representation of what is taking place. Your goalkeeper is your worst enemy. Most of the games I have lost have been due to some of the quirkiest things I have ever seen. Here are some examples:

1. Tim Howard either doing a throw in or a free kick from the side of the field, sends it to the top of the area where an opponent is waiting to knock it in to the open goal.

2. Goalkeepers running off to the side of the area to grab the ball, only to send it to the middle of the area for an opponent to knock it into an open goal.

3. Defenders having a tendency to score own goals. Not sure how common, but I have seen a few.

4. Defenders sending the ball back towards the keeper when there are opponents between them and the keeper.

They don't seem to like to pass, but that could be due to the runs in the default 4-4-2. Tactics is the other aspect I have tinkered too much with and will review later.

One suprising thing that I miss from the FM 2d pitch is the lil' feet the players have. I have no idea what direction the players are facing. So I have no idea if Rio ferdinand is trying to run away from the ball coming towards him, or if his back is turned and he just doesnt see the ball chasing him down the field. There seem to be instances where players will just stand there when the ball is nearby instead of gathering it.

Visually I don't mind the tilted pitch that much. The most annoying thing
is the jaggies along the edges of the raised dots representing the players.

People have been complaining about the speeds available, some saying rt, 2x, and 6x are too slow, and 60x is too fast. I think 2x is fast on my pc, and I don't see how 6x or 60x would at all useful for watching what your team is doing. 2x is just that, twice as fast as real time. You can just watch highlights if you want and not the whole match.

The refs seem to enjoy handing out yellow cards. Either at the end of the group stage of CL or just prior to the end, there had been 27 red cards in the competition, and plenty more yellow cards. I believe most of the reds are for being booked a 2nd yellow.

I like that the engine speeds up when there is a stoppage, to the next point where play is going to begin. Unfortunately once it gets to that point it will go real slow as the ref walks across the field to hand out the next yellow. This probably wouldn't be a big deal if there weren't so many cards being issued. It would be nice if they sped that part up.

Overall Impression:

I have yet to review the 2 things that people have stated as a positive for
the game, training and tactics. I will hopefully do that in the next couple of days then I can get back to FM2005. I will say that the game is fast, and it is very responsive while simming in the background. The question is, at what cost did they achieve this? It would appear at the cost of having a broken match engine.

Another thing people have complained about is the amount of email you receive. I guess I have received as much as they have, because it hasn't been too bad to deal with it. Many people are also upset at the lack of any mp functionality.

I didn't notice any printing capabilities in the interface which if I
liked the game would be a major dissapointment. I think this is something
that both CM and FM need to improve. Hopefully with Markus bringing
OOTP to SI the printing or webpage generation capabilities of FM will
improve.

Overall, I am disappointed with the game, and not suprised that I came
to that conclusion. I am suprised at the amount of people that will say anything to defend it, but I guess all games have their fanboys. I think some people were slagging it without giving it a fair shake, but their first impressions were correct. Unless BGS are able to fix a lot of major issues, I don't think I can recommend this game to anybody, Especially if you have played FM or previous versions of CM. You will only be disappointed.

[ISiddiqui]

You are a brave man... very brave.

[moriarty]

You would have had to tell me this game came w/ a free hummer before I even considered buying it .... but thanks for the fair impartial review.

I have nothing against another soccer game, I just feel bad for the unknowing folks who but this without realizing that CM5 is not from the folks over at Sigames.

[vyshka]

I am imagining that a large number of the people that drove the game to #1 on the sales chart had no idea it was a different beast. I knew what I was getting into and knew I was basically throwing away $40. I was just curious to see for myself what they produced.

I wonder how many of those purchases have turned into returns or exchanges.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally Posted by moriarty

You would have had to tell me this game came w/ a free hummer before I even considered buying it ....

By hummer, do you mean the automobile, or...