Good but definitely not the best in the series
Of course the game is meant first and foremost to represent this summer's big tournament, and you couldn't hope for a more multi-faceted portrayal of EURO 2008 and all that surrounds it. A number of scenarios plucked from the recent qualifiers are included, with players being tasked, for example with taking charge of David Healy and providing the hat-trick that helped Northern Ireland defeat Spain. In the straight campaign, the qualifying stages have been the subject of much attention, with as accurate a representation of the less glamorous side of the preliminary stages as has ever been witnessed in a videogame.
Take England to Macedonia and you'll be met with a pitch riddled with divots and a vocally hostile crowd, cat-whistling your every moment in possession. Updates on events elsewhere keep the tension at fever pitch, and lower teams will often employ deliberately cynical tactics, putting 10 men behind the ball and creating a near-impenetrable wall to try and break down. Whilst these desperate methods do accurately convey their real-life counterpart, it does naturally lead to frustration and can seem a little unbalanced in that putting one against a team such as Andorra can be an infinitely greater challenge than scoring against on a more established football nation such as France.
Graphically, it's hard to notice much of a step up for EURO 2008 from the series' last run-out. From a distance it's easy to be fooled into thinking you're watching a match-day broadcast, but get close-up and some of the character models look downright odd, with players still sporting the buttery skin that makes them look like they've just emerged from a vat of Vaseline. Likewise the manager models that punctuate the action are riddled with deformities, though they do serve to bolster the atmosphere. Steve McLaren in particular – who we're assuming will be replaced by the more dashing Fabio Capello come the game's first online update – looks like a corpse that's been freshly hauled up from the muddy depths of the Thames. The build is also susceptible to some pretty unsightly frame-rate dips, but thankfully these are infrequent occurrences that rarely blight the action.