Still fun despite the stripped features and unbalanced gameplay.
The PS2 NCAA football games (particularly the 2003-05 games) were amazing football games that were full of college football atmosphere and very balanced and fun gameplay. The football was fast, fun, and exciting. The Dynasty mode was deep and involving, and being able to import a custom team into a Dynasty gave the game a huge degree of personalization in that I always had a powerful emotional atachement to my created team - much more so than any of the real college teams. Finding poor implementations (or no implementation at all) of so many of my favorite features of this year's version of the game on PS3 had me very dissapointed.
The game starts out great, introducing you to the indisputeable cool "My Shrine" feature, which acts as the main menu screen. The shrine displays all of your trophies and awards as well as displaying saved photos and replays of your actual games! That's right, you can now save highlight footage from any game and have it be permanently displayed on the main menu. The Shrine's menu music is also a very stirring anthem that helps get the blood pumping right at start up - great soundtrack! Awesome idea, EA - whoever thought up the Shrine deserves a raise! So this great initial presentation really raised my hopes for the game, but unfortunately, I quickly discovered that other elements of the presentation fell apart. First of all, the menus are extrememly slow and clunky, which is just sad considering how poweful these next-gen consoles are. Commentary from Corso, Herbstreet and Nesler has returned, but most of it sounds recycled from previous games. This is not a bad thing, though, as their commentary is outstanding. Some more new lines might have been nice though. However, the lack of college atmosphere in game really weakens the game experience for me. Sure, there are still the fight songs being played by the bands after scores and big plays, and some teams have mascots roaming the sidelines. But many of the teams do not have mascots. The cheerleaders seem to be completely gone and with them went the occasional canon-firing, guys running around waving big flags and other really prepy sort of things that are usually associated with college football.
Graphically, the game is a mixed afair. The onfield players and stadium models look great. I'm a UNLV student, and Sam Boyd Stadium looks just like Sam Boyd Stadium. Except, you know, in the game there are people in the stands, which looks just plain wrong. Which reminds me, it appears that stadiums will no longer empty out during the later half of a blowout game or when the home team is really sucky as it did in the PS2 games. That was a really subtle, but cool effect that I miss from earlier games. Anyway, the stadiums and player models look great. They also are much better scaled. Offensive linemen now actually look like the 300-pound monsters of men that they are. The players also show a lot of emotion on the field. You'll know when a player is not happy with the last play as they will hang their head or sometimes look as though they are throwing a mild temper tantrum, and the guys on the other side of the ball will be jumping around, smiling and showing off. It sucks that these sorts of things don't lead to Unsportsmanlike conduct penalties like they should in college football, but it really helps to immerse you in the screen when your players seem to emotionally respond to the onfield action. Although the players do look a little plastic-like and their uniforms are unbelieveably reflective and shiny. they often look more like new cars than football players, especially at night. The problem with the graphics though is the little things that are missing from the game. For example, there are NO referees, no chain gang, no ball-boys, no coaches on the sidelines, and (as mentioned earlier) no cheerleaders. WTF? I can understand not having cheerleaders, but referees are an important part of football. You'll really notice their dissapearance any time you run the no-huddle, as the ball will just magically appear at the line of scrimage. This looks really bad. These companies are justifying the higher price of 360 and PS3 games due to the "higher costs of producing life-like High-definition graphics." Well, there really isn't a point in making your game look realistic and high-def if you are going to leave out important details like referees! Especially since referees have been in football games since the PlayStation generation (and probably even earlier, but I don't remember specifically).
Gameplay is also a mixed issue. The game is much more momentum-based than before, and the new animations look really good. The gang-tackles are awesome! it is so nice to finally see two three or sometimes even four defensive players actaully tackling the ball carrier. And the wrap-up-and-clean-up hits look downright brutal! I just wish the game did a better job of stat-tracking, since it doesn't count assisted tackles, so only one defensive player on any play will get credit for a tackle, which will cause some frustration if you are trying to pile on stats for a campus legend defensive player and the CPU keeps giving the tackles to another guy. Contorls feel very fluid and responsive, although if you are still used to the old PS2-style controls, these new ones will take a bit of getting used to. The inclusion of a lot of really cool trick plays also adds a new dimension to the game, as these double reverses or WR option passes, flea flickers, and statue of liberty plays can be a lot of fun to bust out on an unsuspecting opponent. Gameplay is still very fast and fluid as well and is a lot of fun to play. The new juke animations work really well and and receiver do a better job of dragging their feet and players will now fall on fumbled balls like they would in real football (although they don't do it on onside kicks). However, playing defense is often very difficult especially since the computer doesn't give you any time to make adjustmenst with audibles, coverage adjustments or line shifts before they snap the ball. On passing plays, the ball seems to travel too fast and doesn't have any arc which leads to a lot of uneccesarily tipped passes by linebackers and a lot of interceptions.
Which brings up the game's second biggest flaw: Too many turnovers. Interceptions will happen more often than passing touchdowns and running backs and receivers are far too likely to fumble the ball, even when you are pressing the "cover-up ball" button. I usually expect to see no less than 5 or 6 turnovers in a single game. It would be nice if they had given some kind of slider to adjust the frequency of fumbles, but even turning the interception slider for both human and CPU defenders to zero doesn't stop the INTs from piling up. Injuries often occur more frequently than I'm used to, but they are usually minor injuries and the player is back on the field in a quarter or two.
Dynasty mode has been revamped and includes some new interesting features such as in-season recruiting and the ability to actually talk to prospects over the phone every week. This is cool, but can be very tedius and is often unpredictable. The other main feature, Campus Legend is basically an expansion of the Race for the Heisman mode and requires your player to earn his starting position by doing well in practices every week and has you balancing football with your social and academic lives. Also, you only have control of ONE player. And all plays are called by the coach (CPU). So if you are an offensive player, then the game will "Supersim" all defensive possesions, meaning that plays will be simulated and a play-by-play synopsis will be displayed in a menu. However, if you want to actually watch your defense perform, you have that option and it will be displayed from a sideline view as if you were actually standing there on the sideline. Which is kinda cool, except that I noticed that the camer was often positioned on the wrong sideline.
The game's biggest flaw in my opinion though, has to be the complete removal of the Create-A-School mode. Part of the appeal of the PS2 games for me was created my own football program and building it from the ground up into a powerhouse based on my own offensive and defensive philosophies. But now, you are stuck with the games built-in NCAA teams and their respective coaching philosophies, as the customizeable playbooks are also nowhere to be found. This is especially irritating considering all the cool new trick plays that are in the game, as you are stuck having to find a team that has your desired trick play in their playbook, and you can't add trick plays that team doesn't have.
This is a pretty good game of football, and I do recommend it to college fans, but some really questionable design decisions on the part of EA and some poor balancing really hold this one back from becoming a true Heisman contender.