Wow. Next-generation game. $60. And this is what we end up with?
Graphics are good but not great, let alone awesome(play a game in the rain...waaay too choppy for next-gen graphics). Gameplay is ok, but not as smooth, consistent, and fun as past incarnations. It is also missing some options, features, and extras from past NCAA titles(but don't worry, i'm sure they'll offer these bit by bit as downloadable content in the future where you gotta fork over more money as apparently $60 off the rack isn't enough). I'm sure there are EA loyalists/apologists who think i'm a hater(it's true, i hate EA so much i've bought most of their NCAA football titles for the past decade or so including their first on the Sega Genesis way back when, and my favorite incarnation of them all: NCAA 2004 with coverboy Carson Palmer on the Gamecube!).
But anyway, is this a terrible game? Not really. if you can 'overlook' and 'forgive', it's good enough graphics and gameplay-wise. But if you used up all your 'look the other way/turn the other cheek' mentality with the also-disappointing(but better-looking at least) MADDEN 2006 on 360; then i STRONGLY recommend you rent this game first or read better and more detailed reviews on the game before buying it. I wish i had before i bought this game. Then at least my lowered expectations wouldn't have set me up for such a huge let-down. Recommended only as a rental or 'read reviews first before buying'. Seriously, after MADDEN 2006, i thought EA learned that next-gen games(at next-gen prices i might add), needed to have everything last-gen games had and more. With NCAA 2007, i guess not. Perhaps NCAA 2008 will be the game we're all hoping for. Hope MADDEN 2007 at least addresses all the concerns of its previous incarnation on 360.
Btw, can others tell me:
how do you change the camera angle?
how do you set up a demo game to watch cpu vs cpu?
where's the slick front end and in-between-game presentations?
why do the graphics sometimes slow down, seem choppy, etc?
how do you create-a-school?
where's the sports-illustrated covers?
Maybe many of these are unlockables or rewards for achievements-earned during gameplay and hopefully NOT extra-cost downloadables. But hey, the EA execs gotta eat don't they? But not to worry, NCAA 2007 will sell by the truckload cause the majority rules. And in this day and age, the majority says "we'll take hd graphics over features and gameplay anyday". The majority has spoken. NCAA Football 2007
The false advertising for this game would lead you to believe the 360 version has:
* Excel in the classroom to improve your overall character -- balance your time wisely between studies, practice, and social events as you live the life of a Student Athlete
* Hone your skills with 11 new and challenging Spring Drills -- minigames like Rush the Quarterback, Passing Distance, and more!
In reality, the 360 version possesses neither of those, and not much of anything. You have four modes: Play Now, Dynasty, Online, and Mini-Games. That's it. The Mini-Games get repetitive and Play Now is pretty much worthless for anything except multiplayer battles.
The Dynasty Mode on 360 is exactly like NCAA 1998. You play your season, recruit, redshirt, customize schedules, repeat. There are no magazine covers. No discipline. No student-athlete mode. Nothing. Just the bare minimum.
If you're wanting an in-depth game, I recommend saving $10 and grabbing NCAA 07 for either PS2 or XBox. It's just not worth it for 360. Not at all.
Every year for the past 3 or 4 years me and my brother have played an NCAA dynasty where we play on the same team, set the level to heisman, pick a horrible team (to make it a challenge), and run nothing but option no matter what the scenario is (4th and 30.....still run the option). Then we save and export our draft classes to Madden until our roster is full of NCAA players we recruited and we ultimately win championships in both games with the same players. Well, this years NCAA does not allow people to play on the same team, so ultimately this tradition is ruined!!!!! Not only did NCAA ruin the college game, but this is going to ruin Madden as well. Thanks for nothing EA sports.
I cannot regret more purchasing this hack of a game. Take away the monotnous before the snap good graphics sequence and you wonder why the graphics aren't better. But the MAIN problem is that the game is not even ncaa anymore. the controls are the worst setup I have ever seen, and in many def modes most buttons aren't used. They took away l/r juke and made it one. They changed sprint to the r trigger, moved every single button to the absolute worst place possible. The play selection is absolutely the worst, most confusing train wreck I have ever seen. Starting out you won't be able to find a play in 3 minutes let alone 25 seconds. Forget bursting through on defense anymore. Actually, aside from gears of war, which was short, I truly regret getting the 360. I miss the old xbox. This game is a complete hack, put together in a few weeks to sucker people out of their money, and I doubt the people that "worked" on it have ever played football. It is THE single worst football game I have ever played and I am getting rid of it.
This terrible game PROVES that EA does *not* deserve to have the NCAA exclusive license for making football games. Even NCAA 04 for Gamecube has much smoother animation than this junk for the 360. Aside from having more resolution and more detailed stadiums, I'd say the graphics and gameplay in NCAA 07 for XBOX 360 are actually *worse* than NCAA 04 for Gamecube. It's THAT bad.
The graphics are choppy and slow. The framerate OFTEN drops below an acceptable level. This is the much-vaunted, super-powerful XBOX 360 -- there is NO excuse EA! NONE! It should be 60 FPS the *whole time*, like Call of Duty is. But instead it's like 20 FPS on a good day.
The camera movement feels heavy and jerky, overly ponderous of the glisteningly clean stadiums. The players -- especially in online mode -- feel like they're wading through molasses, not playing football. Well maybe they're playing football in Aunt Jemima's nightmare. But it's awful! I can almost see syrup dripping from the ball!
Further, they took out the "Create-a-School" feature, which was my favorite feature in NCAA 04-06. My real-life alma mater is a small school which doesn't even have a football team, and it was a blast in the previous versions to be able to make a team of all 7'1", 315-lb. monsters. OK, that sounds dumb, but it was FUN. Why remove this feature? It's a $60 game! It costs *more* than the last version, yet has *less* features, and runs slower! Hmm, lets see... slower, missing features, less fun, more expensive. You do the math!
Worse, they added the lamest feature ever: "momentum." Who came up with this, a bunch of sports announcers who actually think that their rhetoric about football has basis in reality? There is no such thing as momentum, people! It's just a myth of sports announcers who are trying to explain the extremely complex interactions between 22 players, a bunch of coaches, and 80,000 fans. Momentum is not a "real thing," though, like a football or a field or a yellow flag. It does not actually exist. And it has no place in a video game, as if there were really some way to measure it.
The new "momentum" feature just messes up an otherwise (conceptually) decent football simulation by imputing a magical force to the game. Sure, emotion plays a role, but the emotion of the players playing the actual video game should be enough to simulate that. I don't want to feel that, when I'm losing an online game, my own ability and determination to come from behind and win is being overriden by some stupid sportscaster idea that some invisible "momentum" is actually preventing me from doing so. I want it to be the other player who beats me, not some invisible "force." This is NCAA Football, not "Knights of the Old Republic."
EA programmers said they were inspired to make the "momentum" feature after watching USC lose to Texas. They claim USC "had total control" before they went for it on 4th down, and failed. But in their own system, USC would have had "the momentum" at that point in the game, and would not have failed, because the invisible force would have helped them. Really, the fact is that EA programmers were USC fans and just could not get over the fact that their team lost. Boo hoo. It was not because of some magical force, guys. It was because of a bad call by a coach, and an awesome player named Vince Young.
Which brings me the other stupid thing about NCAA 07 Football: the rosters. It is dumb for EA to make these rosters and then not update them throughout the seasons as it becomes obvious which players are better than others. These rosters are a bunch of guesswork. I would much rather that they make the online version of the game reflect the season which has just passed, since it would be much easier to make accurate judgements of players' skill from their performance in the previous year, if you were simulating the previous year -- as opposed to trying to guess from that how they will perform in the following year. Plus, anyone whose team was really good last year, but who the EA roster idiots gave bad stats to, will never have a chance to play online as their team as good as they really were that year.
Further, there ought to be a mode in online play where players could play created schools against each other, or play teams where all the players have all 100's or all 75's in every stat, so that there would be the chance for perfectly fair games. There also ought to be user-created leagues with imaginary schools online, not more of the same boring thing year after year. Come on EA, get creative! NCAA 07 is just a bad rehash of every previous version.
The only good thing about this game, which makes it deserve the 1 star, is that they added a lot more plays and formations, and removed the stupid "In the Zone" feature (where particular players would turn into super-beings after making a couple of decent plays).
However, all the playbooks that you scroll through are drawn as if on a chalk-board, and are very hard to read on my regular TV. Plus, the game wastes lots of time showing stupid close-ups of the players before each play (just like lame Madden for XBOX 360). As a result, you have far less time to switch defenders and call defensive audibles before the snap. Worse, the controls for calling audibles are very unresponsive in online play, and very laggy. Worst, you can only cycle through defenders in one direction -- this is a downgrade from NCAA 04 on Gamecube, in which you can cycle backwards and forwards. The point of being able to also cycle backwards, is so that when you inevitably go past the guy you wanted, you can quickly go back to him without going through all the other players first. EA seems to have forgotten this, even though they still have a button on the controller that does absolutely nothing, to which they could have assigned this feature if they had not wasted so much time making the stadiums look so good that it slows the game to a crawl.
On the offensive side of the pre-snap ball, things are worse as well. Sending a man in motion is no longer a simple matter of pressing down on the right stick. Neither are "hot routes" (one of the games better features) easily accessed from one button. Now, you must "switch" to the man you wish to send in motion or designate for a hot-route, and then issue the command. However, if you switch to a man who is off the screen, on a regular TV, the game does not pan over to him, so you have no idea which wide-receiver you just selected. It's a terrible bug! Further, the process of switching men in online play is extremely sluggish, and you are very lucky if you can successfully switch to a man and issue the proper command within 10 seconds of the game-clock. I received so many delay-of-game penalties that I just gave up trying to make a hot-route.
There are so many other bad things about this game that it's not even worth wasting time discussing them all. But the additional one I will mention is this: in online mode, in-between plays, players mill about in ultra-slow motion and occasionally vibrate erratically as if they suddenly switched from alcohol to caffeine (to use a euphemism). It just leaves the impression of a glitchy, buggy, slow game that was never fully debugged, never fully tested, and released to market way before it was ready.
Look, if you ever loved to play NCAA Football, do yourself a favor and buy NCAA 04 or 05 for PS2 or Gamecube or XBOX. Or buy NCAA 06 for PS2 or XBOX. It's a crime that Microsoft has not made NCAA 06 or 05 for original XBOX compatible with the 360. It's also a crime that EA used a "handwriting"-style font for the menu selections in NCAA 07. It is a crime that they have the NCAA exclusive license as well, based on this garbage that they are putting out. Maybe if they did not have a monopoly on the market, they would be forced to actually make a decent game for fear of people buying a competing product. I fail to agree that any company should be able to have exclusive rights to the sports of primarily PUBLIC universities! THAT is the real crime!
Don't buy this junk. - Ncaa Football - Xbox - Football - Ncaa'
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