NCAA Football 11

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I would have to say that this is probably the most enjoyable football game to come out since the earlier NCAA Football's (i.e. 2005, 2006, 2007). There are many good changes that seem under the surface and are not extremely noticeable at first, but the quality of the game has definitely gone up for the next-gen consoles, although it's a disappointment that the next-gen versions have not caught up to the last-gen versions in terms of gameplay. This seems like it may be changing with the current iteration of NCAA Football.

Now, I'm not saying that this game surpasses the best of the NCAA Football franchise; it's just one of the best of recent times. The running style seems to be changed, which is great; the previous running style seemed extremely fake and unreal, and this one takes a step in the right direction. Jukes still don't factor in player momentum as much, but player acceleration does take a while, meaning that if a player goes from standing still to running or running one way to running the other they are forced to slow down, cut, and accelerate. This does wonders for the game. There are still some gameplay quirks, glitches, and whatnot, but that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes an option pitch will be caught by the defense when it would've been fought over or actually fumbled by the RB, and fumbles do happen more than occasionally, but the game is an obvious step up from last year's model and the year's before.

Road to Glory was not touched at all. That is a major disappointment to me :(. That was, and still is, my favorite game modes, and the fact that they payed no attention to it is sad. But the dynasty mode, especially recruiting, was taken off the hook to another level. Recruiting can be done on a PC, iPhone, iPad, probably even a Zune HD (HEY! I HAVE ONE OKAY?! AND THEY ARE COOL!), which immerses you even more and makes you feel like a coach. This may be a little over the top for some players, and that's fine; just do what you normally do. The online portion of NCAA Football '11 is really neat-o, and in my opinion it may be my most played game over the summer.

Dynasty is as fun as ever. Make your team the super team, take a terrible team all the way, continue an already established dynasty like Florida, Alabama, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, or Oregon and improve their dominance, whatever you want, it's still there. At one point my hopes went really high. I saw that there was an option for switching teams for conferences and I went all like "No way! They figured some conference shake-up would happen and made sure that you could put teams in other places! Cool!". But no, it was just a team switcher, you couldn't actually build your own super conference. That gave me a super sad face.

The interface is cool. The main menu looks a lot like the Xbox 360's UI, which was intriguing, but I got over it (I have both, so I know what the 360 interface is). Sometimes it takes a while to load, but that is forgivable. When it is auto-saving you can't do anything at all on the game. The scoreboard (onscreen) is a replica of the ESPN scoreboard and is very nice to look at, even though you probably won't be looking at the scoreboard that much, unless you're really bored. It's still a great feature and makes the presentation of the game more believable and a lot more "gameday-like", if you know what I mean (chips, beer [pop if you're under 21 like me], dip, hot dogs, the whole nine yards).

The graphics are awesome. If you're into just graphics, you won't be disappointed by these. EA games are meant to be played on the PS3, so if you have both consoles, get it on the the PS3. The lighting effects are great and the uniforms look vibrant and more beautiful than ever. The field looks nice, but when it does replays and shows you a long view of the field it is obvious that the grass doesn't pop up. I know that's not a deal breaker, but it would be cool and interesting to have, would it not? Helmets look great.

The commentary is still recycled, and recycled heavily. If you've played these games before -which I assume you have -you'll find yourself mouthing or speaking the sentences with Brad Nessler and Kirk Herbstreit (I miss Corso =[ ), or maybe just turning the commentary off altogether. It gets pretty annoying after a while.

I love it. If you love college football and were angry at the previous versions, I would highly recommend picking this copy up, because EA is starting to get the college football experience right.

EDIT: After a couple more days playing the game, there seems to be some more oddities within the actual gameplay, which is expected, but is also extremely annoying. In addition to the defense catching your pitch, sometimes players suddenly stop when they are running towards the ball or going to catch a ball, which is kind of frustrating as you'll be expecting them to continue forward like any self-respecting football player would do and then they suddenly stop. Running backs, at certain points, will cut back into the middle of the field -towards the rest of the defense -when there is a massive amount of open yardage on the edge and they most likely would've had a touchdown. These are just a couple of gameplay quirks that i noticed that really don't change how much I enjoyed the game, but for some people they will be deal-breakers.

ANOTHER EDIT: As I said in my previous edit, sometimes the players running will suddenly stop while going towards a ball. This killed me in one of my games. Michigan vs. MSU, I go down 17 to nothing, score 28 straight with the backup QB, MSU scores 17 more to make it 34 to 28, I score another TD to make it 35 to 34. 1 minute and 30 seconds left in the game. MSU is at their 19 yard line. They throw deep on the first play. I say to myself, "Let's let my computer controlled player run towards the ball so I don't accidentally make him run the wrong way". Seems sensible, right? WRONG. He runs...and stops. The receiver catches the ball at my 30 yard line. I stop them for a 3 and out, but they hit the field goal and go up 37 to 35. I can't do anything about it, I go 4 and out and they kneel the ball. GAH!!! (Played on All-American). Really?!

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First and foremost, let me state that I am a sport fanatic and that's not limited to college football. Like 99.9% of sport games available, the yearly copy is simply a rehash of the previous year's game plus a few new gimmicks (EA is obviously the King of this). I am not much a of Madden player, however, as I prefer its college counterpart because I find an enormous amount of fun in recruiting. And it's in this field that EA seems to make players' lives difficult in the sense that they make it harder than it has to be. This year, I can say with a clear conscience, recruiting has taken an ENORMOUS step in the right direction.

Let me continue my review in the form of bullets, rather than paragraph form.

PROS:

-Recruiting now takes a mere 10 minutes per inquiry/pressing of a certain pitch, offering a scholarship, scheduling a visit, making a promise (which can now be done IN season), negatively recruit against another school, etc. In years past, pressing a certain pitch could take way too many minutes from your 10 hours of recruiting time.

-Recruiting takes on a game-show-like twist. Recruits will now ask you about certain pitches rather than the other way around. Once they pick a topic, you can either "make a pitch", "ask them how they feel about it", "compare to another school" (aka negative recruit), "Change the topic", "make a promise", "schedule a visit", or "offer a scholarship". I don't know if this is considered a PRO, but it's a breath of fresh air for this central cog in the game.

-You can change the "recruiting difficulty" if you don't want to keep saving and redoing certain weeks of your dynasty if a certain prospect keeps going to another school. This is nice because sometimes I don't want to lose all the 4/5 stars to the SEC...

-The "Locomotion" game play engine is a large step towards achieving game play comparable to the KING of football games, Madden. In years past, the movements of the players were "jerky" (can't think of a better word), while this year this game offers a much more fluid football. You'll know the difference once you pop the disk in your system. Personally, I'm pretty satisfied with the actual game play. It runs smooth and tackles/catches all look exceedingly accurate. The graphics are really beginning to utilize the full capacity of the PS3 system and I can only hope that EA builds on that rather than maintain it for the next few years.

-Unique entrances for each team. I think this is a gimmick on EA's part just to say they added something new to the game but for people who go to BCS conference schools (I'm an Oklahoma Sooner, myself), you will definitely enjoy this added feature. You've got every thing from the Wolverines running under the "M CLUB Supports You" Banner, to the Clemson Tigers touching Howard's Rock before running into the stadium, etc.

-Unique offenses. College football is innately different from its pro-counterpart because of the unique offenses the majority of schools play. This year, such offenses are highlighted. From the triple-option at Georgia Tech, to the no-huddle at OU, to the Pistol-set at UCLA, etc. It certainly gets boring running the Pro-set for every team, doesn't it?

-The entire interface of the game has been retooled and again, this is a huge breath of fresh air for loyal fans of the game who have to see the same things year in and year out.

Cons:

-The "Pay-to-play" recruiting features are STILL here and it's awfully annoying because they include the options among the other FREE features and I suppose sometimes I forget it's not free and end up clicking on it (sorry for the run on sentence). They call them "time-savers" but paying on top of the $60 + tax you pay already? At least with the Map add-ons for COD MW2, you play them every other game so you get the most use out of it. The features EA makes you pay for are just side features that would surely enhance my satisfaction were they included.

-At the end of the day, if your preference is for the most realistic football experience, you cannot look towards an NCAA game for it. I know I said this had great game play, but it's obvious that EA saves the best for Madden, as millions of more people would prefer the NFL. Which makes one wonder how good Madden 11 will be...

-Same old commentary...... wish they would completely revamp that.

-Each team still only has one unique (if at all) TD celebration. It would be nice for each team to have multiple interpretations of their respective celebrations (i.e. V for Victory/USC, the Gator Chomp, etc.)

-I've noticed that there is A LOT of lag when scrolling through options in dynasty mode. I don't know if everyone else out there is going through the same problems.. my PS3 is not even a year old yet and it's the slim line one so I doubt its my system.

-More to come?? After a few days of playing, I haven't seen anything else yet. And I will update as I see them!

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I haven't owned an NCAA Football game since probably back on the PS2, but I had read really good reviews about this game. I've played a couple weeks now and thought I'd share some of the things that I liked:

First off, the graphics are really nice. Very sleek and clean. The gameplay is fast and easy to pick up, especially if you're used to playing Madden. The time it takes to play a full game on the default settings seems pretty decent for me (ie, it won't take you an hour to knock out a game).

Next I love the customization ability on this game. You can create your own College by using EA's Teambuilder website. Pick out your stadium, pick out your uniforms (at least 50 choices there), pick out your colors, upload your own log. I love that level of customization and hope that will be a feature that EA uses in all of their sports games going forward (especially FIFA).

I like that you can also customize your players easily online in the Teambuilder site instead of using the controller. Juice up their stats. Change them all to Freshman if you like. Change their names manually or have them randomly created. If it's a common name, the announcers will pronounce it during the game commentary too.

Then you can swap your made-up school with another existing school, and start a Dynasty that goes year after year (not sure how far out it runs). You can customize your non-conference games to adjust your strength of schedule. So I must say I really love that piece of the game.

The recruiting in the Dynasty mode is a bit manually intensive though. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I personally kind of like it, but if you were only interested in the actual gameplaying of the dynasty, then you may be upset at how much time it requires.

Having played a couple seasons tweaking my strategy, it does require some devotion. You can't really auto-simulate it, or at least, not if you want a good freshman recruiting class. I turned off all of the Helper Options, which helps give you more control. I also limited myself to about 20 prospects, as this helps keep the board from being uncluttered. I preferably only add guys who have you in their Top 3 initially. I also found that if you wait around until mid-season, you can start recruiting some Junior-College (JUCO) transfers since they seem to wait until longer in the year to sign.

The recruiting piece almost feels like a Role-Playing-Game (RPG). You check back each week to see if you've moved up on their list, or you get upset if they committed to someone else after you wasted hours of recruiting time on them. If you want to do a good job at it, it'll probably take as long each week in recruiting as it does to play the week's given game. I haven't tried online dynasty against others yet.

Overall though, I think NCAA Football 11 is a really good football game. I agree with a previous reviewer who said that now NCAA Football doesn't feel like Madden's poor, red-headed step-child.

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First let me say that after taking a long hiatus from EA football games, I recently poked my head in to see what's happening behind its developmental door and frankly, I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. It's surprising since I've bashed the heck out of the EA football games in the past. So here's me giving credit where credit is due. EA is clearly working hard on making this game great.

Now with that being said, the gameplay has its wonderful moments as well as truly awful moments. The overall pacing of the game feels spot on and adds to the drama. However, the crowd animations in the background during Touch Downs look extremely cheap and sadly begins the first step in taking you out of being "in the game".

I enjoy a lot of the animations when players are hit or interacting with each other, it's not far from perfect but it's serviceable and adds to the overall excitement. However there's tons of clipping going on especially during some of the end zones celebrations where the player clips straight through walls and into the crowd. Yet another step in taking you out of the drama.

The gameplay during my brief time in the single player felt like the best video game football to date and shows me that EA is heading in the right direction, but once taking the gameplay online the game begins to fall apart. I would run into glitches that literally cost me games. One game it actually worked in my favor where some guy was stuck in the hand off animation and dropped back about 15 yards all the way to the back of the endzone ultimately giving me a safety. That's once again another step in taking you out of all the wonderful drama. I guess in this case the game is literally backtracking in developments...

Now here's my biggest critique. The level of complexity in controlling your team has become mind numbing. The game clearly has been catering to the long time loyalists of the game and because of it those gamers are reaping the rewards. Here's the thing, I've played the 2K games as well as previous Madden games (rentals mind you) and the controls were so much more fluid and responsive in NFL2K that I was able to reassign every DB to the opposite side of the field and still have time to manually go man coverage in a zone coverage package before the ball was hiked. It was that fast.

I think the game is headed in the right direction, but I'm sure the same was said for the previous six games since any hint of any competition.

C+

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I purchased this game and all was well for the first month.Out of the box it was probably the best NCAA game I can Remember since 2004-2005. Very consistant (No wicked rubberband EA is known for), fairly realistic and competitive on All American Difficulty. Well, EA Decided that this year they are going to do LTPs (Live tuning package)to "fix" parts of the game that they notice are out of tune.Well as this idea sounds good on paper As of Aug 11 patch 2 was released and well what this does is seemingly takes a great game and makes it a toss up between this and NCAA 2007 current gen (Consensus worst edition ever). Now pretty much the game cheats in order to make it a close game, if you are losing you will avg 20 yards per carry and catch every pass, If you are losing you will get the run stuffed and you will miss wide open passes. This is not rubberband ai this is more like a see-saw AI. It is not that it is harder it is much less enjoyable when I know that 1st down I need to run, then on second I need to call run and audible to play action to get 15 yards. The AI is still easy to exploit but the game is now soo broken you are limited to what plays you can pick. I would say wait to see if they fix the before you purchase it , because this game is not fun as it stands. I will update this and give a better score if they fix this. If this is how they leave off I will be pretty much done with EA.