UEFA EURO 2008 (PSP)

Pros: Rich game play and quite challenging even on amateur difficulty. You can also customize your players as you go through the campaign which gives you some reason to keep playing.

Cons: Too many bugs.

Summary: If you are a football fan you will enjoy touring the European campaign with your team, but besides the challenge of beating the opposition you might come up with some random bugs which really kill the moment at times. Random free kicks will happen all the time. No matter how careful you are even with the soft tackle the referee will blow the whistle for simply taking the ball away. I've noticed this happens more often if you are winning a close game and the end of the half is coming soon. Not sure if EA meant to do this but it does take so much from the excitement away. Offside will also get you every once in a while. Taking a corner kick with the opposing goal keeper on the goal line and a defender leaning on the far post somehow means OFFSIDE. Sometimes if you do a fast counter attack and pass the ball to your self with no other forwards there you might still get an offside, tho it's not always a consistent pattern. It's even more annoying after you win the match and the end game cut scenes start to see the opposing loser team starting jumping and hugging each other in celebration while your winning champs kick dirt with their heads down. Speaking of mix up i couldn't find a consistency in the beginning of the match when the teams hymns are played. It would show one team but play the other team's hymn but sometimes it would do it right. Tho i found it greatly amusing watching the British bow down their heads in respect to the Bulgarian national hymn. I also experienced a loading issue. If i start the game with my memory card in the console it automatically tries to load the most recent profile and then the whole console freezes and shuts down. I thought my save file might be corrupt so i made a new one still the same. Then used a brand new memory card and once again it froze and shut down. The only way i could load a game is if i start the game with the memory stick OUT then plug it in once the game has loaded fully and asks for a new profile. Over a few weeks of play i found that every once in a while the game will load properly with the memory already inserted but most of the time it will crash with the same save file. On the good side with some practice you can pull some stunning moves and enjoy almost life like moments. Scoring a goal straight from a corner is not something you see very often in a real match but i managed a couple of those in Euro 2008 and it was a real lift up. As you go through the game you get awarded "Growth Points" that you can then use to train up your players. I thought the point chart was a bit too simple you get points from scoring a goal shooting on goal and extra points if you shoot/score with a header or penalty kick. It would have been nice to get something extra for pulling off some impressive moves of scoring from difficult situations or when you save a penalty but unfortunately those achievements don't matter to EA. Plus conceding goals or fouls will get points taken off and with the miracle foul the game likes to give you every once in a while .....well you get the point. Over all it probably wasn't worth the $40 retail price but if you a big football fan you might find that investment worth your while.