The time has now come for another major soccer tournament and with that another great soccer video game, EA Sport's UEFA Euro 2008 for the Xbox 360. The European Championships are upon us again, much to the delight of hundreds of millions of people all over the world. The 2004 tournament lived up to all expectations along with England exiting the competition on a penalty shootout yet again. As a proud Welshman, I cannot say I was completely dissatisfied by this. However, it will be strange not seeing the English compete in this year’s competition. A combination of below par performances in the qualifying stages and the fact that they really are just an average team denied them of their place in the championships. Despite of all this, they are still present in the game along with all the home nation's teams which pleased me greatly.
There is a bit of a catch however; a lot of the countries that didn’t qualify for the tournament are there but seem to be missing the relevant licenses needed to use real player names and kits. Wales has players such as J. Kouslas instead of Jason Koumas. Am I playing a PES game or an EA one? There are additions that redeem this omission such as national anthems but it would have been much nicer to have the real player names instead. Thankfully, all 16 teams that are taking part in this summer’s tournament are all present and correct. Also included are all 8 stadiums that will be used in the Austria/Switzerland hosted tournament along with other legendary stadia such as the glorious Millennium Stadium. You can even see the tall and distinctive BT tower building standing over the arena when the camera pans upwards which is a nice bit of attention to detail.
Some features have been added such as the co-op camera angle for 4 player action in the ‘Be a Pro’ mode pulled from FIFA 08. This is very welcomed as the camera in the latter game was not to everyone’s taste. If you are unfamiliar with this mode, basically you control one player throughout your career whilst relying on the AI to supply you with those killer passes and movements. EA have expanded on this idea and have added a ‘Captain your Country’ mode. You can either create your own player by choosing height, weight, hair colour, skin colour et cetera or use an existing professional such as Wayne Rooney or Cristiano Ronaldo. You start off as a ‘fringe’ player for your country’s ‘B’ team with the main objective being to compete with 3 other CPU (or human controlled) players for full international captaincy. This whole affair begins about 4 weeks before qualifying starts and ends at the cup final. As you play and perform well you earn experience points to level up your player. You can earn XP by scoring goals, performing assists, killer passes and defending your goal from the opposition. So long as you continue to outperform your team mates, it is surprisingly easy to gain full captaincy. After being a fan of ‘Be a Pro’ in FIFA 08, I highly enjoyed the CYC mode.
You are asked to pick a country to represent when the game boots up for the first time which is essential for the new country leader board system. As you play the game, you amass points for victories and goals that are contributed to your country’s total on the leader board. You can use any team you want throughout the game as the points still get awarded to your initial country of choice. You can earn more points by using a lower ranked team to defeat a seeded team. At the time of going to press, Norway are sitting top of the leader board with Germany, France and Wales respectively. Despite these new features many have been removed especially the online modes. Obviously there are no club teams at all with only the commentators making brief references to a few while in-game. All usual FIFA game modes are available such as single games and custom tournaments. You can also play the entire Euro 2008 campaign from the first qualifying match right up to the final. There are also scenarios to beat such as ‘Story of Qualifying’ that offers you the chance to re-write history. A good example of this is the chance to save England from failing to qualify by defeating or forcing a draw with Croatia but why on earth would you want to do that?
Graphically, this game doesn’t seem quite as accomplished as its recent FIFA counterpart. The presentation is perfect as usual, it’s an EA game. The animation on players is still fantastic but when you have a large television like me, you may start to notice the players looking a bit peculiar. Apart from this minor fault, the game still looks great. Stadiums are brilliantly rendered but the crowd still looks awful. Frame rates are smooth throughout with slight drops during replays and cut scenes. Another thing I did notice is that the player models are not the same as FIFA 08. They are not bad but there seems to be a much more convincing likeness present in its predecessor.
