This should have gone up a few days ago, but I'm lazy and wanted to improve my social life. Sorry.
So rather than doing something productive with my time, I've decided to make an attempt at reviewing the latest version, NCAA Football 12. Sure, I could be at the beach ogling the hotties in bikinis like everyone else, but that stuff costs money, and I don't have any money to drive to the beach. I do, however, have enough cash to buy this game, so here we are. So yeah.
Sorry for the crappy intro, can you tell I'm not used to reviewing things? Let's get to it...
There are quite a few changes to this year’s edition of the game. EA was hyping new team entrances as the biggest addition. For example, Colorado home games include Ralphie the Buffalo stampeding through the field and Florida State home games include Chief Osceola throwing a spear into the ground at midfield. But there are only a handful of teams that have their authentic, home entrances, and of course it adds nothing to the gameplay. The entrances do look fantastic, however.
EA also made strides to improve the actual gameplay. Pass defenses have been improved, and the days of scoring on every possession are over. I’m having lots of trouble adapting to the new passing system, as you have to throw at just the right time otherwise your pass will either be swatted away by a defender or intercepted. I’ve had the game less than a week now and I’ve already thrown more interceptions in this game than I have in the last two or three years combined. The man coverage has been improved, but there’s still a massive problem of linebackers performing “Superman Jumps,” jumping 10 feet into the air and swatting passes away. Overall the passing game makes you turn to the running game more so than usual, which has also been dramatically improved.
The main problem with the running game the last few years has been with the blocking. Instead of creating holes for tailbacks to run through, offensive linemen would simply run forward if they had no defensive linemen to block, leading to lots of 20 plus yard running plays becoming simple one or two yard gains. EA made a massive overhaul to the system this year and from what I can tell, the blockers actually block! Wide receivers will block too! I use Texas A&M as one of my default teams, so I’m running the ball most of the time. It’s pretty cool to watch your running backs break tackles and run through actual holes.
That leads me to another improvement, the tackling system has been redone, and it looks very realistic. For example, sometimes the ball carrier will be hit and bounce off the tackler and continue to run. Sometimes it takes two or three guys to tackle one. The tackling animations have also been improved. Now you can see tacklers grab the feet of the ball carrier and trip them to bring them down. It looks so much better than in the past and adds a realistic element to the game.
Perhaps my favorite addition to the game is in the Dynasty Mode. Now in past editions of the game you simply pick a team you want to coach and then play the games and handle recruiting, moving from team to team depending on who you want to play as. You could also play with as many teams as you wanted. For example, I usually had one dynasty with my favorite teams and another dynasty where I tried to make a bad team good. This year you can choose to start off as a coordinator (offensive or defensive) rather than a head coach. You only have to play manually for offense or defense (depending on what kind of coordinator you are) which makes games go by much faster. You also get to control recruiting, so you can load up your side with good players which will help you get to a better job faster. A “coaching carousel” mode has also been added, where coaches can be fired or retire, leaving you to fight other coaches for open positions. Or you can always choose to stay put at your job. This is an awesome feature for me since I prefer the dynasty route of making a bad team good and then moving on up to a “name” program.
Another cool feature is that of custom conferences. For the past several editions custom conferences WERE possible, however you could only switch teams from conference to conference. This year the feature has been refined so that you can add any number of teams to any conference. Well up to 16 teams. For example, you can play out the PAC-16 scenario from June 2010, or have Colorado and Nebraska rejoin the Big 12. You can also rename divisions. For example, I did what the Big Ten SHOULD have done and created simple East and West divisions. I mean that’s what should have happened in the first place but that’s a rant for another day. You can also edit other things such as BCS bowl tie-ins, whether or not the conference will have protected inter-divisional rivalries and if the conference is allowed to have night games or play games on days other than Saturday. It’s a cool feature that adds more customization.
As of this writing I have not yet tried the Road to Glory mode, although I hear the only thing that have added as opposed to previous years is that you can play your full senior season in high school rather than just the playoffs. And “trust points” are now needed to improve your spot on the depth chart. Something else I have yet to try is online play, which I’m not typically a fan of, although I may give it a shot this year to finally get some Xbox 360 Achievements.
MY RATINGS (out of 5):
Graphics - *****
The game looks great, no doubts there. They’ve done something to the stadiums this year, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they seem bigger and full of life. The lighting system, which was awesome last year, has been further improved this year. ESPN integration looks just like the programming on their network. Grass is rendered in 3D as well, and the whole game just looks great.
Audio - **
Had to knock off lots of points here. The commentary SOUNDS good, but they still say some of the dumbest things, and it’s a few seconds off when the action picks up. Also some of the schools are missing fight songs and unique crowd yells. That’s a major no-no to me, and it’s why the audio receives a low score here.
Controls - ****
They’re just about the same as they have been in previous installments. No real wackiness and it’s pretty easy to run plays, so nothing really to see here.
FINAL RATING - ****
It may seem cliché to give these sports titles fairly high ratings but there have been enough changes this year that I feel that the game deserves it this year. Enough changes were added to the gameplay to make it feel more realistic, and tinkering with the game’s sliders can improve the gameplay even further. The improvements made to the Dynasty Mode are like a breath of fresh air to a mode that was starting to get stale. The only real downside is that it still seems EA only pays attention to the “name” schools, and for some reason there were fight songs that were REMOVED from the game. This confuses me since they had fight songs for every school back in the Playstation era. Thank goodness for the Custom Sounds feature, although it’s annoying to have to add in everything yourself.
If you’re a fan of the series I recommend snagging this version, as it’s probably my favorite NCAA game since NCAA 07. If you’re not a fan of the series then I don’t know why you’d have any desire to play this in the first place, so yeah.
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