The five stages of grief are commonly known to be: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. The amount of time one spends in any of these steps is purely dependant on the individual and the circumstances.

It’s taken awhile, but now I’m at the final stage (acceptance). No, it’s not from a death in the family, a relationship that’s collapsed or even the fact Jessica Alba has taken out a restraining order on me. It’s much worse: Pro Evolution Soccer is no longer the premier football game on the market.

For the average slavering FIFA Soccer fanboy, this is no big deal as they were already (delusionally) of the belief “their” game was the best. The rest of us – the handsome, skilled portion of the market – knew Pro Evolution was the player’s choice. We were able to overlook the shortcomings of its looks and content because it played so much better.

Not any more, at least not on Xbox 360 and PlayStation3. Euro 2008 trumps Pro Evolution in every single criteria. Some by a lot, some not by much at all. But enough to make it easily our pick for the crown.

No hate towards EA Sports, but despite a load of effort in recent times, we just didn’t see this coming. Even the most recent FIFA – which Euro 2008 is based on – wasn’t able to cut the mustard in direct competition with Konami’s long running soccer powerhouse.

And let’s face it, European competitions haven’t had a glorious track record when it comes to videogames. They’re usually just chopped down versions of the current soccer game with different competition names. But in a testament to possibly how close EA Sports have been getting, Euro 2008 prevails as the best football game you can get on current gen consoles because it’s had enough incremental improvements to get it over the line.

Despite the above, Euro 2008 is the first game that delivers everything we’ve been waiting for on our high powered console platforms. It looks amazing, it plays on par with the vaunted Pro Evo, and it’s got the license and rights backing to satisfy the kind of people who demand realism in the colour of stubble on Wayne Rooney’s neanderthal dome.

We’ll start with the looks. The game is stunning. We expect this from EA, who are past masters of the “gorgeous-but-dumb” aesthetic. No joke, every new stadium you play in, and every new weather or lighting condition you witness makes you like this game even more.

The animation is outrageously smooth – and as we’ll discuss later for once it doesn’t interfere overly with gameplay. Character detail is exceptional, except for the crowd who look as ugly as ever. The motion of the ball is 95% of the way there – the only time I’ve witnessed pecuiliarities in its motion have been a couple of occasions after scoring – there appears to be a slight speed increase as the ball crosses the goal line from strikes on-target. Perhaps this is related to how shots that rebound off the posts are modelled – they come off with an appropriate but very solid bit of zing.

The movement of players on pitch is sensible and intelligent – something EA have really lifted their game in relation to, and the game retains the ability to send players on a run – about the only way you’ll really have a hope of collecting a through pass at decent difficulty levels. Passing in general is a bit of an acquired taste – you need to get your head around the fact it’s not pinball anymore – take the time to boost the strength on your shot rather than pinging it around will result in superior results.

Whilst the actual pace of play has been boosted from FIFA 2008, play in Euro 2008 is still deliberate, much like the real game. The game’s trick system – which works as well as any football game in recent memory – focuses heavily on shoulder button an analogue stick combos, which tend to leave you running out of fingers if you’re trying to get a little too ambitious, even with top flight players.

There’s very little fancy stuff you can do successfully at a full sprint without throwing away possession, so in the interests of control you find yourself giving up on blasting ahead and building up play properly from midfield – like you’re supposed to. Euro 2008 is especially strong at lateral play – there’s significant rewards for players who can drag the defence towards the sidelines with clever passing.

Backing this action up is some truly noteworthy audio. Not only is the commentary spot on, there’s even a pretty comprehensive voiceover introduction to the game, instructing new players on how the Euro 2008 online competition format works. The crowd noise is equally well managed. The commentary starts to get drowned out by the roar of the punters as full time approaches and the effect this has on the game atmosphere is tremendous. I defy anyone to not get pumped up as they near the 90 minute mark dead level with the opposition in a must-win game.

If there’s one thing we’d change it’s possibly the difficulty level at low levels. It’s very easy to score on the easiest two levels – almost too easy, which in turn makes for a steeper learning curve later on. One-touch shooting seems to have been made a little less easy this time around – even if you have a top flight player you’re much more likely to blaze the ball over the bar or be off target than before, which is probably a good thing. The only other flaw noticed to date is sometimes the AI controlled ‘keeper will wait for a while before taking a goal kick – well and truly after the players are back in position and are stationary. It’s around ten seconds at its worst, which is hardly the end of the world.

So the gameplay – the area Pro Evolution has traditionally had the wood on EA – is up to the task. The visuals as usual are beyond reproach. The audio is better than ever. The front end menus are – once again, clean and efficient. So what else is there to talk about?

Try the online component. There’s the online play option, which is largely the same as FIFA’s – subject to the same connection dependencies. There’s also a Euro 3008 online knockout if you fancy your chances vs the internet.

For players who don’t have the connection speed to enjoy direct play against humans, Battle of the Nations mode is primo. At the every start of the game you select “your” team. Play certain modes in the game with this team, and the bigger the upset, the more you’ll help rank up your team – global totals are kept.

There’s more though – Captain your Country takes the “player as one person on the pitch” option and amps it up intoa multiplayer challenge. Up to four people can play on the same team as an individual player in a multi-level challenge to determine who gets to be the boss. Truly impressive.

At the end of the day though, it’s this simple. The challenge to both rivals – EA Sports and Konami – was to see who could incorporate the others strong points best. Konami has had to play catchup on the visual and licensed front – and has been moving damn slow. EA Sports on the other hand has had to being the actual play experience of their games to the high standard of Pro Evolution. It’s been agonising to watch Konami fiddle around whilst EA has steadily caught up, but catch up they finally have.

A final note: EA Sports, we’re begging you not to get too carried away with tweaking between now and FIFA 2009. Euro 2008 represents a fine gameplay balancing act, and the stack of slight changes you made to FIFA 2008 to get to this point seem to indicate it’s just as easy to screw up the formula. By all means, pound out a few bugfixes if required but stick to adding all the FIFA licensed competitions and teams, go nuts with Manager mode if need be but don’t touch the how the thing plays, add any “great” new features – it’s good enough on its own.