While not perfect or revolutionary, there's the same tried and true football action that fans have come to expect.
Game Play - 7.5
Visual - 9.0
Audio - 7.0
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Overall - 7.5
My friends and I have been playing college football games for years, but this is the first one I have seriously critiqued. My brother was very excited for this game, and even went early to get the game at midnight when it was first released. I was more skeptical. I played countless hours (and numerous years as a coach in Dynasty Mode) of NCAA 2009, but last year's game was a big disappointment for me. NCAA 2010 almost completely turned me off from the series. That out of the way, I tried to come into playing NCAA 11 with an open mind.
In my opinion, a true football game should put the player in the life of an athlete or coach on the field. NCAA 11's game play did a good job of that. One place I thought this game shined was the running game. Before each play, the game will show the play selected and also show where the offensive linemen are planning to block. Not only that, the lineman do an admirable job of trying to stick to that play call and blocking where their supposed to. This helps the player plan a route of attack before the play starts. Offensively, the passing game is okay. I felt some passes work all of the time, and other passes don't work at all. On defense, you could call the same play most of the time and be successful (My brother does!) but I guess that's always been true. So overall, the in-game action is pretty good.
One of my biggest pet peeves of this game was the menu system. While it was better looking and more readable than last year's game, I felt it was extremely unresponsive and slow. Sometimes it could take over 5 seconds to move just 3 or 4 screens. It caused problems for me several times. (especially when I tried to sign a 5-star recruit and accidently messed up how much time I game him.) For those players that are heavy into the recruiting this can be a big pain-in-the-you-know-what. In the dynasty mode, recruiting takes almost as much time as a game does, but it was fun. I did enjoy that the more time I spent on recruiting, the more successful I was. In years past, I would quick call almost everybody, but I noticed a marked difference in this game when I took the time to call recruits.
The presentation is very good, and the modes are the standard football modes that you should be used to. Dynasty Mode still has a lot to offer, and the Road to Glory (a.k.a. Campus Legend) mode even shows cutscenes to show off big events in the life of your campus legend. I have to admit, I did like seeing them do a Sportscenter-style report on me as a college QB. Most of my time was spent offline, but I did a brief part of a season of online dynasty, and it worked quite well. If you are a fan of that, it should still be enjoyable.
Visually, I thought the game was very good. Player models look excellent and character animations look outstanding. A QB actually looks like a real QB throwing a football, and a tail back falls down like a normal one. The stadiums looks great, and the lighting effects change (outdoors only of course) as the game time gets later and later. I especially liked the player entrances. With the visuals, I was impressed, but with the audio, I was less so. Most of the play-by-play was simply recycled from years past. (except they took out Lee Corso this year.) While I don't expect it to be completely different every year, I think it would be nice to include a few more new sound bites. The menu music tracks were okay, but outside of the game, I got used to having the mute button on because it was the same tracks over and over again.
Overall, there is a lot to like about this game, and college football junkies will definitely get their fix. Most of my critiques are small, and don't take way from the experience of the game. I feel this game is a couple of small steps away from being outstanding, and if they fix a few small things, next year's release could be the one of the best ever. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed NCAA 11, and I look forward to where the series will go in the future. I would recommend to those looking for some college football action.