Game Reviews

Champion Eleven review - A management game that leaves you on the sidelines

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iOS
| Champion Eleven
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Champion Eleven review - A management game that leaves you on the sidelines
|
iOS
| Champion Eleven

The recent sacking of Spain manager Julen Lopetegui on the eve of the World Cup prompts a familiar question: how important really is the manager?

Ultimately, the consensus is that Spain will be fine because they have much better players than most of the other teams in the competition. Put simply, you or I could manage them and they'd still probably progress deep into the tournament.

I've been reminded of this debate during my time with Champion Eleven - a management game in which you never really feel like you're having much of an influence.

Player power

It really is all about the players in Champion Eleven. You're constantly receiving new team members in sticker packs and from periodic scout searches. Your biggest recruitment headache tends to be how to trim your bloated squad.

You won't have to wait long to have a formidable team that steam-rollers the lowly opposition you'll come up against in your first few seasons. Naturally the competition gets stiffer, but there's little of the scrap and toil that you hear about in the real lower leagues.

That's largely because Champion Eleven isn't remotely realistic. Your fictional team of cobbled together real players takes on a mish-mash of real teams in weirdly truncated leagues.

Limited attacking options

The curious sense of detachment continues with the limited way you can interact with your team where it matters - match day.

Each match is simulated via a slightly clunky 3D engine, which seems to resemble a third rate console footy game from the PS1 or PS2 era. Your level of input here besides selecting a formation and making substitutions is pretty low.

You can select a rough attacking approach from six vague options - and three of those are 'left wing', 'right wing', and 'down the middle'. Your defensive options, meanwhile, are limited to just four options.

I honestly couldn't tell from the flow of the game whether my changes were making a material difference. Far more important, it seemed, was how much better my players were than the opposition and how in form they were going into the game.

Pep talk

Your range of team-tweaking options does increase as you play more of the game, with the ability to set a more nuanced custom tactical approach, but it's hardly Football Manager. It's also frustrating that these touches are so slow to appear. They seem to be doled out almost as rewards, which is a strange approach for a football management game.

There's a definite buzz to Champion Eleven's relentless churn of new and recognisable players, and of upgrading their abilities. It's like Pokemon with Gabriel Jesus and Kevin Wimmer in place of Pikachu and Bulbasaur.

But for the committed fan, that buzz will be fairly short-lived. This is a very casual management game with wait times and power-ups and card-combination upgrade systems, as well as a familiar reliance on various virtual currencies.

There's a thin veneer of of authenticity provided by the involvement of Pep Guardiola and the aforementioned Gabriel Jesus, but even then the weird conversational style of their input tells you that this isn't the real deal.

Champion Eleven review - A management game that leaves you on the sidelines

An oddly uninvolved casual management game with a thin veneer of football authenticity
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.