Nascar, for instance. NASCAR 08 (PS3, PS2, XBOX 360) is a motorsport game, but only in the sense that there are motor cars involved. Goodness knows Formula One can lack a bit as a spectacle, but what compels people to attend motor races where the cars just pelt around and around an oval track?
It's like watching a hamster racing around in its wheel, but with a far larger carbon footprint. NASCAR 08 , like all EA Sports games, is unmistakably official - you need only look at the endless list of suppliers, sponsors and 'partners' whose company logos are so loving rendered on every available inch of cars and drivers' overalls. And in fairness, the gaming experience is not unlike NASCAR inasmuch as it involves steering in the same direction for hours on end.
The pantomime villainy of ice hockey is updated for next year, too. NHL 08 (PS3, PS2, XBOX 360, PC) is, like last year's version, a mildly enjoyable variation on indoor five-aside football. Fast, aggressive and free-scoring, NHL 08 is spoiled only by a complete lack of differential in any of the clever tactical plays you try to employ.
Every single game quickly devolves into frantic charging up and down the ice, your players bunched around the puck like a playground full of six-year-olds slavishly following a football. And there's far too much emphasis paid to the habitual brawls that break out at the slightest provocation. Still, at least ice hockey includes a degree of clarity.
American football, which continues to baffle the European psyche, mistrusts self-expression and seeks to counter it with strictly regimented modes of play. In that respect, Madden NFL 08 (PS3, PS2, XBOX 360, Wii, PC) is an authentic representation of the game itself: the difference between calling one play or another is infinitesimal, the action is desperately stop-start and there's an awful lot of effort expended to very little end. Of all the American sports, it's easy to see which one was devised by a Canadian.
NBA 08 (PS3, PS2, XBOX 360, Wii, PC) is the latest update of one of EA's most satisfying titles, and basketball is a game of rare simplicity. The updates over last year may only amount to some new player likenesses (pituitary cases all) and some tweaking of the game engine, but NBA 08 plays beautifully all the same. Attack and defence are two entirely different skills, there's some showboating to be perfected and it's possible to get a team playing as a team even when in control of just one individual at a time.
There are two biggies where the European market is concerned, though. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 (PS3, PS2, XBOX 360, Wii, PC) is an excellent golf simulator, thoroughly absorbing in the same way as the game itself, but it suffers from the lack of year-on-year variation in the sport. Golf is notoriously slow to embrace changes of any kind, and while EA is entitled to fiddle with the control layout, onscreen guides and meters, and course selection as much as it likes, this is really just last year's game with a new hairdo.
But it's FIFA 08 (PS3, PS2, XBOX 360, Wii, PC) that's the most strategically important of the new slew of EA titles. The football sim is the staple of console gamers the world over, and ever since the upstart ISS transmogrified into Pro-Evolution Soccer , each successive year's FIFA remix has been fighting a losing battle. FIFA 07 was EA's best-ever effort, and the realisation that it was as far from PES as ever has obviously hit EA hard.
FIFA 08 has gone all-out for the 'realism' that PES achieves, but has succeeded only in turning too many matches into dour midfield stalemates. There's no certainty of touch to FIFA 08 , the ball bounces like it needs more air in it and the team-mates under the computer's control seem to have only the faintest grasp of what's required of footballers. So EA has rung in the New Year, and inadvertently made us nostalgic for the present day.
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