Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: EA Canada
System: Xbox 360
Genre: Sports/Soccer
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

Timed to coincide with the real world UEFA EURO 2008 competition in Austria and Switzerland, EA has released their latest entry in the soccer field, UEFA Euro. While EA is also the developer behind the venerable FIFA series, UEFA differs quite a bit and offers up its own compelling sports package even if it seems that we’re getting two soccer games from the same developer in the same year.

Where UEFA differs immediately from FIFA is in the stable of teams to choose from. Only those teams eligible for this real-world competition are on display in the game. In UEFA, players are tasked with choosing their favorite team from among the 52 member nations of the United European Football Association. What this means is that you can choose to captain a perennial powerhouse like England or append a Cinderella story on Croatia.

UEFA is at heart, a soccer game. I’m sure most readers are familiar with the specifics of the sport so I won’t dive into too much detail and instead focus on the various game modes available. Solo players have a wealth of options at their disposal from the outset. Players can choose to select a team and then begin working through a campaign: working from the qualifying rounds of the tournament all the way through the finals, or they can opt to skip the preliminary rounds and advance straight to the finals for their shot at fortune and glory and the adoration of soccer hooligans everywhere. The Be a Pro Mode allows the user to choose a Pro from one of the teams and role play that character’s development, with the computer AI taking the reigns of the rest of your squad.

Arguably, the highlight mode of the solo player campaign is the Captain Your Country mode. In this, a user will create a player and guide this avatar throughout the course of the entire tournament, from the qualifying rounds to the finals. The catch to this mode is that you are trying to be the All Star on the team, meaning the player will garner points for heroic actions on the field and individual performance in a bid to be named Captain of the Squad. The computer will randomly select 3 other teammates with whom you are competing against for the Captaincy. Thus, you are constantly focused on making sure your player is the glue that holds the team together while juggling the team-oriented decisions that go into constructing a winning soccer team.