UEFA Euro 2012 DLC Review

EA Games has released their UEFA Euro 2012 game as downloadable content if you own FIFA 12. We downloaded it and had a look to see if its worth your hard earned cash.

Football has come along way since its early working-class days. Open top intimate grounds have been replaced by high tech generic stadia. Players cost about as much as some small countries. Try catch a game over the pond and your looking at a new mortgage just for the ticket. Well, I am being a little extreme but the point is this: Football comes with a price tag. This little FIFA nugget (available only as DLC) is no different, and for the privilege of enjoying the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament from the comfort of your couch is going to cost you 200 ZAR (£15.99/$25.99 on the PlayStation Store) or 1800 MS points on Xbox LIVE. Make sure you download the trial version before you buy the unlock because they are BOTH needed to have a go.

When it comes to the gameplay most will probably say that it ‘s FIFA 12, unchanged.  If you have played the game, there is nothing new to learn. here The FIFA franchise avoided some serious stagnation with FIFA 12 by rubbing some serious funk on key aspects of the game most notably in my opinion: Tactical Defending. All the additions are present and accounted for and so the gameplay is pretty much the same, high quality experience.

The actual differences and what you’re more than likely paying for is the lick of paint and new game modes.  When you download it, a new tab on the FIFA 12 main navigation bar appears. Select it and you tumble down into a seriously trippy world blasted by tournament branding. It’s magenta, it’s ugly. It is vastly different from FIFA 12 but once you get past this, tournament stadia and the match atmosphere being stepped up a notch, confetti canons and some fireworks for the champions, it all just doesn’t do a major international tournaments carnival atmosphere any justice and you quickly find yourself playing nothing more than a match in FIFA 12.

The roster of international teams has been expanded to include every single UEFA nation but many of these are unlicensed an populated by misspelled imposters, including G. Belth for Gareth Bale. Clearly, the addition of every nation has been done to make Euro 2012 appeal to even those whose national team didn’t make the finals.

In the DLC’s main gameplay mode – the Euro 2012 tournament itself, you can choose to play as any team in the competition, but if your team didn’t qualify, they can easily be substituted for any nation that did. Out comes Germany; in goes Scotland. The mode is as simple as the competition itself: 3 group games and 3 knock-out games are what stand between you and the cup. It’s exactly what you’d expect it to be, and once you’ve lifted the trophy, which is mildly satisfying, it’s unlikely that you’ll keep reliving the campaign.

Something a little bit different for the FIFA series is Expedition. Here you are confronted by a fantasy style map of Europe not filled with Orcs to make Frodo’s magic sword glow blue, just a ridiculous amount of football to be played.

You start out with a team of one player of your choice and a useless bunch of middling reserves picked from the minnow’s of Europe. From within groups, you’re able to ‘attack’ nations by playing a typical game of football.

The spoils of war are incremental: defeat a nation once, and you’ll be offered one of their reserve team player; beat them again, and you can take one of their subs; win a third time, and you get the opportunity to snatch one of their starting eleven. But the rewards don’t just improve the quality of your team; you also get the opportunity to build new roads across Europe, connecting you with previously-inaccessible countries. The aim is to end up with a map of Europe threaded by a network of roads and the ultimate European dream-team. But perhaps the most baffling of prizes awarded for a victory is a ‘mosaic’ piece. Every team has 3 mosaic pieces to earn, each one a photo of that nation’s team in action. To collect them all you have to play and win 159 games. It’s NO incentive to keep slogging away at Expedition mode, and I doubt many actually will.

Make sure you check out our Euro 2012 prediction post – EA Games used their game engines to predict the winner of Euro 2012…