Hoorah hooray yippee yay wahey! At least, that’s how I would have started this review had Jay and myself not let in an incredibly dodgy last-minute equaliser against Wales just now and as a result failed to qualify for Euro 2008 as England. It was a varied campaign that saw us win games we thought we’d lose, lose games we really needed to win and draw games we probably should have romped, and all through it we sat through the best and worst that the new EA footy title – Euro 20008 – had to offer.

As you’d have expected, the game is pretty much FIFA 08, minus the club teams but with the addition of the sense of occasion that the European Championships bring. EA have always been pretty decent and giving players a decent sense of atmosphere with their tournament games by having all the official locations and extra gubbins loaded in, and Euro 2008 is certainly no different. Thankfully, though, they’ve also gone and provided us with a couple of interesting new modes and tweaks in order to make parting with the cash a little less painful.

First and foremost, you can trog through an entire Euro 2008 campaign with the team of your choice (although Wales are curiously unlicensed for some reason, so you’ll have to put up with the likes of Jason Koulsan and Craig Belmont). You can tailor this to however detailed you wish it to be; should you have a hankering for a bit of qualification and friendly action you can go right the way through playing every game, whilst if you would prefer to just Didier Drogba dive your way in you can head for the tournament proper straight away.

This is probably the mode to which you will head first, and once you get out on pitch you will begin to realise that they’ve also gone and made a few tiny tweaks to the way the game works too. Crossing now seems rather trickier and depends a lot on how quickly you were running and which angle you set the analogue stick, whilst passing also seems a little more accurate. Having said that, it will mean that you will spend a large amount of time passing the ball straight to the opposition because you thought the game would nanny you a little and help things on their way.

The tweaks aren’t solely related to your team, either. AI opposition now seems to react in the way they would in real life, so play Portugal or France and you’ll see some flowing footy whilst playing Armenia or Liechtenstein will see them pack the midfield and defensive areas and force you to craft space in tighter confines. This leads to all sorts of annoying matches where you literally get swamped by nagging minnows who refuse to let you have space to breathe; in our qualifying campaign myself and Jay managed two epic draws against the aforementioned minor nations, which was really quite embarrassing.

Still, it all adds to the authentic atmosphere the whole thing gives. Going away from home to the smaller countries will see you playing on comparatively tiny, muddy pitches and with the home crowd whistling and booing your every touch. Returning home to play crucial games will have the support chanting and cheering at every opportunity, whilst Clive Tyldesley provides some brilliant and appropriate commentary for the situations that crop up. Erm, Andy Townsend is in the booth again too… so… er… never mind. The game also allows you to press a number of face buttons after you score to perform custom celebrations, which allowed me to run Wayne Rooney around in little circles with his right arm in the air for a good few too many seconds after he bagged one against the Swedes.

Generally, it all feels rather nice indeed once you get used to having to give passes a little more direction. What still frustrates, however, are the slightly dodgy way in which the AI score some of their goals. The ball physics are actually very good and allow for all sorts of deflections and such, but on more than one occasion we had players run through the ball, had opposition players magically retrieve possession with some kind of Stretch Armstrong tackles and even more annoyingly then go on runs which saw them shrug off the attention of three or four of our team by just bumping along through and around them. At times it really does feel as if you’re being slightly cheated on Euro 2008, and it’s none too subtle. Despite this, it’s still a decent enough game of footy and you can still knock in some decent goals, even if they 30-yard curlers are more rare than they used to be.

Heading off-pitch once more, Captain Your Country mode follows on from the Be a Pro mode in which FIFA 08 allowed you to control a single player on the pitch. This time around it’s got much more of a career feel to it – something fans called for – with you taking a created player through the ranks of B Internationals right up through to being the head honcho of the main national team. It’s a good addition and once you get stuck in it’s really rather rewarding too. The game also allows you to control two single players in co-op mode in single matches, something which is actually really good fun and will also advance your spatial awareness no end. Elsewhere, the Story of Qualifying mode gives you a number of scenarios for you to play through rather in the same manner that the old ISS Pro games did, so if you fancy scoring 8 goals as Germany or helping Croatia beat England again (booo!) then you’ll get your fill there.

Perhaps the mode with the most longevity is the Battle of Nations, in which you set your home nationality and then take on other players from throughout the world online. The way it all works is that the game offers players incentives to play as smaller countries in an attempt to beat higher-placed nations and earn more points toward your country’s ranking total, which in turn places all the nations in a league table to see which country is best/has the most spare time. In my experience with the game I ended up playing quite a few smaller team games as the majority seemed to shy away from the bigger nations in order to land more points, but it’s a nice addition and the online play was pleasantly lag-free and smooth.

The cherry on the top of the cake is the game’s visual side, with some glorious stadiums and authentic looking player model;. Rio Ferdinand still looks curiously like a horse and Wayne Rooney is still Mr Potato Head so it’s as good as it can get. The way the players glide and stagger around depending on what’s happening is also a joy to watch when it comes to replays and really goes a long way to making the whole thing seem real enough to please footy fans across the globe.

Whether you reckon it’s worth an extra investment is, of course, an entirely different matter, especially if you’ve already gone and shelled out on FIFA 08. What I will say is that this time around EA have put a bit more legwork into making their summer tournament game a standalone product with some interesting game modes and great use of the official championship license, so you could say that it represents more of a step than any of the previous Pro Evo games have managed over each other. The changes in the way the game plays are small as it still uses the same engine, but the footy itself was noticeably good fun in FIFA 08 anyway so that’s not a bad thing by any means. Whether you buy it or not, Euro 2008 can certainly hold its head up a little higher than you probably initially expected it to, so cheers to that.