Reviews Written by Josh

Taking Steps backwards

Pros: It's college football, more plays and schemes, updated rosters, kick blocking

Cons: Gameplay is digressing

I've always been a HUGE fan of the series. I'm the guy who buys this game when it comes out and plays little else until I get new games at Christmas, and when those wear out their novelty I go back to NCAA Football.

This year there are a few new features. First is the momentum meter. I believe momentum is a huge part of the game and this adds some of that realism, but it is still flawed. Often if one team gets the ball on the opening kickoff and drives down to score they're suddenly sitting at +4 or +5 momentum. Which means all of their players get that number added to their ratings. Some people's reviews says this always leads to blow-outs, which it often does. But on the flip side it can help bad teams hang with better ones.

This year they have the Campus Legend mode. It's basically what they had last year but a little more involved....which isn't a good thing. During the week you have practice, but you can also focus on either studying, partying, or even more practice. Partying is meant to help your popularity, but it's pretty much worthless. If you're a stud and win awards you'll be popular anyway. So the obvious choice is to do more practice and make your player better. That's what I thought. So I practiced and studied a little bit. Despite my studying 1 or 2 nights a week I soon found myself ineligible. I did nothing but study and still had to miss multiple games. You have to take a mid-term and end of semester test. So when you study it gives you an answer, when you get a tutor you take a sample test. So for most of the season I did nothing but study and hire a tutor which consisted of me answering the same simple questions over and over and over and over. I selected a history major which is supposedly one of the tougher ones. If you passed 6th grade and miss any of the questions you're an idiot. Guess they couldn't alienate all of the little kids.

The gameplay is mostly the same, but they've added more plays and schemes. This helps when you play a team who has a quirky offense or defense. I noticed that it is suddenly super easy to pass. If they're in man you can hit the out every time. If they're in zone you can hit anything crossing over the middle. The linebacker just sits there and creates a huge crease in front of him and between he and the safeties. They also have a new perspective for blocking kicks and on returns. It helps when trying to block PATs and FGs (blocked 2 in 2 seasons compared to 0 in hundreds of seasons for the past few years), but returning kicks it is a nuisance. In real life you can turn your head when running, in the game you can't see guys to your right or left unless they're 15 yards away.

What really turned me off is the AI on defense. It's never been super realistic, but it's always gotten the job done. In this version playing on the 2nd hardest level (all-american I think) is my point of reference. But the left cornerback on the screen, RCB for the defense (and I tried several teams and players) never did his job. In a Cover 3 he is supposed to have the deep 3rd, as in he is supposed to guard the deepest man in that 3rd of the zone. Anytime there is a shorter route he covers that guy instead. So 3-4 times a game the quarterback would hit their receiver deep and all I had was a safety 20 yards away. If you have a decent team you're scoring a ton anyway, but if not it sucks b/c you can book it that the computer will score at least 3 touchdowns doing that in any game if you play a zone. Man-to-man defense in this game won't give up that huge play, but be prepared for them to complete 8-10 passes in a row on you probably twice in a game. And of course the computer is always passing, b/c like games of old it is way too easy to shut down the run game. Even though they pass 80% of the time and have no run game, your defensive guys with 90-something awareness stil ...