UEFA Champions League 2006-2007

The anthem does a lot of heavy lifting here. EA bought the competition licence and understood exactly what it was paying for: the banner unfurled in the centre circle, the badge on the sleeve, the sense that a single two-legged tie carries more weight than three months of league football. Everything in this spin-off is arranged around that feeling, which is both its argument and its limit.

Mechanically it is FIFA 07 with the serial numbers filed in a different direction. The same slightly heavy, deliberate passing, the same trouble turning a midfielder quickly under pressure, the same tendency for defenders to hold a line a beat too long. If you played EA's football games across the sixth generation you will recognise the weight of the ball immediately. What changes is the framing: you are working through group stages and knockout rounds rather than a forty-game grind, so every match is supposed to matter and a bad night actually ends something.

That structure cuts both ways. Knockout football is tense, but it is also short, and a tournament game lives or dies on whether it gives you a reason to start another one. The away-goals arithmetic and the penalty shootouts supply some of that, and the club-by-club presentation supplies the rest, though the roster of licensed European sides is narrower than a full FIFA release by design. Play it for a few hours and the repetition sets in faster than it would in a season mode.

It arrived in a strange spot in the calendar, a mid-cycle release aimed at people who had already bought the main game and wanted the competition EA could not otherwise put front and centre. Taken on those terms it is honest work rather than a grand statement. The presentation is the best part, and the football underneath is a known quantity that has aged exactly as FIFA 07 has aged, which is to say stiffly but not unpleasantly.

What survives is atmosphere. The pitch under lights, the crowd noise building before a second leg, the small ceremony of the trophy at the end. The football has been bettered many times since, but few games have been as single-mindedly devoted to one tournament's particular hush before kick-off.