Great potential, but Ultimately Disappointing
posted by SMShadow (MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, MD) Jan 14, 2009
Member since May 2008
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Longtime madden fan here, so I thought I'd give this a try for a slight change of pace. Plus I'm just as much a College Football fan as I am a pro. So, as expected, I found the game to be similar in many ways to madden, with some nice differences.
Of course, the psp version of the game is going to be a scaled-down version of the bigger console's versions. So there are a limited number of game modes, there's a pretty nice dynasty mode, and no online play. For a portable game, however, it's more than adequate. The graphics are as nice as any other EA game.
Gameplay action is where the trouble starts. The control scheme is familiar, with a few key college-ball-oriented differences. However, there is a severe turnover problem. Fumbles happen at least twice a quarter. Whether I'm on offense or the cpu is playing, it sometimes is as if neither team can complete a drive without fumbling! This is not even close to being realistic, and certainly is not fun.
In addition to the rampant cases of fumble-itis, there are other odd AI bugs that occur with too much frequency. Sometimes, while the ball is in the air, the computer-controlled receiver will randomly break away from his route and run in the opposite direction of the ball, leading to an incompletion or int. Again, this happens for both sides.
Like madden, NCAA 09 enables you to throw lob or bullet passes. But I'm not sure why they bothered with this feature, since bullet passes are -never- completed.
Upon first trying this game, I was quite excited about some of the gameplay features, the ability to run real-college-style wildcat or option offenses, and the dynasty mode. But the problems I described above turned out to be showstoppers. I kept this game for 3 days and spent several hours hoping I just had some bad luck at first, but finally became too frustrated to bother with it.
It's baffling to me that this game was allowed to be released with such glaring defects.
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