NCAA College Football 2K2 Preview
We take a close look at the upcoming Dreamcast college football game.
At times, it is hard to believe that Visual Concepts is only in its third year as the principal developer of the Sega Sports 2K series of games. The development studio burst onto the gaming scene with NFL 2K, almost instantly carving out its place among the most eminent North American development studios. Now with its NFL 2K and NBA 2K brands firmly established, the company is branching out into other areas of the sports genre. The studio is overseeing the development of World Series Baseball 2K2 and is currently working on its first college football game, titled NCAA College Football 2K2. GameSpot recently had the opportunity to take a trip out to Visual Concepts' headquarters to check out the latest build of the college football game. Although the game leaves room for improvement, we came away quite impressed with its fluid gameplay, crisp visuals, and college-specific touches, such as fully orchestrated bands for individual teams, brand-new in-game artwork and textures, new playbooks and strategy, and highly realistic team stadiums.
NCAA College Football 2K2 is essentially based on the NFL engine, but a brand-new team has been organized within Visual Concepts to work solely on the college game. The team, which includes developers who have worked on previous games in Electronic Arts' Madden series, is determined to create a football game that faithfully captures the college atmosphere both on and off the field. "NCAA College Football 2K2 is based on the NFL engine, but we basically took it apart and built a lot of things from the ground up," explains Vu Thai Dang, the game's producer at Visual Concepts. "The plays, the ambiance, and several other elements are geared specifically for the college game."
Visual Concepts' college football game features all 117 division 1-A teams, including authentic jerseys, playbooks, and stadiums. The amount of college football-specific detail in both the gameplay and visuals is staggering. For instance, more than 700 new plays have been designed specifically for NCAA 2K2--plays that are inherent to college football and can't be found in NFL 2K2. To make it easier for the player to navigate all of these new plays in the game--particularly considering the short 24-second play clock in the college game--Visual Concepts devised a color-coded playbook interface. In the game, blue icons indicate passing plays, red icons running plays, and yellow icons option plays. According to Visual Concepts, this will let the player adapt quickly to the faster play clock and will generally speed up the pace of the game.
The roster interface is also much more intuitive, compared with the one in last year's NFL Dreamcast game. On the roster chart, NCAA 2K2 shows the actual position for each individual player. For example, instead of tagging the DB abbreviation to all the players in the secondary, they can be sorted by specific positions, such as left cornerback, right cornerback, safety, and free safety. Naturally, by putting specific players in their natural positions, you will be able to make more knowledgeable position-specific substitutions.
NCAA College Football 2K2 Quick Links
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- Sega
- Visual Concepts
- Football Sim
- Release: Aug 29, 2001
- ESRB: Everyone
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