AgtFox
07-23-2008, 03:58 AM
<div style="float:left">
Title: NCAA Football 09
Platform: 360/PS3/Others
Developer: EA Tiburon (http://www.tiburon.com/)
Publisher: EA Sports (http://www.easports.com/)
MSRP: $59.99 (http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Arts-15599-NCAA-Football/dp/B0015E4G4G/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1216618377&sr=8-1)
Editor: Loren 'AgtFox' Halek
</div>
<br><br><br><br><br>
<div style="float:left;margin-left:7px">NCAA Football 09 Review</div>
Sports games are always hard to review simply because there is a subsection of gamers out there that are heavy simulation players and any small problem or number of roblems is like a nuclear bomb blowing up. These games probably aren’t as hard to review here at Evil Avatar simply because I don’t get the sense that sports games are held near and dear to many of our members. With the new version of EA’s college game, NCAA Football 09 there are several things they did right, but a growing list of broken things and oddities will set off several nuclear bombs in the hardcore simulators.
The first thing I want to say is I started up this game and immediately played some pickup games. I then went back to last year’s game to see how it compared to this year. The graphics are no contest, this year easily bests last year. The fields have more texture in their grass instead of a flat, almost FieldTurf, look to the open air grass stadiums. I’m not a big fan of Ohio State, but I did take them simply because they have an open air stadium and I played as Wisconsin last year. I love my Minnesota Golden Gophers, but they play in a dome currently (changing next year) and the graphics don’t look all that great with their field. They took away the wide angle moving shots of the stadium from last year which is fine because it seems to have solved those little hitches in framerate you got in-between plays. This year there are no hitches at all that I saw and the game ran pretty smooth. This may be because it is built on the Madden 08 engine from last year, but the graphics are not as gaudy here since the odd font use and special talents are no longer present that were in Madden 08. One of the disappointments in the graphics department is there are no environmental effects on the field during rain or snow. The field doesn’t change to a muddy mess over heavy rain and you don’t see footprints in the snow. I seem to remember Madden having this stuff, why doesn’t NCAA?
Animations also seem quite fluid, although reading through various forums there are the picky people out there that like to talk about how the quarterbacks don’t throw correctly, the running backs aren’t as fast or mobile as their real-life counterpart or the best yet in that the whole defense of a team is not as good as their real-life counterpart. Then again, there is some major stuff broken on defense, but I’ll get to that later.
The sounds of the game are still pretty good. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3218/2695382046_4bcae94c7b_m.jpgThe pounding hits via the right analog hit stick still shake the room. If you happen to be an away team playing a major team at home (like Ohio State does with USC in the 3rd week of the season this year) and you’re on 3rd down you will feel the loud crowd in the controller as it shakes violently. It’s a fantastic effect and one that really nails what it would be like trying to convert a 1st down in front of a loud and hostile crowd. You are also able to pump up your home team and get the away team frazzled, although when playing against the computer their QBs have a tendency to complete a high percentage of passes. This is currently being termed the “CPU Robo QB” on several forums and I’ll get back to this as well later on. One thing that is teetering on the inane in the sound category is the commentary during the game. I don’t know how much voiceover work was done or if they rehashed the old stuff, but they’re starting to get old and maybe they should bring the team back in to do all-new voiceovers or, dare I say it, bring in a new team like they are with Madden 09.
The gameplay is nice and fluid, although there are some strange oddities here and there. First off the whole kicking game is broken. Once again it is very hard for any kicker to kick it into the end zone off a kickoff. To me that is crazy when you see it almost every week in the college game. The bigger problem is that the kick and punt returners have way too much room to make huge gains and have too many holes to run through on any difficulty. This kind of lollygagging by the kicking team is dumbfounding and it just creates great field position for the other team.
The defensive line system is simply broken in this game and EA has talked about working on it in the second patch (I’ll talk about the first patch later). I usually play both NCAA and Madden as a defensive tackle and in this game I had a hard time getting any pass rush on the quarterback. I did have a few sacks, but rushed passes were almost non-existent. I figured something was wrong and my fears were confirmed as I was reading the usual forums that flare up when these games come out. Somehow the offensive line has the uncanny ability to hold the pocket for a huge amount of time and to “suck in” the defensive player and not let them go even when you try to pull a move on them. Sucking in has been a part of football gaming for a while and EA had fixed it for the most part from what I remember, but it looks like it is rearing its ugly head again.
On the plus side of the defensive side of the ball is that the number of interceptions is not as great as last year. Last year there would be a ton of interceptions even when you didn’t take control of the defender closest to the ball no matter what difficulty level you played on. This year it seems to have been toned down quite a bit, although there are still some aberrations out there that I have seen as well as many others. One more thing of note that may tie into the less interception idea is that the defense, especially the linebackers, are rated a bit too low in speed and acceleration to the point they have almost no chance if they are paired up against a halfback or a wide receiver. Not sure if this problem can be fixed or not, but it just adds to the growing amount of problems.
The gametype options have been increased this year, but many of the favorite ones are too much of a retread from last year. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3251/2694563475_aa20b65888_m.jpgThe mini-games are back, this time with a couple extra ones to round out the package. They should keep you interested for a short time in order to get Xbox Achievements tied to them. Campus Legend mode is back and is basically a straight port from last year. You go through your high school playoffs and become a 1-5 star player and get recruited. You run through the practices until you get to the 1st string position, then you can pretty much forget about practicing the rest of your career. You do need to remember to run through the Evening Event every day or other day and not skip (or sim) through the whole week. If you let the Evening Event go your GPA will drop and you’ll find yourself right off the team. This time they give you 3 options: Go the library, study the playbook or go to the training room. No longer are you told a short paragraph to set up the choice. Obviously going to the library increases your GPA, but if you choose the others you lose a part of your GPA, but often gain in other areas so you need to balance what you do. I wish they’d do away with the Evening Event or allow you to set simulation tendencies around it so you are able to simulate to the weekend game.
Dynasty mode makes a return and for the first time in the series we have Online Dynasty that you can have up to 12 players can play. I set up an Online Dynasty with fitbabits and bapenguin (the only two in my friend’s list that seems to have EA accounts) just to test things out. You do not have to pick teams in the same conference nor do you have to pick teams that will eventually play against each other. You play through the schedule for the year and see who ends up at the top, if anyone. The creator of the dynasty is the commissioner and they can do pretty much whatever they want. They can forward the season a week if people are behind and the game will simulate the games people haven’t played as well as many other things. I rented this game from Gamefly, but I would be interested in picking it up if some members here are interested in an Online Dynasty.
There have been some major problems with the Online Dynasty mode, but as of Tuesday night EA believes they have figured out it is a server side error where the Dynasties get saved to the incorrect locker and the next time you go in you try to load your dynasty, but actually load someone else’s with your name on it. This would explain the games being simulated that you played as well as wins changing to losses and vice versa. They are testing it on several dynasties right now and hope to have it fixed ASAP.
One thing to talk about in Dynasty and general simulation playing is that the Human/CPU slider screw-up really comes into effect here. EA somehow let the game go with the fact that if you change Human sliders in the game it will also affect the CPU side of things, meaning you can’t change them separately. It is also believed that the CPU sliders themselves don’t work at all, so all you can change is the Human sliders and those affect the CPU sliders to some unknown effect. This will hopefully be fixed in an upcoming patch, but there are other things relating to the CPU QBs that are a problem. First problem is that they don’t like passing much over about 12 yards in front of them. They will go for a long bomb if their player is wide open, but they are far more apt to pass short. This has created a statistical anomaly when playing in any sort of season mode. With all the short passes, the QBs have a high rate of completion and simulating through a season you will find out that there are far more QBs above the real world completion average than there should be. With the CPU sliders pretty much broken unless you change the Human aspect of the slider, you have a huge screw-up here that also may tie in to the slow linebackers as well.
The last thing I want to talk about is the online rosters. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3156/2694563589_402958657c_m.jpgHad I not read some forums before firing this game up, I would never have known that the roster editing system is pretty much broken. As long as you download a roster via the in-game EA Locker (pick the Gamertag and download the roster) and restart your system it should work. Just don’t go in and edit the teams or the game will eventually freeze up. EA has sent in the patch for this to Microsoft and Sony’s QA department and we should see an update in the next week hopefully. I had to play with just the numbered players for the first time in a long time on Dynasty. It is also believed this has something to do with the non-existent stats (http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/07/saga-of-tim-tebow.html) that Bill Abner (the go-to guy for sports game reviews in my opinion) encountered in the game. Hopefully this patch will fix everything on this, but we shall see.
As you can see, it looks like NCAA Football 09 still has a lot of stuff to fix before it becomes everything it probably could be. I do want to stress though that playing the game itself, both offline and online (minus the dynasty mode), is exciting and easily outdoes last year in my mind. The problems I talk about (and I’m sure there are many more) in this review really bring this game down, especially if you are into simulating seasons and dynasties. Hopefully EA can fix these problems, but given their track record the future looks grim. They certainly seem to be more visible in some of the bigger sports forums out there, so they are obviously listening and hopefully doing something about it.
Bottom line is NCAA Football 09, even as broken as it is in several places that can be important or unimportant to you, is better than last year. On the other hand it could also be so much more if the broken things are fixed. I’m giving this game a 3 right now (I teetered on 2.5), but if the patches come through and fix a good deal of what is wrong, this game could easily score a 4. If you’re at all interested in this game you should probably just rent it for now at least until the second patch comes out. Don’t expect anything outside of the rosters (after the patch) and Online Dynasties (after server update) to be fixed when you get it though. Be sure to check out some sports forums and see what the updates are in relation to patches. A disappointing game at time of shipment, but I do believe this time it could be fixed.
Score: 3 out of 5
http://www.evilavatar.com/images/icons/e3.jpg
(About our Ratings (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40390))
The Good
The graphics are easily better than last year
No more stutters in-between plays
It plays a good game of football despite problems
Online Dynasty (once saving update is done, maybe today)
The Bad
Campus Legend too much like last year
Defensive line problems are frustrating if you play that exclusively
Linebacker lack of speed really hurts coverage and tackle angles
No environmental graphics as game goes on during rain or snow
A myriad of other problems various people have picked up on
The Ugly
When the uprising begins in forums when people start to see problems in these game
*Note - review based on Xbox 360 version of game
Title: NCAA Football 09
Platform: 360/PS3/Others
Developer: EA Tiburon (http://www.tiburon.com/)
Publisher: EA Sports (http://www.easports.com/)
MSRP: $59.99 (http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Arts-15599-NCAA-Football/dp/B0015E4G4G/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1216618377&sr=8-1)
Editor: Loren 'AgtFox' Halek
</div>
<br><br><br><br><br>
<div style="float:left;margin-left:7px">NCAA Football 09 Review</div>
Sports games are always hard to review simply because there is a subsection of gamers out there that are heavy simulation players and any small problem or number of roblems is like a nuclear bomb blowing up. These games probably aren’t as hard to review here at Evil Avatar simply because I don’t get the sense that sports games are held near and dear to many of our members. With the new version of EA’s college game, NCAA Football 09 there are several things they did right, but a growing list of broken things and oddities will set off several nuclear bombs in the hardcore simulators.
The first thing I want to say is I started up this game and immediately played some pickup games. I then went back to last year’s game to see how it compared to this year. The graphics are no contest, this year easily bests last year. The fields have more texture in their grass instead of a flat, almost FieldTurf, look to the open air grass stadiums. I’m not a big fan of Ohio State, but I did take them simply because they have an open air stadium and I played as Wisconsin last year. I love my Minnesota Golden Gophers, but they play in a dome currently (changing next year) and the graphics don’t look all that great with their field. They took away the wide angle moving shots of the stadium from last year which is fine because it seems to have solved those little hitches in framerate you got in-between plays. This year there are no hitches at all that I saw and the game ran pretty smooth. This may be because it is built on the Madden 08 engine from last year, but the graphics are not as gaudy here since the odd font use and special talents are no longer present that were in Madden 08. One of the disappointments in the graphics department is there are no environmental effects on the field during rain or snow. The field doesn’t change to a muddy mess over heavy rain and you don’t see footprints in the snow. I seem to remember Madden having this stuff, why doesn’t NCAA?
Animations also seem quite fluid, although reading through various forums there are the picky people out there that like to talk about how the quarterbacks don’t throw correctly, the running backs aren’t as fast or mobile as their real-life counterpart or the best yet in that the whole defense of a team is not as good as their real-life counterpart. Then again, there is some major stuff broken on defense, but I’ll get to that later.
The sounds of the game are still pretty good. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3218/2695382046_4bcae94c7b_m.jpgThe pounding hits via the right analog hit stick still shake the room. If you happen to be an away team playing a major team at home (like Ohio State does with USC in the 3rd week of the season this year) and you’re on 3rd down you will feel the loud crowd in the controller as it shakes violently. It’s a fantastic effect and one that really nails what it would be like trying to convert a 1st down in front of a loud and hostile crowd. You are also able to pump up your home team and get the away team frazzled, although when playing against the computer their QBs have a tendency to complete a high percentage of passes. This is currently being termed the “CPU Robo QB” on several forums and I’ll get back to this as well later on. One thing that is teetering on the inane in the sound category is the commentary during the game. I don’t know how much voiceover work was done or if they rehashed the old stuff, but they’re starting to get old and maybe they should bring the team back in to do all-new voiceovers or, dare I say it, bring in a new team like they are with Madden 09.
The gameplay is nice and fluid, although there are some strange oddities here and there. First off the whole kicking game is broken. Once again it is very hard for any kicker to kick it into the end zone off a kickoff. To me that is crazy when you see it almost every week in the college game. The bigger problem is that the kick and punt returners have way too much room to make huge gains and have too many holes to run through on any difficulty. This kind of lollygagging by the kicking team is dumbfounding and it just creates great field position for the other team.
The defensive line system is simply broken in this game and EA has talked about working on it in the second patch (I’ll talk about the first patch later). I usually play both NCAA and Madden as a defensive tackle and in this game I had a hard time getting any pass rush on the quarterback. I did have a few sacks, but rushed passes were almost non-existent. I figured something was wrong and my fears were confirmed as I was reading the usual forums that flare up when these games come out. Somehow the offensive line has the uncanny ability to hold the pocket for a huge amount of time and to “suck in” the defensive player and not let them go even when you try to pull a move on them. Sucking in has been a part of football gaming for a while and EA had fixed it for the most part from what I remember, but it looks like it is rearing its ugly head again.
On the plus side of the defensive side of the ball is that the number of interceptions is not as great as last year. Last year there would be a ton of interceptions even when you didn’t take control of the defender closest to the ball no matter what difficulty level you played on. This year it seems to have been toned down quite a bit, although there are still some aberrations out there that I have seen as well as many others. One more thing of note that may tie into the less interception idea is that the defense, especially the linebackers, are rated a bit too low in speed and acceleration to the point they have almost no chance if they are paired up against a halfback or a wide receiver. Not sure if this problem can be fixed or not, but it just adds to the growing amount of problems.
The gametype options have been increased this year, but many of the favorite ones are too much of a retread from last year. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3251/2694563475_aa20b65888_m.jpgThe mini-games are back, this time with a couple extra ones to round out the package. They should keep you interested for a short time in order to get Xbox Achievements tied to them. Campus Legend mode is back and is basically a straight port from last year. You go through your high school playoffs and become a 1-5 star player and get recruited. You run through the practices until you get to the 1st string position, then you can pretty much forget about practicing the rest of your career. You do need to remember to run through the Evening Event every day or other day and not skip (or sim) through the whole week. If you let the Evening Event go your GPA will drop and you’ll find yourself right off the team. This time they give you 3 options: Go the library, study the playbook or go to the training room. No longer are you told a short paragraph to set up the choice. Obviously going to the library increases your GPA, but if you choose the others you lose a part of your GPA, but often gain in other areas so you need to balance what you do. I wish they’d do away with the Evening Event or allow you to set simulation tendencies around it so you are able to simulate to the weekend game.
Dynasty mode makes a return and for the first time in the series we have Online Dynasty that you can have up to 12 players can play. I set up an Online Dynasty with fitbabits and bapenguin (the only two in my friend’s list that seems to have EA accounts) just to test things out. You do not have to pick teams in the same conference nor do you have to pick teams that will eventually play against each other. You play through the schedule for the year and see who ends up at the top, if anyone. The creator of the dynasty is the commissioner and they can do pretty much whatever they want. They can forward the season a week if people are behind and the game will simulate the games people haven’t played as well as many other things. I rented this game from Gamefly, but I would be interested in picking it up if some members here are interested in an Online Dynasty.
There have been some major problems with the Online Dynasty mode, but as of Tuesday night EA believes they have figured out it is a server side error where the Dynasties get saved to the incorrect locker and the next time you go in you try to load your dynasty, but actually load someone else’s with your name on it. This would explain the games being simulated that you played as well as wins changing to losses and vice versa. They are testing it on several dynasties right now and hope to have it fixed ASAP.
One thing to talk about in Dynasty and general simulation playing is that the Human/CPU slider screw-up really comes into effect here. EA somehow let the game go with the fact that if you change Human sliders in the game it will also affect the CPU side of things, meaning you can’t change them separately. It is also believed that the CPU sliders themselves don’t work at all, so all you can change is the Human sliders and those affect the CPU sliders to some unknown effect. This will hopefully be fixed in an upcoming patch, but there are other things relating to the CPU QBs that are a problem. First problem is that they don’t like passing much over about 12 yards in front of them. They will go for a long bomb if their player is wide open, but they are far more apt to pass short. This has created a statistical anomaly when playing in any sort of season mode. With all the short passes, the QBs have a high rate of completion and simulating through a season you will find out that there are far more QBs above the real world completion average than there should be. With the CPU sliders pretty much broken unless you change the Human aspect of the slider, you have a huge screw-up here that also may tie in to the slow linebackers as well.
The last thing I want to talk about is the online rosters. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3156/2694563589_402958657c_m.jpgHad I not read some forums before firing this game up, I would never have known that the roster editing system is pretty much broken. As long as you download a roster via the in-game EA Locker (pick the Gamertag and download the roster) and restart your system it should work. Just don’t go in and edit the teams or the game will eventually freeze up. EA has sent in the patch for this to Microsoft and Sony’s QA department and we should see an update in the next week hopefully. I had to play with just the numbered players for the first time in a long time on Dynasty. It is also believed this has something to do with the non-existent stats (http://nutweasel.blogspot.com/2008/07/saga-of-tim-tebow.html) that Bill Abner (the go-to guy for sports game reviews in my opinion) encountered in the game. Hopefully this patch will fix everything on this, but we shall see.
As you can see, it looks like NCAA Football 09 still has a lot of stuff to fix before it becomes everything it probably could be. I do want to stress though that playing the game itself, both offline and online (minus the dynasty mode), is exciting and easily outdoes last year in my mind. The problems I talk about (and I’m sure there are many more) in this review really bring this game down, especially if you are into simulating seasons and dynasties. Hopefully EA can fix these problems, but given their track record the future looks grim. They certainly seem to be more visible in some of the bigger sports forums out there, so they are obviously listening and hopefully doing something about it.
Bottom line is NCAA Football 09, even as broken as it is in several places that can be important or unimportant to you, is better than last year. On the other hand it could also be so much more if the broken things are fixed. I’m giving this game a 3 right now (I teetered on 2.5), but if the patches come through and fix a good deal of what is wrong, this game could easily score a 4. If you’re at all interested in this game you should probably just rent it for now at least until the second patch comes out. Don’t expect anything outside of the rosters (after the patch) and Online Dynasties (after server update) to be fixed when you get it though. Be sure to check out some sports forums and see what the updates are in relation to patches. A disappointing game at time of shipment, but I do believe this time it could be fixed.
Score: 3 out of 5
http://www.evilavatar.com/images/icons/e3.jpg
(About our Ratings (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40390))
The Good
The graphics are easily better than last year
No more stutters in-between plays
It plays a good game of football despite problems
Online Dynasty (once saving update is done, maybe today)
The Bad
Campus Legend too much like last year
Defensive line problems are frustrating if you play that exclusively
Linebacker lack of speed really hurts coverage and tackle angles
No environmental graphics as game goes on during rain or snow
A myriad of other problems various people have picked up on
The Ugly
When the uprising begins in forums when people start to see problems in these game
*Note - review based on Xbox 360 version of game