The Official College Fantasy Coach Review Of NCAA 10
Editor’s Note: Thanks to Dubbz for stepping up and giving us an exclusive first review of NCAA 10. If you want to learn more about our PS3 playing college football expert, check out his Facebook profile where he goes by David Bentz.
If you’re an avid follower of the NCAA Football franchise, you’re probably as worried as I am about its prospects for the future following several lawsuits regarding player likenesses in the game by former college quarterbacks Sam Keller and Ryan Hart. For now, however, the game is to be released as normal with rosters being similar to the real thing. Although they are far from perfect. More on that later.
I start with this bit of information because I feel it is important to enjoy this game as is while we still have it. The game could be fundamentally changed (ruined) if these disgruntled players have their way.
Lets start by looking at some new features in this year’s game. The most anticipated by far has been the Team Builder feature which just surpassed 100,000 teams. This allows people to go online and design their own teams including uniform, stadium, players etc. If it sounds similar to create-a-team its because it is. It’s the most indepth create a team ever. It also allows you to choose from existing logos and uniforms from all FBS and FCS teams. So if you’re a fan of Appalachian State or the Fightin Blue Hens of Delaware, you can create those schools and import them into your Dynasty mode. However, I wonder why they don’t just put the FCS teams into the game like they used to.
Another new online feature is the Season Showdown. It sounds like a great feature but we won’t really know until the season gets started and we see it in action. But its supposed to work something like this: You commit to a school, and then earn credits by playing online or against the computer with that school. You can earn as many credits as possible up until the start of the season to improve your ranking among all other players. Then once the season starts, you will play through your team’s real life schedule one week at a time. At the end of the regular season EA will choose the top 32 schools to compete in a single elimination tournament to crown a champion. Obviously, this feature is for the most dedicated of all players.
Dynasty mode is always my favorite feature. The first difference of note is that you’re given the option of customizing the conferences. However, you can do an even one-for-one swap. So the feature really isn’t that great. You can’t add Notre Dame to the Big 10 or put Utah and BYU in the Pac 10 or anything you would really want to do. I’m not sure why they can’t do it like this. It seems a little half hearted if you ask me.
Another difference is increased depth in the recruiting. The game is beginning to tip toe the line of keeping recruiting fun and making it seem like work. They seem to have the perfect amount of detail, but if they add much more to it you’d end up spending as much time keeping up your recruting as you would playing the games. Anyway, the coolest addition to recruiting is the addition of negative recruting. You can tell sought after prospects why they should go to your school and why the other schools on their list are no good for them. This is nice to have because anyone whos played through a few dynasty seasons has pursued an in state prospect who claimed their highest priority was ‘proximity to home’ and then went to a school halfway across the country. Now you’re able to inform that prospect why your school is better.
Finally, lets talk about game play. EA has bragged about improved defensive AI and I would agree with that. The pursuit angles are better and the defenses do pick up on habitual play calling. This only happens on the higher difficulties though (All American and Heisman). Also, there’s a new feature that lets you lock onto a player on defense. When you do this, you can only play as that player for the duration of the play. So you can lock into a corner and try to shut down the other team’s top wideout on a crucial third down or lock into a defensive end and pursue the quarterback for the length of the play. You cannot switch out from being this player though. It’s a good way to improve your rankings and gain credits though.
Another new gameplay feature is the play setup. Plays within your play book are linked to one another. For example, you can set up a certain play action pass or draw running play by running plays that appear similar to it and lull the defense into cheating. You’ll see just how well set up the play in question is by the percentage listed above it. You can choose to ignore this if you want, but its a fun addition to play calling which can be rather monotonous. Other than these small things, the game play is just about the same as it was last year, although the appearance is sleeker and the behaviors and appearances of the players do seem more realistic.
Finally, I want to talk about the rosters. They were essentially butchered. There are instances of teams not having any freshman on their roster. This issue has been addressed by EA through a roster patch available through EA Locker. Still, these bugs annoy me. EA locker is back so you can download fully named rosters through the EA community which is always nice. Others put in hours of work so we don’t have to play with FLA QB #15, who its worth saying, may be the greatest virtual athlete since Barry Sanders in Tecmo Super Bowl.
