UEFA Euro 2008

After receiving the RROD yesterday for the first time in 1 and a half years, i have sent my 360 to microsoft and after seeing the videos of euro 2008 was in the mood for some football gaming. So i plugged in the PS2 on my 42 inch plasma (lol) and stuck pes4 in (the best version in my eyes).
And what a revelation. Yeah i know its a little rough around the edges, theres a serious lack of defender AI at times and its old and unlicensed, but its just amazing. I remember why I fell in love with PES.

Everything about it just...works. People say you cant feel differences with players in FIFA, and I now see what they mean. It isnt necessarily that martins can outrun defenders on pes and not on fifa, but even the way they run. Play with england and you'll quickly notice that beckham strides along effortlessly with grace, whereas gerrard, while still effective, is much more leggy and slightly more difficult to control. Its a subtle difference, but its impact is huge. All the things i miss from pes quickly became apparent:

- proper goalmouth scrambles
- incredible set pieces. defenders actually come up and start their runs AS the kicker takes it, compared to fifa where they run around randomly during the entire sequence. Whipping in a ball from the right with Beckham (and his perfectly matching animation which looks shite on fifa) towards a flying Campbell and Terry (old rosters) is immensely satisfying. It is surprising to me that this area has never received the attention it needs in FIFA.
- backspin long shots that rise the way seedorf's or edman's (earlier in this thread) do rather than random looping reverse shots with a dumbass goalkeeper.
- keep in mind im playing a patched version, but something about the crowd is just so much more involving and at times, exhilarating compared to fifa. They cheer more loudly and scoring a goal is SO much more satisfying in this version of the game.
- best point of all : NO CHESTING. the players jump and kick the ball or if they cant reach it, header it. Thats the way it should be.

I could go on for hours, but after thinking of what is BETTER in this "next generation" version of fifa compared to "old gen" PES4, I could only come up with a few things:

- the finesse shot changed football gaming. I continually find myself trying it on PES4 just for the hell of it. A great addition.
- the trick stick and the freedom it brings. Tricks are pathetic on PES.
- the AI at TIMES. Not always. Attacking-wise I still believe old PES has the advantage.

My point being that in all the hubbub of night lighting, incredible graphics (which fifa does have) and perfect licensing or player representation, i think both konami AND ea have forgotten what makes a good football game. Dont get me wrong - FIFA 08 is definately a better game than pes2008, but i cant see myself playing it with the massive smile on my face i get when something realistic happens in pes until they add that sort of 'freedom', despite being on rails AND being limited by a small number of animations, that PES has. Its incredibly hard to explain why it feels so good. I guess...the best way to describe it is to watch pizarro's goal against real madrid recently...THAT is what happens in pes and cannot happen in fifa. Even in the game i just played, i cut the ball back to rooney and in the heat of the moment he hit it, but it was a bump ball, although still forced a great save. It was a mistake, but inherent mistakes (or more the possibility of inherent mistakes) in football are what makes it so great.

Please note: I havent owned a PES since pes5 and have owned every fifa on 360 since 07, including ucl, and play them all the time.
 
Very disappointing to see they've done nothing at all with direct free kicks, you'd have thought it would be one area that they can make significant improvements (that the community have been crying out for) with little time and effort, but no we get the exact same shitty one man free kick taker :(
 
NickSCFC said:
http://www.vitivi.tv/index.php?layout=show_video&var=15887;flv;0;0;2581;14;0&game=UEFA-Euro-2008

Watch the action at 04:20

The speed, animation, movement, everything just looks so real!
Click to expand...
Haven't watched all the videos yet, but I've just watched this one and I have to say, you're right. That looks like a real match, brilliant.

DJ Doc4 said:
Did you guys notice on the last video that there is a Scenario Mode?!! Ive wanted this since the old ISS's!
Click to expand...
Is that not Challenge Mode, which is already in FIFA 08?
 
I like the way front end looks now

and i cant wait to start the "captain" mode with 4 mates, that will be awesome

hopefully that will be available online as well
 
the only thing that worries me are the 90 degree turns. If they copied this from pes and changed it even though turn animations in fifa08 were awesome I dont think that I will play euro
 
The only thing that's convincing me is the rain flattening hair :). I was waiting this feature for a very long time.
 
Steve McClaren on the cut scenes, wonder whether he will come with an umberella for the matches played in rain?
 
Wow, listen to this bit from that blog...

When we first sat down to talk about what it was we wanted to achieve on UEFA Euro 2008 it was clear that we wanted our focus to be on quality and emotion. Quality in that we wanted to continue to enhance the football engine that we had been developing for the previous 3 years, and emotion in that we wanted to capture the feeling and passion of the Euro tournament. In addition to this we wanted to create a gameplay feeling that was clearly different to what had already been released on Xbox 360 & PS3.

To achieve this we looked at what it was about the Euro finals and qualifying games that made them so dramatic. What we found was that a team’s tactics often set the tone for the match. Smaller nations often played defensively against the larger nations, getting men behind the ball, trying to stifle their superior opponents. This in itself creates an emotion and a tension throughout the game – will the ‘big’ team be able to break them down, or can they hold out. So this is one aspect that we have carried through into our game. Each team will alter their tactics pre-game and during game depending on their status and the tournament and match context. The effect is dramatic, emotional and very rewarding. Seeing teams go 5-4-1 when defending a lead or pushing forward in a 4-3-3 to try and get a vital equalizer creates a very fulfilling, unique gameplay experience.

...

One of the first and most significant changes that we wanted to make was around responsiveness and game pace. To do this we refined our dribble, passing, trapping and player acceleration systems. Dribbling now has slightly less momentum and reacts slightly faster to user input, passes are crisper, players show more effort - stretching or sliding to get the ball if necessary - and player acceleration has been increased in order to give the players a more immediate feel and also to further differentiate players of differing abilities. This results in a faster, more responsive gameplay experience which can lead to some shout out loud moments of frantic edge of the seat excitement, especially in the knockout rounds of the tournament.

Another area we chose to develop was that of in-air gameplay, by that I mean jostling and fighting for position while the ball is in the air. We overhauled this system giving the user more control and thus introducing more gameplay into those situations. Users now have control of their player when the ball is in the air and have to fight for position before launching a header.

Of course we worked on lots of other areas of the game. Penalty Kicks play a more significant role in tournament play so of course we refined the shooting model and the goalkeeper being able to move and gesture before the kick is taken. Difficulty levels were adjusted so the game is easier at the lowest levels but still a challenge at the highest. CPU AI, trapping and GK all saw improvements and of course the ball physics were adjusted for the new weather effects. The result is a game that we feel re-creates the drama and emotion of the Euro tournament but is also a significant step forward for our football engine.
Click to expand...

Sounds amazing.

Becanes said:
Does Gameplay deliver to the US? I tired finding out on their website but I didn't find anything.
Click to expand...
I don't think they do mate.
 
Euro is the perfect game to introduce rain. We wanted to be able to contrast the dark, cold, wet winter matches in qualifying with the beautiful warm summer evenings of the finals. So to that end, last June we went on a fact finding trip to some Euro qualifiers. We started off in the Faroe Islands to see them host Italy in probably their biggest match ever. Our time there was amazing, at that time of year it doesn’t get fully dark and it was reasonably warm. That is until the hour before the match. The heavens opened, the temperature dropped and the match was played out in the pouring rain with us freezing in the uncovered stands. Then we went off to Germany and took in a friendly between Turkey & Brazil which led to a whistling crowd audio feature I’ll describe at a later date. Finally we headed to Croatia to see and hear the renowned Croat fans in an Eastern European clash against Russia. From this trip we gathered a lot of reference material which enabled us to produce some very varied environments to play matches in.

Finally! This sounds so amazing!
 
i wonder how much of this will make it across to fifa 09 --- i don't want to play this and then experience a huge step backwards with 09 and start missing all of these nice features
 
Radiation said:
i wonder how much of this will make it across to fifa 09 --- i don't want to play this and then experience a huge step backwards with 09 and start missing all of these nice features
Click to expand...

The $1 million question that different developers different ideas so who knows just have to wait and see. :))
 
They said that the CPU would change formations and attacking bias in FIFA08, but they don't really...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom