EA SPORTS TITLE IN GAMEPLAY OVER GRAPHICS SHOCKER!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Good gameplay,better than FIFA 2004

Cons: GASP! graphical aspects!, and a few issues

The Bottom Line: 
Euro 2004 is a good game, and all fans of the sport should check it out. It isnt perfect, but it is definitely above average in terms of enjoyment.

Author's Review
To end my little celebration of Euro 2004, I thought that it should finish with a suitable review of, well, Euro 2004, and what time for fitting than on the eve of the final.
I actually had no intentions of buying this game, due to the fact that I wasn’t a particular fan of FIFA 2004 and this would probably just be an added to version of it. But it was purchased with a staff discount at an already lower than RRP price, the day after Portugal sent England home from the tournament, if nothing else as a little poke in the ribs to a friend of mine who supported England and constantly mocked Scotland for not making it (Christ that’s what happens when you have to play real teams when qualifying).

So anyway, in case you have been living under a rock, (or at least somewhere not in Europe), the European Football (soccer, whatever) Championships were being held in Portugal this year, and this is the official videogame tie in.

The game allows you to play as not only the 16 teams that qualified for the tournament, but another 35 that gave it a shot to get there. As well as Euro 2004 mode, which I will get back to in a minute, the game also allows you to play your bog standard friendlies and tournaments, but also offers a few unique options. Home and Away is a two-legged match complete with Away goals rule. While you could say that this could be accomplished by playing two back-to-back friendlies, having an official version is a nice touch from EA. Another nice mode is Fantasy. This allows you and an opponent to pick your Euro 2004 Dream Team player by player (like you used to do down the park) and play each other. The only thing that dampens this mode is the atrocious strips each team sports, and the Dutch players (something else I will get back to). Finally we have situation mode, which allows you to start games with players sent off, on cards, X amount of goals up/down and so on. While these could have just been included in exhibition options, its still nice to have them there.


Euro 2004 mode lets you pick any of the nations that tried to qualify, and play through the qualifiers and try to reach the tournament, before taking part in it. What distinguishes it from previous Tournament tie-ins and the other tournament options is that to play well you will also need to keep the players morale high. Del Piero has missed three penalties on the trot? Expect low morale and poor play from him. Cassano however has scored hat-tricks in the last two games; expect him to be sharp as a samurai sword.


Graphically, the game may shock a few people in that it isn’t the perfection that EA usually strive to at the expense of gameplay. Sure most of the star players look spot on (what the hell, since when did Milan Baros sport short hair?), but the crowd’s are devastatingly crap.
Also in for some stick is the department in which EA usually excels, the strips. Italy sport the shirts they were wearing to qualify, but they changed shirt a good few months ago, to a darker blue shirt with a central badge and Puma logo. While the shirts they wear in game are almost accurately reproduced (although EA have been kind enough to award Italy another three World Cup triumphs) , this isn’t the shirt they wore in Euro 2004. the Czech Republic is also a strange one. For some reason the Away shirt’s Puma logo is central, yet the one they have wore in the tournament (and I own) has had the Puma Logo on the right side of the chest.
Croatia’s shirt also needs ripped into. While I am aware that Nike are dicks when it comes to licensing their shirts for games (or at least they always have been to EA), Croatia’s shirts are a disgrace. First of all, neither shirt gets the numbers in a circle on the front (this appears on Portugal and most other Nike-kitted teams), and the home shirt lacks the white bit at the bottom. Irritating, but forgivable. The kick in the nuts is the away shirt, which is the exact same except the parts of the shirt that are sweat absorbent and white on the home shirt are red on the away shirt. It should be noted that the Croatian shirt is red and white checks, so this means that the away kit clashes with every kit the home kit clashes with. Defeating the purpose of the away kit. The fact that every Croatian away shirt is blue means that EA could easily have just given them a blue away shirt.
One strange thing I noticed was that the names on the Spanish team’s shirts are missing. All the other Adidas kitted teams have names, so why not Spain?
The real spoiler for the entire game is Holland. Seeing as the Dutch didn’t make the last World Cup, and the FIFA games are more club based, EA got away with not having Holland in WC2002 and the 03 and 04 FIFAs. The latter two also had several Dutch internationals missing from many of the club sides. But in this, we have a plain orange shirt, with players called ‘Ned -insert squad number-’. While the Ned defender looks like Jaap Stam, acts like Jaap Stam and probably smells like Jaap Stam. He isn’t Jaap Stam. The thing that makes this even more infuriating is that the few Dutch internationals who made the FIFA games (Van Nistelrooy, Davids) are just ‘Ned#’ here.
What the hell is up with David Beckham’s hair in this game is also a mystery to me, it should also be noted to any Swedes/Celtic fans that Henrik Larsson isn’t in the game, due to the fact that he decided to play in the finals too late for inclusion in the game. Why they couldn’t just have lifted his model from FIFA 04 I don’t know.
The stadiums look great, and the ball is even exact to the one used on the park.

Sound-wise, the game is pretty disappointing for an EA sports title. The in came commentary from Motson and Coisty seems to be made up of their FIFA 2003 script without all of the good bits. The crowd sounds pretty good though.
The game also brings with it the usual barrage of crappy music, including tracks from Freq Nasty, Norwegian rockers Span and the official (?) tournament theme from Portugal’s own Nelly Furtado.

So how does the game play? Surprisingly well actually. EA have tightened up the defences in the game to make sure that scoring is not only now anything but a formality, but on occasion bloody hard. Shots no longer fly in the net from well outside the box, but it is now much easier, and more realistic looking scoring from parries and scrambles.
Thankfully the free kick system from FIFA 2004, which was the reason I didn’t buy that title, has been fixed, so when shooting from a free kick it takes on a system similar but more difficult than the one in the 2003 FIFA title. This is a good thing by all means.
I’m not too much of a fan of the corner system though. In it you choose a rough option (eg inswinger near post) and then you have to compete with an opponent for this spot. The only problem is that 9 times out of 10 the keeper gets it.
The game has also stolen what was one of the only reasons to play Codemaster’s Club Football games, the modifier. If you hold down L when shooting, you will now try to lob the keeper. Hold while playing a through ball to play a high through ball and so on. This makes for play that is not only more realistic, but also much better to watch.
The game has also improved the way in which players hit the ball on volleys and headers, actually making them viable ways to score.
The only fault play-wise is that the game still has a habit of passing towards players you don’t want it to pass to, often going to the other team.

A fault I discovered that may not be EA’s fault, and may just be my disc, is that the game crashes and slows down an awful lot. 2003’s FIFA used to slow down a bit when selecting teams/strips, but this does it far more often. Thankfully, once you get into the game it has always worked fine for me.

When it comes down to it, Euro 2004 is a solid football title that features enough good points to definitely warrant a look from any fans of the sport, but enough faults to stop it from being perfect. Quite amusing it is that the aspect that EA usually strives to get perfect, the presentation, is actually one of the main detractors of this title’s score.

If you own FIFA 2004, I’m not sure if this is worth investing in. I personally like it a lot better, but my experience with 04 is slim.

Those who don’t own 04? It’s probably worth a look. Should they use this engine, but spruce up the presentation a bit, this with added club sides and non Euro national teams it would be a great FIFA 2005.

the game is slightly like the tournament itself, in that while it was a good tournament with some great football played, it wasnt the best of recent times, and while this is a really good title that entertains me greatly, it isnt the best football game ever.

And just for the record,

GO PORTUGAL


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Kit
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