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UEFA EURO 2008 Review - PS3

UEFA (pronounced You-Ay-Fah for the Aussies that might not know) 2008 is EA’s newest soccer game and it revolves around the national football associations of Europe. Choose your favourite European country, whether it be Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Belgium or even Herzegovina and win your way to be awarded the UEFA cup. With lots of different gameplay modes including online leagues and ranked matches, UEFA 2008 is the only game of 2008 that will let you live out your UEFA Cup dream, and with the real-world tournament starting next month, the game gives you a head start on what to expect.

Gameplay

UEFA 2008 plays eerily similar to FIFA 2008. The fact that they are both published by EA Sports may have something to do with that. The gameplay is basically the same, with new Skill Moves such as body feints, ball rolls, scoop turns and juggling, there really isn’t anything that separates the game from its big brother FIFA 2008 apart from the team roster and tournaments. Game modes in UEFA EURO 2008 include Kick-Off, UEFA EURO 2008, Captain your Country, Story of Qualifying, Euro Online Knockout Cup, and Battle of the Nations.

Kick-Off mode is your basic exhibition style match where you can jump straight in to some UEFA action, UEFA EURO 2008 mode is where you will find yourself at the start, qualifiers, or finals of a UEFA EURO tournament. There’s plenty of customization in this mode, you can adjust how long the tournament goes for, and you can even play pointless friendly matches as you work your way through the ranks. Captain your Country is a variation of Be a Pro mode where you can create your own player (or pick someone from the roster) and fight your way through Europe to lead your country to victory.

Story of Qualifying mode lets you relive the qualifying round of UEFA EURO 2008. It’s for die-hard fans only, as it puts you in different scenarios such as jumping in to a game with 10 minutes to go and being behind by a goal. There was a similar mode to this in FIFA 2008 called Challenge Mode and just like that, it proves to be equally as hard and only for the true fans of both soccer games and the franchise.

The online aspect of UEFA EURO 2008 will probably extend the lifespan of the game at least until the real-life tournament is over. It allows for ranked and unranked matches, and also online leagues which you can create, or join and win your way to the top. It’s pretty hard to find a match against an Aussie opponent, but once you do there is little to no lag. Offline multiplayer allows for as many as seven players, and online allows for a massive 14 players, which makes UEFA 2008 a lot of fun to play with your friends, as long as you’re all die-hard soccer fans.

The actual (continued next page)