So the first taste of football has come out in college format, a huge improvement on its predecessor NCAA Football 2010. 2011 not only changed much of the game, but it has a revamped layout, updated graphics, new animations, new playbooks, and it has tweaked some of its gameplay modes to make them more enjoyable.
The three main modes have returned, Dynasty, Online Dynasty, and Road to Glory.
To clarify, Dynasty and Online Dynasty are the mode in which you take your favorite team (or a team you created) through a 10-20 year period of football. It entails much more then just playing the games. The Madden games give you complete control of drafting, signing, resigning, trading, setting the starters, and even naming team captains. NCAA Football keeps that by giving you control of recruiting players, calling them, offering scholarships to them, and even promising them a starting job. It also allows you to red shirt players and even suspend them for behavior issues. If SS #21 is giving you trouble and refusing to show up at team meetings, then grant him his wish by making sure he doesn't show up at all for the next five or six games! As you go through the season the crowd gets louder as you near the home stretch and play for a bowl game (which is never a problem considering there are somewhere near 25 bowls to begin with) and there are special chants and songs played at your home field. On top of that, the gameplay features animations that are team specific when it comes to endzone celebrations and it is always fun to watch your team hit their lockeroom sign before coming out of the tunnel. The graphics are also very good and the animations help them to look even better. Grass will actually stick to helmets and tackles look smoother and sound louder instead of the blocky and square tackles with generic hit sounds from past games.
Road to Glory mode is where you take one player through his college experience whether it be three or four years. You create him, choose his position, his number, what he looks like, and lead him through his High School state playoffs and on to college. You control him and only him. It was frustrating in previous games because the coach would call plays that seemed doomed to failure. If you ran a play that lost yards seven times in a row, the coach would seem to never care and you would run it seven more times each quarter. I often wondered if the opposing coach was calling the plays. That has all changed now, the coach mixes up the play call a little more and it only takes him two or three times to figure out that a play just won't work. It also gives you more freedom if your player is QB. In the previous games running a no huddle was impossible if you were a QB because the coach never allowed you to. Now you can, I ran a no huddle the entire fourth quarter to catch up when my team was 15 points down. My defense fell apart and lost the game but I was happy to be running a rushed offense, it seemed so fluid and free. Another problem with the QB mode was that upon throwing an interception the game would pause and a small window would pop up with three different defensive plays in it. In order to keep your QB composed, you had to select the right one. I found this quite aggravating because half the time the defense was out of position which made it impossible to know the play. Furthermore, you never knew who picked the pass off, so if the defense was using a man coverage play you had no idea if it was the safety or conrnerback who was covering your intended receiver. That has been removed and doing so removes headaches and rage quitting from gamers.
Playbooks have all been tailored after the school playbooks. Instead of every team looking the same on offense, each coach has updated AI and makes them run their team the way they would in real life. Oregon uses its massive spread offense and New Mexico runs its no huddle theme. Texas still emphasizes a hard running game and LSU still loves its play pass. The no huddle system when using dynasty mode helps, it opens the playbook and gives you about 10 seconds to choose a play as your team hurries to the line.
Other miscellaneous features such as crowd volume and commentary are improved. The crowd gets louder when your on defense and when you score it erupts into cheers. They quiet when its 3rd or 4th down and it almost feels like your there and your hopes and dreams are with them as the ball is snapped.
The game does have a few drawbacks. Moving players to other teams is not included so updating transfers is a hard thing to do. Names are excluded so generating names is a must unless you have the patience to update every roster (have fun, there are 199 Division I teams alone, that totals renaming 14,875 players). Road to Glory has eliminated some positions and being a Road to Glory linebacker is much harder, maybe too hard. Not to mention that the difficulty settings are a huge difference. Varsity level is far too easy but the next level up makes all your players stupid and makes the game extremely hard as computer controlled teams seem to know every play your calling and they call the perfect play to destroy you while your team acts like a Pop Warner squad.
Review
Grade- Harvest It!
Highs- Amazing graphics, improved gameplay modes, accurate playbooks, and updated AI.
Lows- Difficulty settings are very far apart, fixed some Road to Glory issues that were never broken to begin with.
ESRB Rating- E for Everyone, all ages
Kid Friendly? Yes, although with its complexity I would recommend that your kid should be 10, 8 at the youngest.
Overview- It's well worth the $59.99 price tag, a good solid game, if you like football games, then this is a game you would want!
-Rezler
Grading System
Harvest It!- Get this game! It is awesome! No time to waste!
Pick It- It's good, get it, it can wait though
It Could Grow- The game needs work, unless its cheap (19.99) avoid it
Needs Some Cultivating- Don't even get it, it is a waste
It's Dead- Why was it published? Who at the company signed off?
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