As a long time fan of Electronic Art’s Madden football games, I have yet to be impressed with their NCAA franchise. From the get go I was thoroughly impressed with this years offering of NCAA Football. The graphics were the first thing on my list of many that I enjoyed.
The graphics in NCAA 10 are simply put, amazing. The character models are great, a little generic, but detailed none the less. I liked the fact that the backgrounds around the stadiums show actual landmarks away from the school grounds. Where the graphics took a hit is on the cheerleaders. Every damn time the cheerleaders show up between plays, the 360 stuttered. Blah, that’s not kewl. Snow-dusted fields leave footprints, thermal undershirts are worn and you can see every player’s breath. I loved playing in a bowl game and seeing half the stadium wearing my team colors! It’s the little touches of realism that are great here.
The audio is another great touch. Hearing your schools fight song during setup is nice; however, if my favorite team is the University of Washington Huskies, why do I want to hear the Florida State fight song? The play-by-play commentary from Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso is good, but not great. After awhile their selection of commentary is tired bullshit. It’s unfortunate that more couldn’t have been done with this aspect. I really got annoyed when at least once per game, I would be back 4th and 15, make the first down and hear “Tackled for a loss!” or “Ohhh, they lost yardage on that one!” WTF? At least they could get it right when they give me their annoying commentary.
Game play in NCAA is about what you would expect. If you’ve never played NCAA or one of the Madden Football games, you suck. For those of you that have, you know that NCAA is a build up to the greatest sports franchise game ever made. NCAA builds on its predecessor and on Madden 09. The controls are relatively easy to learn (as I mentioned, I didn’t own a 360 until this game came out).
Dynasty mode is what I went right into and played my heart out in. However, new features were a welcome addition. Teambuilder is a new feature that allows you to build your custom team. Just login to TeamBuilder.EASports.com and create your high school football team from the grass up. Uniform, logo and the field are all easy to customize.
The Road to Glory and Season Showdown are also great features, but not near as well liked by me when compared to TeamBuilder. Road to Glory’s video content and having Erin Andrews and Herbstreit point out how bad you suck or how good you are, doesn’t quite make up for what it doesn’t offer when compared to the rest of the game. The fact that there’s not much difference between Road to Glory and Campus Legend from NCAA 09 only hurts the value of this feature. I especially dislike the fact that you can be kicking ass in your ground game, and you’ll get benched to let the second string play, Bullshit!
Season Showdown lets you support your favorite team by playing games offline and on and in trivia contests. Sportsmanship is key for this guys, so when you’re up 75 – 0 on the Wolf Pack, take a knee.
So should you go out and buy this game? Sure, it’s worth it. It’s a great game and a lot of fun. However, aside from the gripes I have already mentioned, the one that pissed me off and will hurt the overall score of this review is that EA decided to charge for features that should be free instead of another profiteering gluttonous attempt to suck out that last dime from us gamers.
Originally published August 9, 2009 on GamersRevenge.com
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