Here I question the wisdom of photorealistic football graphics and "realistic" gameplay
What is the Uncanny Valley? To give you an idea of what I mean, let me tell you a story about Sensible Soccer. There is a series of soccer games popular in Britain called Sensible Soccer. In one of the earlier games in the series, a collection of pixels meant to represent a famous black footballer appeared more like a white midget with a grotesquely large ginger colored afro. That is comedy. If this same gaffe were to happen today, it would be tragic.
Although EA does at least get the race correct for all the college football stars, and in some cases went to considerable effort to make the in-game models appear just like the real players, the result is just as outlandish as the old Sensible Soccer scenario. Each player has a detailed face and a few different expressions, but none of the faces look natural. A sacked quarterback looks almost exactly like a frowning clown. Cornerbacks follow the arc of a pass with the cold, lifeless eyes of a shark. No one quite moves their jaw. We are getting close enough to photorealistic graphics that the unrealistic flaws actually make this game look WORSE than the PS2/Xbox versions. The inconsistency of the frame rate doesn't help matters any. The game plays pretty much exactly like last year's Xbox game, although the button mapping has changed significantly (resulting in numerous unintended juke moves, in my experience). That is to say, if you like the quasi-sim arcade game that Madden has become, you'll enjoy playing this game. The passing game still doesn't feel right, and running still feels too easy to me, even when facing 8 defenders in the box. Screen passing seems more effective than last year. The kick meter has adopted the Tiger Woods analog golf swing approach, and works fine. Jumping offsides is easier than ever, thanks to a "jump snap" button. The audible system has been overhauled, for the better. The "stadium pulse" has been replaced with a "momentum" bar, an awkward and heavy-handed way to introduce "old man mo" into the game. Spending the ten extra dollars for the Xbox 360 version gives you an opportunity to complain to your friends about all the missing features, including create-a-school, career mode, et al. A friend of mine is very talented at NCAA 06 without knowing the first thing about football. He couldn't tell you what an inside handoff is. He couldn't tell you the difference between a 3-4 and a 4-3 defensive set. But he has played so many snaps over the years, selected so many plays, that he just "knows" which ones will work. - not by name or formation, but simply by the number of buttons he has to press to select them. He likes to make fictional teams with names like the America's Next Top Model Community College Poor Sports and beat up on the graduate schools that rejected him. He doesn't pretend that any of these NCAA football games re-create the actual game of college football with any accuracy, and he is happier because of it. When we played our first game of NCAA 07, he was furious the layout of the playbook had been changed. "You gotta know something about football to play this," he said. After a half of play, he had gotten his bearings and came roaring back. The final score was a close one. He won. "So let's make a school," he said. "Can't. Feature isn't in there." I said. "Can we return this and get the Xbox one?" This is just so depressing. We now have what are essentially supercomputers lying on our living room carpets, and EA Sports cannot think of anything better to do with all this power. The things I hate about all the Madden engine games from the PS2 onward feel like they've entered into the hallowed canon of great game design. I think that, with a few minor tweaks to the player models, EA could rename the game "Inertia Truck Football War" and no one would be the wiser. The (wonderful) Temco Bowl for the NES is closer to NCAA 07 than NCAA 07 is to accurately recreating the experience of watching (or playing in) a real college football game. But there isn't anything wrong with abstraction. At least there isn't anything inherently wrong with abstraction. I would rather have the abstraction of football to tide my thirst for violence than the cold reality of war. But don't pretend football and war are the same thing - and don't pretend NCAA 07 and a real college football game are the same thing.