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Being a football manager is wonderful job - if you got the nerves
CM2006 is the second attempt (and first on the Mac) of Beautiful Games Studio to revive the successfull managment series which saw a cut when Sports Interactive parted with Eidos to publish their game under a new label ("Football Manager") together with Sega.
CM2006 is different from Football Manager 2006 or 2007 (both also available for Macintosh) as it has a different approach how to present information, action on the pitch and the controls which it gives in your hands to take control of your team.
The features seem less than in FM but this doesnt mean it is less fun. Actually I have the feeling that I can control all important aspects of my team better with CM than with FM. Less is sometimes more. The tools you have are enough to get the feeling it is your decisions which create sucess, fame or fate.
The match day presentation is okay, with different angels to view the action but it is kind of monotone. You hardly see great games rather than a sequence of moves, passes and shots which sometimes happen to lead to a goal. But it still is very exciting and I never got the feeling the Macintosh is cheating on me. It is not prime time quality yet, but fair enough.
The interface is being critisized as being old-fashioned, not polished. I found that all information is presented in an easy to understand manner and ergonomics are better than in FM. I dont mind the "retro" look of the skins. It works for me.
One little "flaw" is the performance. I have hard times on my G4 ibook to proceed quickly through the season. Number crunching in the background makes me waiting a lot for the next match day. You still can do things around your team but sometimes everything is set and ready but you are still waiting for the computer to be ready to move on. My workaround: I run CM2006 in a window while surfing or working and let the ibook work on my inputs. After 3 weeks of downloading the game I am still in my first season (6 matches to go) and I spent quite some time on my team. But the designers of CM are not responsible for the hardware I own; a managment game with this scope has to calculate a lot, but Minimum system requirements, which I exceed by a good number, dont match the reality at all.
If you love managment games with soccer being the topic, oyu have 2 good choices: CM or FM. Go for the demos and compare yourself.
I am pleased with CM2006.