Surprisingly worth the money. Its not just FIFA 08 repackaged.
I didnt own FIFA 08 and only briefly played it a few times, i havent bought a football game for a long time as they always seemed very 'arcadey' and nothing like the real thing this however was quite different. My last footie game was PES 4 on the xbox
The gameplay is quite fast and fluid, you need to pass the ball around alot and move into spaces. The animations are all very real as you would expect from a modern game. The graphics are pretty good and i never experience any slow down during gameplay but you do feel the character models should be better. Some of the players shirts look like they are made from cardboard, they dont fit their chests properly at all.
Compared to FIFA 08 you can expect slightly faster gameplay and some minor improvements which i wont mention. There is however 2 big new modes and the Battle of the Nations.
There is ofcourse only European national teams. No clubs but it has all the European teams that are eligable not just the 16 finalists.
The biggest feature in the game is Battle of the Nations which is basically a leaderboard of countrys. When you first start the game you have to choose a country to represent, after this all your points rating from every game is uploaded and then calculated into that countrys average which gives a good reason to play as weaker teams or on harder difficulty to increase the points you gain.
There are some other great features in the game besides the usual you would expect.
Captain your country is basically a career mode that allows you and up to 3 friends to create a player from scratch or pick an existing one, to control them directly through all the Euro 08 friendlys, qualfiers & finals. Theres one bad point about this mode, if you create a player you will be forced into the main team after just 2 games and your skills are so low in comparison to the other players you just cant compete properly. I found it much more fun to just play as an existing pro.
Story of qualifying allows you to replay famous moments of the qualifying and try to recreate exactly what happened.
A few other good points about the game - The commentary is excellent but occasionally they will start a conversation about english players in a game England arent even playing in.
There is alot of achievement style things to complete in the game such as scoring X amount of goals or getting man of the match 10 times which add to an overall % complete, this along with the other features gives you plenty to do in the game.
Its not without its bad points though and these might make the difference between you buying or not so ill list them :
-There is no co-op online play. All you can do is basically 1v1 team mode in one of many formats. If several people are on the same console they can play together against another person online but no more than 2 consoles and no be a pro. This has made me not play online as i find 1v1 too competitive and not fun
-One very frustrating part of the game is that the AI will very easily take the ball off you with a standing tackle if you go close to any oposing player however when its the other way around and he has the ball you wont be able to tackle him easily at all. The AI seems to be programmed to always keep his back to you and your options are very limited. You can pressure him yourself or have 1-2 com players do it. Pressuring seems almost useless as you can never tackle the AI you will often see his players run around with 2 defenders stuck on them unaffected. The other option is a sliding tackle but the AI rarely gets into a position where you can do one of these without getting a yellow card. I find the only way to get the ball back is to have the com pressure and you limit their passing options. This often leads to long amounts of time unable to do anything and on some of the special matches where you have a short amount of time to score multiple goals you will get angry.
-Goalkeepers are too good. They are robotic, never make mistakes and will catch or parry everything. You will find mosy your goals coming from rebounds or sheer luck. This was probably done to keep the scores down and make it more 'real'
-Another really bad thing - 1 star teams. These should be pushovers,6-0 thrashings, but no not in this game. They all opt to play all out defense and keep 9 players infront of you. This combined with the last 2 things makes these teams harder to beat than the likes of Italy and France.
If you already own FIFA 08 you could skip this one and wait for 09 but when it starts in the summer and you see those players on TV you will maybe wish you had bought it.
Overall despite all these things i say this game is well worth £40. There is just so much to do especially if you want to reach 100% completion. Compared to alot of other PS3 games i bought that were done in 1-2 evenings this is a real bargain.