Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by John DeGiorgio

Strike up the band, it’s college football time again!! Look at the calendar, the end of July is the start of the football season these days. The mid-summer heat has us thinking of Saturdays in late October with the release of NCAA from EA. A cover boy (Reggie Bush) who won the Heisman but lost the National Championship Game sums up the franchise’s hit and miss performance over the last 5 years. With their first shot at the college game on the 360, we’ll see which side of the fence NCAA ’07 lands.

Starting from the top, the first time you boot the game up in your 360 you are asked about your favorite school, and, from then on you are thrust into the atmosphere of the college game. I picked my Wolverines and was treated to shots of “The Big House” and the best fight song in college football is played. “Hail to the Victors” blasts through my speakers as I boot up my first game and lead into one of the best load screens in memory. The static picture of the stadium that comes to life as the load completes. This is a very nice touch and really takes you ‘into’ the game as if you are actually walking through the tunnel, as the, somewhat disappointingly, pixilated crowd comes to life and cheers as your team enters the stadium and makes you feel that you’re ready to take on the world…or Ohio State.

Once you hit the field things are a little hit and miss. On the plus side, the players look great on the 360, if not a little jacked for an 18 year old kicker. Also, there are a ton of great animations that caught me off guard to the point that I needed to jump into a replay to verify that what I saw actually happened.
On the minus side there are some quirks that bugged me a bit. The first of which is the weather. Awful rain that looks like static and paint like snow that doesn’t accumulate or appear on the sidelines. The other issue that drove me crazy was the camera during tipped passes. When a ball gets hit at the line, the camera still goes to the intended receiver for a split second. It looks just as it would if you watched on TV but during a game that you are playing, it is disorienting if you are trying to grab the ball for a pick or knock it down.

Overall you'll find things you’ll love and hate about the graphics in NCAA but the good outweighs the bad where it counts the most.

The sound of a sports game is never a selling point. This is the case with NCAA as well. The ESPN booth with Corso and Herbstreit keep things flowing with some good banter and not too much repetition. Speaking of ESPN, there isn’t all that much ESPN integration throughout the game. I expected more from the license, but I digress.

In the background you’ll find fight songs and cheering crowds complement your players on field barking.
I’m sure some people are going to have issues with their fight songs potentially missing or maybe even off key but the mainstays are present and accounted for.

Basic controls have aligned themselves with Madden this year so you’ll be sprinting with the right trigger, but the big news comes from the kicking game. Through the years we’ve seen all sorts of meters and bars to deal with. They’ve gone from Vinitieri accurate to Norwood frustrating and every Gramatica in between. This year, the fine folks at EA have put a little Tiger Woods in our football. You still aim your shots with the on-field arrow like always but now you’re swinging like it’s a nine iron on the right stick. An hourglass-in-moon indicator sits on the bottom of the screen. Pull back and the meter around the left side of the ‘moon’ fills to indicate power and the hourglass makes a compass action that indicates how straight your pullback and follow through are for accuracy. I probably just made it sound more complicated than it really is, but anyone who’s played a recent golf game on a console will feel right at home.

The college game is different. This is what I constantly hear when discussions of college versus pro sports comes up, and this is apparent when you take the field in NCAA ’07 this year. While there’s no lining up in the wishbone for the Steelers, anything goes in the land of the BCS.

As you may have guessed from the early part of this review, I’m a Michigan fan, so, in my first game the invite went right out to THE Ohio State University. Oh, yeah, I’m not wasting any time with any D3 schools to warm up. Lining up my favorite teams to beat, Notre Dame, Penn State and Boston College were all on the schedule to kick off my schedule with NCAA.

NCAA football has mirrored basketball: It’s a game of runs. Offensive explosions towards the ends of game are common, a bit too common for me. While others may think a game that’s scoreless going into the 4th quarter and ends up 35-38 (it happened) is all part of the college game, I see it as some questionable AI. I know how I got my points in the 4th. I switched up the gameplan and focused on getting the ball downfield through the air. The strategy worked. No problem there. What did concern me was that Penn State somehow subbed Jim Brown to wear their RBs uniform. They ran the same plays as before, but NOW they score points? NOW they break tackles? Now they beat triple coverage? Beating it to the tune of 35 points in a quarter? I’m not saying there is some kind of catchup logic, but I will say that things sometimes defy the way the game has been played up until that point. Maybe the momentum was building for the other team on me?

This brings me to the next feature in NCAA that’s somewhat questionable: Momentum. What momentum is EA measuring in this game? Is it something going on in the stands, the parking lot, in the booth with Corso? Penn State sure was builing momentum in that game I mentioned, but why? I was scoring points as soon as I got the ball back. At greater clip even. Where was my momentum? Another strange case of momentum shift was when I knocked Ohio State’s QB out of the game and THEIR momentum increased!?! Did they hate their own qb? Realistically you could say that the team was stepping it up for the backup in the game, but I doubt that’s included in the game logic. All these momentum shifts would be a big deal if you could even tell what the effect was on the game. When I actually maxed the momentum meter I had no idea what the difference was. I’m not sure how this is handled in the other versions of NCAA, but in here it’s somewhat of a puzzle.

The wide open gameplay that I mentioned before favors the pass from what I saw. Not that the running game couldn’t get the job done but when it comes down to it, you’ll need to throw to win. Your not going to grind out many victories from what I’ve seen here. 3rd and 13 didn’t make me sweat like I’d have thought. I had pretty good luck in long distance situations in most games to the point that the running game was just being used to kill time. This is the same running game that still has us high stepping in place right into the backs of our blockers. Sega fixed this issue years ago by having the RB put his hand on the back of a lineman and ‘feel’ his way to a hole.

The game between the lines of NCAA has shown us some improvements in look but the feel seems to be the same as in years past.

As always, just being a sports game means you’ll find something different every time you get into the action, but there’s a bunch of things missing from the entire package on the 360. In the time honored tradition of EA cutting back on the first release of every game on every new system you won’t find things like Campus Legend and Race for the Heisman in this year’s offering. I’m going to assume we’ll see something next year but for now you’ll have to make due with a rather toned down Dynasty Mode and the online play for your longevity plusses. You get NCAA football on your 360 this year. That’s the good news. The bad is that the NCAA football you do get, has holes in every department. Everything is good, but could be better. The omission of features that are present in last gen systems is inexcusable. You have more of everything available to you, so why don’t you use it for more than extra shiny helmets?  NCAA is a good game but it could be a great game and that’s a bit of a shame. This is the constant struggle with sports gaming. Every year you think you’d be one step closer to the “Ultimate” game, but for all the improvements it still leaves you wanting more.

Gaming Trend Score

82

1. Graphics: 83
2. Audio: 80
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 85
5. Value/Replay: 70
6. OVERALL:82