Other than drunk Mario Kart sessions while attending Penn State, I owned video game consoles solely for sports titles over the past 15 years or so. From Blades of Steel to Joe Montana Football to the MLB the Show and NCAA Football series, my love of sports games meant I had very little time for other genres.
Over the past few years, that has changed with my focus shifting more to FPS and Action games for the first time. I owned both Madden 10 and NCAA 10 last year but they did not get nearly as much playing time as they had in the past. After not playing many sports games in the last eight months or so, I still went out and picked up NCAA 11, perhaps out of habit.
As with most yearly series, new features and better graphics are always the first thing people look for. Aesthetically speaking, NCAA 11 is an improvement from its predecessor. The game has a more fluid feel thanks to some enhanced animations and graphics. The cut scenes are very impressive while the actual gameplay seems as realistic as EA will be able to get with this generation of consoles.
I did run into a few glitches but no major problems. For example, when playing against Kent State in dynasty mode, their quarterback missed delivering the handoff and continued to run straight back for 35 yards with his outstretched arm into his own end zone. (In all fairness to EA, that play might actually be in Kent State's playbook since they play in the MAC)
Also, while the menus have a cleaner presentation than last year, it seems like loading times have increased.
There are a myriad of offenses to choose from when preparing for your game, adding to the authenticity of the college experience. The pistol, the wishbone and the wild hog allow you to play to your team's strengths while bringing a whole new level to NCAA playcalling.
Not much has changed as far as the game modes. In Dynasty Mode, recruiting has become a bit trickier and it seems you'd be better off taking the time to manually recruit than to simply select the quick call option. More of an emphasis has been placed on negative recruiting and there are several options for you under each topic of conversation. From what I can tell, the difficulty has been adjusted to be more accurate, meaning it's easier to beat the teams your team should beat and harder to beat the teams your team shouldn't beat. In the past, playing on the harder levels has resulted in teams like Duke playing like Alabama on their best day.
The Road to Glory mode has seen the least improvements. I could be wrong, but I think Erin Andrews has been wearing the same outfit for over 2 years now. Very little, if anything, has changed here.
Sadly, Lee Corso is not in this year's NCAA Football. When I first started watching College Gameday, I absolutely could not stand Corso (Google image search for "Lee Corso is a penis," good times). After a few years, I couldn't imagine college football without him and his crazy uncle behavior. The game doesn't feel quite right without him shouting into your ear every now and then.
Overall, this game is exactly what I expected- slightly improved graphics and gameplay while remaining very similar to its predecessor. As I said before, I am not sure this generation of consoles will allow for much more of a breakthrough so this is all we can hope for each year.
That being said, it's been refreshing to play a sports title after being away for so long.
Overall 8.5/10
-Mark
It's been six years since EA Sports cancelled NCAA Football, but now it's time for the storied franchise to make a comeback.
"It’s apparent to us that the NCAA’s decision to end its long and hugely profitable relationship with EA is tied directly to the pressure our litigation is bringing to bear."
They can still make a college football game with individual licences from the Schools. Although it will be hard to sell as the player likenesses will have to be extremely generic
Hope NFL follows in their footsteps, anyone know when that licensing agreement runs out? I would love some competition from other studios. Especially from Sony like how they rule with The Show. Sony hockey game sounds good too, mmmm
The NFL contract ends this year, and from what I've read, EA no longer wants to pay the NFL asking price for the exclusive contract so things could get interesting.
On a side note DirecTV is rumored to be considering whether or not to renew their Exclusive Sunday Ticket contract that expires in 2015, so it appears the NFL is pricing themselves out of lucrative deals.
Online support for a number of 2010 EA Sports titles is set to end next month.
NBA Jam ? w00t 0_o Thankfully I don't buy any sports games. I hope they are talking about NBA Jam disc based version not the On fire downloadable one
I can understand the need to shut down servers. But doing it for games that only came out last year is a bit ridiculous.
I normally try and defend EA on here because I don't think they are as bad as many people make them out to be but but this would annoy me if I owned any of these games.
They're probably following 2k's lead. 2k has already shut down nba 2k12 servers. Which means the average life expectancy u can get from playing nba 2k13 (if u were to buy it now) would be about 10 months. Don't expect to play online longer than that. That means there product is a NO buy for me. If they offered LAN option on the pc side u could always use Tunngle to play online, but they don't so there's no way to play online.
wow they shut down 2K12 servers already???
at least EA gives people 2-3 years to play online, wow. nobody can complain about EA now
and to be fair to EA they shut servers down based on what percentage of people still play online. I remember them saying that they shut servers down which make up less than 1% of traffic across all EA servers, at least that's what they say.
"nobody can complain about EA now"
- torchic
Yes we can. 2k sports are also on my "no buy" list.
"The decision to retire older EA titles is never easy." That's also what they said when they shut down the servers for BF2: MC.
I think maybe with the release of pay for your own server on BF3 this is what EA might continue to use for all games giving an option for people who want to play it online.
I'm so sick of EA and all the BS, i'm sick of a lot of publishers anymore.
