UEFA Euro 2008

By Daniel Needham

It seems that with every major sporting event across the globe occurring, you can almost bank on it having a videogame counterpart. The Olympics have their button-mashing duels, football has its premier international showpiece, the World Cup, on display, and now it’s Euro 2008’s turn to make its way on to consoles, handheld and PC.

Euro 2008 will let you control any of the sixteen participating nations who qualified for the event, as well as an additional thirty six countries, allowing you to customise the event as you see fit. A real bonus for all you England fans out there still upset on your team missing out.

Although produced by the same company who make the hit FIFA series, expect Euro 2008 to have noticeable gameplay tweaks, as it seeks to establish its own identity. For starters there’s a new game mode called ‘Captain Your Country’ which allows you to create your own player and work him through friendlies, warm-up matches and eventually on to team captaincy.

Modelled loosely on FIFA 08’s ‘Be a Pro’ mode, Captain Your Country allows you to also play against other offline human opponents, and make your progression through the game while tracking your stats, which are kept on a Man of the Match type system, giving your footballer a rating of one through to ten, with enough high quality performances eventually earning you that captain’s armband.

Other game modes include a straight tournament, online tournaments, as well as being able to replicate the whole qualification process and do the hard slog to earn your spot in the final tournament.

In terms of gameplay additions EA have introduced the new Kick Stick system. By using the left stick to aim the ball and then snapping the right stick forward in a kicking motion you’ll have precision perfect control of your set piece play, allowing you to curve the ball around the wall and in to the back of the old onion bag.

Available for PC, PS2 and 3, PSP and Xbox 360, UEFA Euro 2008 looks set to capture the emotion and glory of the upcoming tournament perfectly. Keep checking back on NZGamer.com in the following weeks for a full review!

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