UEFA Champions League 2006-2007

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Token update of FIFA 07 with robotic AI, yet we're still excited

Words: Nathan Ditum

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To make matters worse UEFA ’s AI is a little in shambles. Even on the higher difficulty levels it’s always very obvious you’re playing a machine, from the way the attitude of opposing teams will shift disjointedly (at 3-0 down their game is raised unrecognizably and they wheel out the step-overs and sidesteps) to some bizarre and inhuman stop-start on-field movement. To illustrate the latter, at one point we stood completely still at the edge of the opposition box with the ball at our feet. Three defenders jerkily crept towards us, circling our player like he was protected by an invisible force field and refusing to put a challenge in. “He’s not really doing much with it here,” Clive Tyldesley chirped on the commentary - more alarmingly, though, neither were the opposition.

As for different game modes, straightforward exhibition matches and the managerial Season offering return, but the real attraction is obviously the showcase of the Champions League itself. In practice this plays out pretty much like any other cup competition in any other version of FIFA, but it does bring along with it the Ultimate Challenge mode. This is a celebration of the greatest moments in Champions League history, in which you can replay the competition’s most memorable comebacks, the best (and hardest to complete) of which is Manchester United’s last-gasp final victory over Bayern Munich in 1999. More focused than a standard 90-minute game and adding a welcome bit of drama to a non-narrative game, the Challenge mode is the highlight of UEFA, although even this is slightly tarnished by the fact that EA hasn’t included the correct squads for the teams of the time - you have to play the challenges with the current-day line-ups, which obviously differ in strength from their predecessors.