NCAA Football 1st and 10 may be a recent release, but it's years behind the competition in every aspect of its presentation and gameplay. Its 22 players stand inches tall; each is at least three times smaller than the ball, which is enlarged for clarity. These collegiate athletes dart about the field like mosquitoes under a strobe light, but to call this phenomenon "animation" would be an insult to the progenitors of the art. The game's action is too jerky and irregular to afford you any control over its outcomes. NCAA 1st and 10 is enjoyable neither to play, to watch, nor to listen to, leaving you but one recourse--to avoid it.
NCAA lets you play out a 10-game season as one of sixteen Division I schools. Alternately, you can play a single exhibition game by selecting "quickstart." Choosing one team over another has a negligible impact on the outcome of the games, but at least you'll see all the official logos.
The coin toss happens automatically, and apparently with a trick quarter--you'll always be assigned to receive. Upon catching the ball, your man will run at approximately 70 miles per hour, dodging the equally fleet-footed special teams of your CPU opponent. All of this looks completely ridiculous.
The menus from which you select offensive and defensive plays appear onscreen, along with green arrows, representing the running paths of your receivers. You can't initiate the play on your own and will have to wait until the ball is hiked. From there, you'll have a split-second to pass or run before your ball carrier is tackled and the play ends. You won't have any idea how things developed until you see an alert window announcing the outcome. It's almost impossible to visually distinguish a 12-yard gain from a 12-yard loss.
On special teams, 1st and 10 really starts to show its seams. Field goals and punts are automatic; you have no control over their accuracy. Forget doing an onside punt; you wouldn't be able to maneuver your men into position fast enough, anyway. You're better off just passing the ball up the field, which works fine on two of the game's three difficulty settings.
NCAA's sound isn't anything remarkable. There are three sound effects: crowd noise, a whistle blow, and the grunts accompanying a pile-up. The sound can be easily toggled on and off through the setup menu, but no volume selector is present.
NCAA Football 1st and 10 is a poor game of football. Players picking up the game for the first time will assume they have no control over the proceedings, and blink at their LG VX7000s in a mixture of awe and disgust. You'll eventually grow accustomed to this game's unreasonable pace and poor control, but you won't be any happier for it.
