It was always going to be hard to get excited about the game of the tournament that England didn’t manage to qualify for, but that didn’t stop EA from making the most of their licence and hammering the bi-annual “FIFA one point five” out on to store shelves.
And, despite England not qualifying, you can still play as them or if you wish, attempt to take any of the European nations into battle. Even Kazakhstan or the Faroe Islands. Or Wales.
I’m going to skip over the majority of the gameplay here, as it is exactly how you remember it from FIFA 2008, with a few graphical tweaks. If you’ve followed the series for anything more than five years, you’ll know exactly what I mean when I say that UEFA Euro 2008 is very much the par for the course in terms of actual on-pitch improvements.
However, some interesting developments have been made elsewhere, and the highlight of these is the “Captain Your Country” mode. In short, this takes the woefully underused “Be A Pro” mode from FIFA 2008, and throws you into a full European Championship campaign complete with friendlies and qualifiers. A slight RPG element has been added also, and the rate at which your player improves (if you have created one…as you should have done) is so slow that repeated campaigns are all but guaranteed. Its difficult to pick holes in the on-pitch play here, although the camera tends to be a bit of a pain at times - especially the motion-sickness inducing angle that comes into play when you’re bearing down on goal with the ball.
Unfortunately though, its the off-pitch performance that stops the mode from being a superb draw for the game. Playing for England as a created player was far too tough to begin with, as I was competing for the captaincy with three highly-rated players, so I chose Wales. Everything started off OK, although I couldn’t hit a barn door from six yards when it came to shot accuracy. Three games in, I pick up on a rebound and bobble the ball over the line for my first international goal. Stunning it was not, but exhilarating, it most certainly was. It isn’t hard to become addicted to that feeling of scoring a goal when you’re controlling your own player, let me tell you. Anyway…Wales sneaked into the finals. Time for the tournament proper to kick off!
“You are not rated highly enough to play in the Euro 2008 finals.”
WHAT? I’ve been picked for EVERY match and am second rated in the race to be the captain for goodness sake! Why can’t I play?
Because the game won’t allow it.
OK, “I’ll do better next time,” I think as I simulate the final matches and start to dream of playing for England. I light up the qualifiers and am the captain of the England team by the time the finals come around. Awesomesauce! Winning two of three matches from the group stages, we head into the quarter finals. Germany! That’s not good. The auld enemy will prove to be a tough test…
“You are not rated highly enough to play in the Quarter Finals of Euro 2008.”
For FUCK’S SAKE.
I’m now the fucking CAPTAIN of the team and I’m not allowed to play in the next match. Where is the sense in that? Who in the name of all that is good and pure, sat down and thought that there was any good reason whatsoever to add this brick wall to proceedings? I mean, seriously…would John Terry be dropped because the FA hadn’t randomly given him a rating of 7 or more in terms of squad importance? Your rating doesn’t even seem to even be based on your match performances, since you can score highly in all but one match on the road to the finals, and still be overlooked for the final 16. This is infuriating, as you can imagine. You’ve spent a couple of hours in getting your team to the finals, and then get told that you can’t play anymore. This is a real shame, since the mode is good enough to make UEFA 2008 warrant a purchase on its own. I sure hope that FIFA 2009 contains some play on the Be A Pro mode too. I’m actually slightly damp with anticipation at trying to get into the Liverpool squad and trying to win the Premier League title as my created player…bring it on!
It may sound strange that I’ve only discussed one mode in this review, but having played the other modes and having seen that they’re absolutely nothing that FIFA hasn’t done before, “Captain Your Country” was theonly thing that kept me coming back to play. In fact, it was the only section of the game that I spent anything more than an hour on. Draw your own conclusions about what that says for the rest of it.
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