By David Rogers
New features, better controls and a special cover for Alabama fans
Earlier this week EA Spots released their perennial NCAA Football and with every year they have made improvements making the game more similar to the traditional college experiences like the FSU Tomahawk chop or the Florida Gator Chomp. This year however, EA Sports wanted to make NCAA Football feel even more like the college experience with the tunnel exits and pre-game pow-wows. Each school experiences their own tunnel exit that give a player that feeling of a collegian game day experience.
The big feature in this year’s NCAA Football title is for the first time in franchise history NCAA Football is using the same graphics engine as Madden Football.
Hit the title/read more to continue reading the review on NCAA Football 11...
New Offensive and Defensive Controls
This year’s NCAA Football features improved offensive line blocking, and blocking in general. Each offensive linemen, and players designed to stay in and block, will now each take an assignment. Running the ball has greatly improved because of this feature, now counter plays, and draws seem like more viable options. You will even see offensive linemen double teaming defense tackles, creating huge lanes for the running back to run through, until a middle linebacker comes in and . . . oh wait the fullback just came up for a crucial block! He’s at the 40, 45, 50, 40, 30, he could go, all, the . . . way! Yeah, it feels just like that, really, really well.
Another enhancement is the new locomotion system where you now have more control over the direction of the player like the spins and jukes. A perfect example of this is during the game while playing running back, I carry the ball past the line of scrimmage and an OLB is coming after me, so to juke him, I start to spin right towards him, as he goes for the tackle, I quickly swivel my analog stick in the other direction away from him, and the player in an instant will spin to the left and often times avoid the tackle. You can now use the left and right analog sticks to kind of get your players body in awkward positions, very Barry Sanders-esque, and gain extra yardage, getting skinny they say past the defenders.
The camera is also different but improved. When you’re the quarterback the camera stays high so you can read the field when passing. When you’re the running back carrying the ball the camera angle will dip down and improves ball carrier vision by allowing you to see the running lanes more clearly, and with the new blocking AI, the two go well together. The same for the WR's once they have caught the ball the camera angle will drop down allowing you to see your running lanes. When you’re playing defense and you intercept the ball the camera no longer snaps the other direction, but gradually shifts around. This creates for a really cool effect when you intercept a pass along the sidelines and you roll back around to the opposite sidelines and turn it up field for a pick-6 it’s a great effect.
The offensive playbooks have seen dramatic changes and EA Sports now totes there are 120 ways to win. Yeah technically there are 120 ways to win if you play with every school, but there are only 8 styles of offenses. All of the offensives are well done and you can absolutely see, and feel a difference in the way your offense will move the ball. I personally prefer to run the Pro style on any team I use.
Different Gameplay Modes
Other changes include the overhauled user interface which looks very clean and sharp. The offline Dynasty mode has been slightly improved with much better recruiting strategies and it really allows you to feel more involved. The On-Line Dynasty mode features a lot of new things like being able to control your recruiting on the web and also upload your highlights from ranked matches or online dynasty mode and give the real story about what happened. This could give you the opportunity to say things like “During the fourth quarter the opponent had the ball, and he called a run play, my controller died and he scored a 56 yard touchdown to take a 14 point lead, but I still won, ahahaha!”.
For all you Road to Glory players out there I am sorry to report that there have been absolutely zero changes to this game mode. I honestly believe it is because Erin Andrews has been extremely busy in and out of court because of the Peeping Tom incident, and now Erin Andrews is going to court filing lawsuit against the hotel involved, so she has been a very busy woman, not to mention her job with ESPN. So it is understandable that RTG did not see an overhaul, perhaps next year, you can only do so much in a development cycle with perennial titles such as NCAA Football.
Areas in Need of Improvement
No review is complete without some negative comments. I think a little more time should be spent on the fans inside the stadiums, I know it’s nit picky but I saw two fans sitting right next to each other holding the same exact sign that says “Sorry Dad I’m not enrolled here anymore!” C’mon man, in every stadium there was at least one person with that sign.
The commentary is still pretty bland and I would really like to see EA Sports improve this in future releases. Brad Nessler and Kirk just seem so dry and as if they weren't really in the booth together announcing the plays. They should have recorded lines together and possibly have them do what Madden has done with including Nessler and Kirk visually in pre-game and halftime reports.
Then there are things that should have been patched the night NCAA Football launched, for example when kicking an extra point the camera sometimes is 100 yards behind you in the other end zone. Another bug that should have been fixed is when the quarterback is handing the ball off and the QB misses the hand-off and continues running backwards until he reaches the end zone or gets sacked. These kind of things should have been fixed at launch with a simple DLC update but sadly was not.
Final Vote
I have to say this is the best college football sim they have ever put out. So kudos to EA Sports, for turning around the NCAA Football franchise, and making it a more enjoyable experience for all football fanatics.
The score is in . . . 8/10
Also as a bonus, for the fine people located in Alabama, there is a special cover for the game that is being released. This is quite possibly the best marketing campaign I have ever seen.
Trackback(0)
|
TrackBack URI for this entry
Bloguin is the revolutionary blog network specifically focused on helping bloggers get the most out of their websites. We're currently working on building a large network of online communities and hope to expand our blogging coverage to include a wide range of topics. 
The Bloguin Network allows advertisers to promote their products and services to our ever-growing number of visitors. We offer both site-specific ad placements as well as the ability to run a network-wide campaign. If you're interested in working with Bloguin to meet your advertising needs, please contact us.
The Bloguin Network is always looking to expand. We're specifically looking for blogs in the sports, entertainment, and video games field, but are open to adding any type of quality site. If you're a blogger and interested in joining our network, please fill out our application form.
The Bloguin Login gives you full access to everything our network has to offer. Your name and password will work for each and every one of our sites. Signing up is simple, and will allow you to post in all our forums, create member blogs, and access other cool features! What are you waiting for? Create an Account! 
I had a scenario where I had six dropped passes in a row by my receivers, and then lost my three RBs for the season in one game.
How do you have that happen?
I also am still pretty disgusted by fact that someone can seemingly run the same exact play OVER AND OVER and there is nothing your defense does to react to the same play or stop it.
At this point with these games it's virtually impossible for the game designers or creators to make a competent game because of all the development and testing that a complex game like this entails. They don't seem to get the games right anymore and spend most of the money on marketing the piss out of the game rather than putting in quality game development.
Quality games take time to develop and providing a literal cookie cutter game on a year to year basis with only real tweeks coming when Sony or Microsoft does a system change is completely inexcusable with the amount of money EA dedicates to marketing.