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NCAA 2006 Impressions

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I’ve had some time now with EA’s latest NCAA offering. Here are a few impressions I have. They’re first impressions and not all of them are good:

  • The “Impact Player” is a godsend. A lot of people are saying they make a good player unstoppable, but for a young dynasty, they are saviors in shoulder pads.
  • Home Field Advantage should not make such a pronounced difference when I’m playing Brown
  • I haven’t noticed the same “dropped passes” problem a lot of other people are talking about. So far so good for me.
  • The computer can finally run on a good defense. The “juke stick” makes running a blast. Something is now forcing me to take my finger off the turbo-boost. I know it was there in ESPN 2k games before this but it’s making the running game a lot of fun.
  • In-season recruiting hasn’t paid off any divendends but it’s cool in theory.
  • The discipline system is borked. It sucks and I wish it would go away.
  • Can we please get a mid-game save? I would love that more than any other enhancement of all time
  • Can we please hire someone to make a realistic crowd? It’s like they’re not even trying.
  • My Dynasty is modeled after my High School. We are the North Royalton Bears. We are not the Bearcats. The announcer seems to have numerous brain-farts during a game. First it’s, “The Bears are lined up…” and then we get “The Bearcats take the lead!” Is it that frickin’ hard to fix this? It’s been going on since 2004!
  • And while we’re fixing the announcer, someone hire an English major to fix the grammar. If I hear, “The Bears is ready to kick off” one more time I may lose it.
  • The graphics have received another minor upgrade. They are due for an extreme makeover

That’s my first pass. I’ll elaborate on some of these after I’ve played a little more. I’m only a third of the way through my second Dynasty season as the North Royalton Bears. It isn’t easy being an Academic school in the MAC. We’re getting our butts handed to us each and every Saturday.

Sports Gamer on NCAA 2006

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The Blog for the Sports Gamer is quickly becoming one of my favorite blog stops. Moreso right now because one of the contributors, bill, is filling us in on his experiences with NCAA 2006. I’ve cooled on the NCAA series due to 2005’s lacklusterness (is that a word?). Bill (who is a Buckeye like me) did what every other Buckeye Fan does when they get the newest NCAA title — the play OSU vs. Michigan (the greatest sports rivalry of all-time). Bill has a recap of the first half and the second half, along with his impressions of NCAA 2006. Of course, OSU was victorious, as they have been the past 3 out of 4 years. Go Bucks!

So now, after reading these initial impressions, I am contemplating an NCAA 2006 purchase, something I thought I may pass on this year. I’ll probably still wait until its price comes down a bit, but as it stands now, I think I may be NCAA’ing it again this year.

Speaking of Golf…

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I’m always about two weeks behind on my Penny-Arcade reading, so I just came across this one tonight:

Absolutely hilarious. So my golf fantasies have come full-circle: I checked my Yahoo Fantasy Golf League (yes, Virginia, there is Fantasy Golf), played a round of Shot-Online, got my Penny-Arcade golf comic fix, and in about six and a half hours, I’ll be hitting the links with some friends (and fellow-buttonmashers) for a round of early morning golf. I should be asleep right now but I’m too giddy with anticipation.

Golf is life!

Why I haven’t blogged this weekend

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OSU 37 Team Up North 21 – So there’s a little game that’s been played 101 times between two storied college football programs. It often has national championship implications and almost always has Big Ten Champs implications. This year has been disappointing for OSU. A win over Michigan can erase a lot of those bad memories, and this win certainly did that. OSU took Michigan behind the woodshed and threw a beating on them. Even though they still get to go to the Rose Bowl, we have the bragging rights for another year.

Here in Columbus, it’s an all weekend affair, so I haven’t done any blogging this weekend because I’ve been too happy with our victory. While this has nothing to do with gaming, College Football is another one of my passions, second only to Video Games. Just thought I’d rub it in to any Wolverines who happen to read here.

Minor glitches in NCAA 2005

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Dynasty mode in NCAA is definitely the biggest draw for me. Starting as a new team running with the big boys in Division 1-A is tough but it’s rewarding. I also love “Create-a-team”, being able to pick everything from location to uniforms to mascots. If you make a team that doesn’t have one of the “canned” mascots/nicknames, when the announcer refers to your team, it’s either “the home team” or “the away team”. So in my recent dynasty, I’ve recreated my high school, down to the school colors and team mascot, The Bears. Well, there seems to be some confusion. Sometimes I’m referred to as the “Bearcats” and other times it’s just the “Bears”. It’s a bit frustrating that something seemingly so simple (in terms of programming) can be so horribly screwed up.

In NCAA 2004 it was picking up a fumble, running for about 5 yards and hearing the announcer scream “fumble recovered for a return of seventy three yards!” Right.

These are just minor things, but they do get my goat sometimes.

Top Five Football Games

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This isn’t so much a Top Five Football Games list as it is more of a progression of my football gaming experience. I mentioned earlier that football games have evolved over the years. So I’ve listed five games that have had an impact on my football gaming experience.

#5 Mattel Handheld Football 2 – The first in the list is the game I played at night before I had a Game Boy. Not much to see here. I never was able to reconcile the total unfairness of the first iterations of video football games – there was always one more offensive player than defensive. In the case of the Mattel Handheld game, it was three red dashes versus four other red dashes. I don’t remember much about the game play here but I don’t remember anything about spin moves or stiff arms. Just those red dashes.

#4 Super Challenge Football (Atari 2600) – Ahh, my first console football game – Super Challenge Football. Anyone who’s played this game knows exactly why I loved it – if you missed a tackle, no big deal! Just run to the left, you’ll pop out on the right side, perfectly positioned to make a play. As you can see from the screen shots, about twenty yards fit on the screen at the time. So when you made it to one end of the screen, you popped out on the other side. No side scrolling here. Again, I don’t remember too much about the game play, but I do remember being a sweet safety. Nobody got through more than one screen against me!

#3 Tecmo Bowl (NES) – Many will say Tecmo Super Bowl was the best NES football game, possibly the best football game of the 20th century, but Tecmo Bowl is my choice for #3. Of course, it had its quirks, like unstoppable players including Lawrence Taylor, but it was a great game. It still didn’t have a full team of eleven players, but it was getting close. I had a friend who actually keep track of stats between games (Super Tecmo Bowl did this) and he even chose an MVP for each of his seasons. I didn’t get that into it, but we sure played the heck out of that game.

#2 John Madden Football (PC) – I couldn’t make a list with out paying homage to the game that brought football video games to the life. I had John Madden Football for the PC almost fifteen years ago. The thing I remember most about this version was being able to draw up plays on a chalk board, with X’s and O’s. You could then simulate the plays and watch them real-time. I remember drawing up plays that had the whole offensive line pulling to block on a sweep. As I remember, that play didn’t work too well.

#1 NCAA 2004/5 (Gamecube) – Of course, this game is number one on my list. I am a HUGE college football fan, and NCAA 2004/5 is my number one game. Madden 2005 or ESPN NFL 2K5 might have better graphics, more recognizable stars and more all around polish, but for my money, it doesn’t get any better than Dynasty Mode in NCAA. The graphics are great, but the dynasty mode is so much more than the game play. It’s about running a high impact college program. It’s training players, recruiting them and getting them to stay out of trouble (discipline was added to 2005). I was a bit disappointed with 2005’s enhancements but it is still a fabulous game with a great replay upside.

Weekend gaming and Video Game Football

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This weekend didn’t involve as much video gaming as we had anticipated. Other things happened, like going outdoors and actually breathing fresh air! We rode the four-wheelers a bunch, watched some college football (my Buckeyes are reeling, but I’m not dismayed) and played some NCAA 2005 on the Gamecube.

Watching a few football games this weekend made me realize how far football games have come but also how much farther they can still go. While it is unrealistic to think a gamer would want to spend 3 hours playing a game of football (3 hours being the average length of a college or pro football game) I think there can still be more realistic additions to both the graphics and AI. For one, collision detection still has a while before it’s perfect. Body parts still go through other bodies as if they were ghosts, collisions occur and bodies contort in unrealistic (in a Newtonian Physics sense) manners, I could go on. There also should be in place ways to play other positions. My brother-in-law doesn’t really like to play offense, so when we play co op, he plays one of the down linemen. He thinks holding ‘X’ keeps his guy engaged, but I’m not sure about that. If there was a way to make a sort of “mini game” to determine the amount of success one has, would be an improvement. I really like the 1st person mode in ESPN 2k5 (even though I’m not good at it) but that would only work for one person.

With respect to the AI, it is getting better but the play calling can be very predictable and sometimes blatantly wrong. I’ve had the computer driving on me at the end of the first half (in NCAA 2005) and it lets the clock roll until there is less than five seconds on the play clock before it hikes the ball. In the process, it loses precious seconds to set up the next play or get ready to kick a field goal.

But as I said, football games have come a long way. I’ll be going over my top 5 football video games on Friday. Hopefully this will start a trend of posting top 5 lists every once and a while.

NCAA 2005 and an Xbox?!

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I just listened to my messages, Trading Zone has my copy of NCAA 2005! I’ll be heading over there as soon as the buttonWife gets home to pick it up. Picture and preliminary thoughts will be posted soon.

I also am contemplating a trade with a friend: an unused set of my golf clubs for his Xbox (and stuff, maybe 2 controllers, a game, etc). He hasn’t had any issues with his box so I don’t worry too much about that but I wonder if I’m better off selling the clubs and buying my own, new, Xbox. If I get one from Game Crazy (probably a refurb’ed model) I would also get 12 free game rentals, so that’s something I need to think about. Either way, we’d both be getting a great deal, it’s a win-win situation. We’ll be Halo’ing at his house this Friday, that’s when all the details will be ironed out.

Needless to say, I’m pumped! So much gaming goodness going on right now.

NCAA 2005 is only 11 days away!

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I posted that earlier link from work, I don’t think I’ll be doing that much anymore. Probably wouldn’t be the most appropriate activity, even though I was at lunch. Either way, I probably won’t post much from work.

NCAA 2005 is going to be sweet! Some say the pump-up-the-crowd angle will be done poorly but I have been to the Horsehoe during an OSU/Michigan game and after a Buckeye defender lights up a Wolverine, that place explodes. It might not be the loudest stadium out there but it is still a spiritual experience. And then the band blares the fight song and it’s surreal. The world around fades and nothing else matters. And this is just from a lifetime fan’s perspective. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be down on the field. Ahhh, that’s where NCAA 2005 comes in. College football season starts July 12th!

I’m still not sure if I’ll pick it up the first week. I may, I dunno yet. To me it just doesn’t seem right to start the football season until August. But I’m sure my brother-in-law will pick it up and tell me how awesome it is and then I’ll go and pick it up, too. Man I can’t wait! And with the new Memory Card, it’s like heaven has open its gates and rained a little love on us all.