Look, I love the franchise. I've picked it up like a loyal lad every single year it's been available. Like so many others, every year I have some small amount of misguided faith that perhaps the serious issues that have plagued the title in the past have been addressed. Like so many others, every year I find myself disappointed once I realize that behind some fluff, the same limitations, bugs and flaws are still present.
I suppose that's not entirely fair. Things do get fixed, but for every step in the right direction, new problems (problems that should NEVER get past a reasonable amount of testing and QA) present themselves. So sure, defenders take better angles this year, and now HB screens are only crazily effective rather than unstoppable. Sure, QB sneaks now see the signal callers just sort of slumping forwards like they're having a cardiac event, which has "fixed" rampant abuse of the same in years past. Sure, they don't call the same plays over and over and over again (like a bomb out of shotgun on 4th and short) in modes like Road to Glory anymore. I appreciate all of this work.
What I don't appreciate is that every single time the AI completes a long play and then hurries to snap the ball, I'm called for offsides because my slow plodding DLmen haven't made it across the line of scrimmage yet (in the real world, they can't snap the ball until it's been set by the officials). I don't appreciate that the rosters aren't just hosed, but they're comically hosed, like someone somewhere just assumed that casuals wouldn't care, and the nutty hard-core types would just be tweaking them anyway. I don't appreciate canned animations being stacked on top of canned animations, rather than having real physics introduced.
Another year, and more fluff. Now Erin Andrews follows your career in Road to Glory. Now the Ohio State marching band will run Script Ohio in the Shoe before games. Now you can spend points in dynasty mode to negatively recruit against other schools. Now you can spend real world money on cheats (Want to always be a 5-star recruit? Want to know which recruits will sign with you? Want an extra pipeline state?). Now you can make your own schools/teams (funny, I thought that was a "new" feature like 5-7 years ago). You can find lists all over the place of the changes, my point is not that they don't update the game, it's that most people who play it would really prefer that the core game, the basic play and functionality of the game, be addressed before we load up with sugary video clips of Erin Andrews and various band formations.
I feel a little disingenuous giving the title 2 stars, because I'll play it, and I'll play it often. As a college football fan, I'll get to 'see' teams play that won't in real life, I'll get to right wrongs that happen during the season (at least in my own silly brain), and I'll get to take in some of that camaraderie that comes with immersing in college football with other passionate fans. And, like a good little addict, I'll be sure to line up again next year to secure my copy of NCAA 11 -- which won't have many of the fixes and changes fans have been clamoring for all along, but will introduce new fluff, new bells and whistles, but a whole new chorus of bugs and flaws to go along with them.
To be fair, some of the brand new issues (this year) that have most outraged fans since the games release on July 14th have been addressed with a quick patch. Online league commissioners may now prevent the use of purchased upgrades that would otherwise afford one player an unfair advantage. The rosters have been at least partially adusted. The sliders are fixed (funny how that's been a recurring issue). That's not really the point though. For what little they did from last year to this year, it simply shouldn't have gone to market with the flaws that it did. EA knows they have a captive and passionate customer base, they know people like me are going to plunk down the cash for the title year after year, perhaps there's just no incentive to really break new ground and advance the franchise when you hold a monopoly on it.
It's a great game (and that's not a contradiction of anything else I've said, believe it or not), but every year we pay the same price for it that we would a standalone title developed from the ground up. Are you seeing updates, improvements, and new features worthy of full-game cost? After so many years in development, after the "next-gen" consoles have been out in the market so long, shouldn't there have been a more meaningful and apparent evolution of the game? Season Showdown is a wonderful new feature, so it's not like I don't appreciate some of the aforementioned fluff. It's just not worth that full game price every single year, year after year, which is why I find myself writing this review, and lamenting the fact that I remain addicted, while EA continues to seemingly do the absolute minimum, and with no attention to detail, every single year.
I'll close the way I opened, because I know daring to knock the game and EA isn't going to sit well with some -- I love the franchise, I play the game religiously, and that's not going to change this year. I just wish I felt a little less like a chump with every new annual release. NCAA Football 10
**I deleted my original review so that I could give a more accurate star rating after further play (original star ratings were 4 stars for fun and 3 stars for overall)**
I will start by saying that the base gameplay is fine. It usually is minus a few annoying glitches, but the glitches have never made the game unplayable.
EA Sports has pushed me to an every other year update purchase plan due to lack of ground breaking features and addons. As others have said, they take away excellent features so they can add them back in later as new. That being said I had never played NCAA Football 09 and therefore do not know what has been updated/fixed from that version.
At first I was really impressed with TeamBuilder. This feature was excellent as it kept me from having to type information with a controller and allowed a lot of customization for a custom team (you can even create your own team logo!). You can also share your custom created teams with whomever you please.
This was a great feature, until I became aware that you have to be connected to the internet in order to use your custom created team. EA is either so adament about combating piracy or is so deep in bed with Microsoft that they add most features to their games that require a Gold subscription on Live to use (features that should have NO reliance on Live [statement is based on a different review]) that they decided to keep all your created teams on their servers. This means that if you don't have an internet connection your team will not be available to play with.
Another major iritant while playing this game was seeing EA's use of DLC. Yet again, they have decided to sell what is essentially cheats as DLC. I do not purchase them, but when I see a feature in a game only to be prompted to pay for that feature it gets annoying and is just...tacky. If EA feels they absolutely MUST sell cheats as addons, they should have a dedicated option on the main screen and only once you have purchased the cheat (or DLC as EA will refer to it as) is the option available from in game screens.
Again, the base gameplay of the game is fine as it has always been. It is enjoyable and entertaining while on the field...well, except for hearing the bland, 4+ year old commentary that seems to never get updated. It's when you start to stray away from the base game to their "New and Exciting FEATURES" that you really begin to see a loss in value of the game.
Thanks to NCAA Football 10, I have adopted a new purchasing plan that will have me skipping the next few releases and MAYBE picking up 14.
Perhaps EA should stop releasing updates to their sports titles every year so they can spend more time creating better games. If they were to just give roster updates every "non-release" year (preferable for free but it is EA)...they could get back to their glory days of great sports titles. - Video Games - Ea Sports - Football - College Football'
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