There’s something about seeing that swirling EA sports logo and hearing that nasally American guy intone “It’s in the game” that gets my sports gaming juices running. Except for one particular title in their range, and that’s the FIFA titles, which, by extension, also includes offshoot titles such as Euro 2004, which is meant to cover the EUFA competition that is occurring right now.

It’s not that EA make bad soccer/football games, quite the contrary. As opposed to some lean years around the end/start of the millennium, the EA sports team always manage to refine their games and make them that little bit better than last year. And because they have had the foresight and more importantly, the dollars to spend up big on official licenses, sports fans get to see the real likenesses, the real names and the real teams. And any fan worth their salt loves authenticity. And here is where EA Sports find themselves a trifle hamstrung in regard to the likes of Euro 2004.

You see, the other big thing fans like – apart from seeing familiar faces and names – is a real feeling of sophisticated control. It’s not enough anymore to have a button for pass, a button for shoot, and a button set aside for turbo and ‘trick move’. Players want subtlety, and they want to feel like they have true control of the ball, not canned control.



And for all the dollars, for the undeniable millions of FIFA titles sold that have formed the basis for everything in Euro 2004, there’s the niggling realisation that those meddlesome gits at Konami make a regular practice of stealing EA’s soccer thunder. Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer may not look as good, but in the control stakes it plays like a million dollars, licenses or not.

So EA finds itself playing gameplay catchup to Konami. And in the last couple of years their adjustments have been slowly bringing the series closer to the Pro Evo standard. No more balls stuck to the feet, an emphasis on midfield play as opposed to charging up the wings and scoring ridiculous thunderbolt strikes, and a general slowing down on play. And while EA can’t quite shake off those canned trick moves – they appear in Euro 2004 as well – they’re really making inroads on the gameplay front.

Euro 2004 plays as good as any FIFA title to date. It’s still not at the levels of Pro Evo, but it’s closer than ever – with some minor tweaks putting it past FIFA 2004. For starters players not under your control will do useful things as opposed to standing around as if they’re waiting for an act of God. So now they are more inclined than ever to run into position, or even better, into open space awaiting your deft pass. They’ll even mark attacking players – although you’d have to be on crack to not take control of the player guarding the opposition dribbler, as your AI controlled defender will quite often be happy to escort the attacker beyond your penalty area. In fact the off-the-ball movement is something that FIFA and Euro 2004 do very well, and although it seems complex and requiring as many limbs as an octopus to control properly, you can even control additional players as you bring the ball upfield.

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