 Review By: Nick Arvites |
Developer: | EA Tiburon |
| Publisher: | EA Sports | |
| Genre: | Sports | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | Xbox Live (online play) | |
| Buy Now: |   |
The NCAA series has progressively incorporated momentum into the game. Since they introduced home field advantage in the form of a screaming crowd, they’ve slowly but surely added in more intangible gameplay elements to recreate the college football experience. To this end, NCAA Football 07 adds a momentum meter. This meter increases when you make a big play, stop, big hit, score, or generally do anything beneficial for your team. If the meter is in your favor, your team will get on-field boosts in the form of stat increases. Sounds good, right? Well, it doesn’t work well in practice. The meter is too strong and fluctuates way too much.
For example, in one game I was Oregon playing Stanford in Oregon. I was laying a world-class beating on Stanford, and the score was 35-3 going into the fourth quarter. In the beginning of the fourth quarter, Stanford made a stop on third and 5, forcing me to punt. The momentum meter shifted from fully on my side to a third on their side. As a result of the meter shifting that far, my team, which had solidly dominated on all sides of the ball, gave up 300 yards and 4 turnovers (three fumbles, 1 pick) in the next quarter. You start to see this type of anomaly throughout every game against the CPU. It ultimately feels like NBA Live does, where the CPU team automatically catches up to you at certain points in the game. Sure, I like having the CPU be competitive, but I’d prefer to do it in a manner that doesn’t simply cheat to beat me. I’m not that good, trust me, I’m sure you guys can make an AI that can challenge me without making my players grossly ineffective because you made me punt in a blowout.
Some people like the momentum system as it is, and really, I’m a fan of it in the long haul. I think it does need some massive work, as routine things like forcing punts shouldn’t drastically shift blowout games. Let’s bring another example: if I’m playing my cupcake team in week 3 (this time: Sam Houston), there is no way in hell they should magically shift the momentum late in the game and score three touchdowns and rack up 150 yards in the fourth quarter when they were held to less than 100 and 3 points the entire game.
The Campus Legend mode is a revamped version of the Race for the Heisman mode from last year’s game. The improvements make the mode work better. Practices actually give you a benefit in the form of stat boosts during that formation. After you create a player and pick a position, you also have to pick a major. Certain majors have different attribute bonuses associated with them. During the mode, you have to balance your time between studying, practicing, and social events. Basically, the difficulty of the major determines how much you have to put into studying. In order to stay afloat in one of the more difficult majors, you have to do a two-day tutoring session in order to keep your GPA high. If your GPA falls too low, you can be declared academically ineligible. You have a daily practice session, and you can choose to do a personal workout. While this will take up two days, you get permanent attribute points that you can add to your player. Generally, I found that I could get by doing a two-day tutoring session, two-day practice session, and a one-day study session and keep my grades over a 3.0 and keep getting attribute points to build up my player. At the end of your career, you can elect to import your player to Madden NFL 07 or go coach.
This mode is not without its problems. The GPA seems to fall a bit too quickly. If you blow off a tutoring session for a week, your GPA will take a major hit. I understand there has to be a certain amount of decay, but it feels like it’s a bit too much. You have to take a midterm and a final, but that’s it in terms of grades. No quizzes, no tests, and no surprises. The other thing that quirks me with the major is they never change up the questions. Most of them are on par with basic high school knowledge, and they never increase in difficulty. After the first year, you’re going to see the exact same questions repeated through the quizzes and tests. It also bears mentioning that I experienced a massive glitch with the GPA. In my first season, I went into my final exam with a 3.5 GPA, and I got the message that “no matter what I get, I will be eligible for the post-season.” I took the final, got a 100%, and advanced the day. I check my GPA, and it says I have a 2.0. I double-checked the final exam, and it was completely glitched out. It had one question with no answers and a 0%. I reloaded and took the test again and got the same result. It finally stopped happening when I simmed through the entire week up to the final without practicing or studying, and it worked. It only happened once, so I’m not sure how wide-spread this glitch is.
Also, I found it fairly strange that you couldn’t do anything during the weekends or during bowl season. This month gap is essentially dead-space. At the very least, I should be able to do a position drill on the bye week and party after home games. It doesn’t really make sense to waste the weekend times.
Perhaps the biggest criticism for this mode is that it’s far too easy to max out your player. Sure, the basis behind the mode is to give the more personal feel to the common strategy of making yourself a living legend and placing yourself on a roster, but it actually gets pretty boring. The Dynasty Mode, which has been the staple of this series since its introduction, adds far more meat and substance for the long-term player.
Dynasty Mode is essentially the same monster as it was before. Basically, you choose a program, set your depth charts, and recruit players to build a powerhouse program. This is the best mode in the game, and provides a serious challenge to keep restocking players to keep your powerhouse going. Spring Drills and the Spring Game are new additions, and help to give your underclassmen more experience. Really though, it’s the same mode we’ve seen throughout the years. The only critique I have is that I’ve rarely, if ever, had a bust recruit and that it’s almost impossible to fall off of your pedestal once you hit a certain point. Granted, that could be said of almost every major program in the NCAA in real life, but from a gaming standpoint, it can cause the mode to get boring after multiple seasons.
Online mode is handled through EA’s proprietary network. The online play almost depends on who you draw, although I did find it impossible to find someone who was willing to be the visiting team due to the crowd noise feature. EA’s online service is average at best. It still feels cluttered and sluggish, and is prone to the occasional lag-spike (especially when connecting via Xbox Live). The live sports ticker is great, and I’m a huge fan of implementing things like that into games. As with many online games, it almost always depends on who you draw to play. For every decent, fair player I’ve played, I went through a dozen of total jerks who found many new ways to question my sexuality, mother’s moral stature, and generally talk massive trash to me in 14 year old squeak-speak. This isn’t EA’s fault, although I think they should at least attempt to figure out some sort of feedback system so you can at least get an idea of who is and isn’t a player you want to deal with.
NCAA 07 claims to be powered by ESPN, but I couldn’t tell you what that exactly means. You get to look at ESPN: The Magazine in Dynasty mode, but outside of that there is no ESPN presence. The games are still brought to you by “EA SPORTS NETWORK” and EA simply hasn’t implemented nearly as many ESPN features as was saw even in the first 2K Sports games that featured the license. Considering that the license was acquired in January of 2005, it’s completely inexcusable that it isn’t used in any true aspect in NCAA Football 07. At the very least, the last iteration of 2k’s ESPN games had things like highlight reels and Sportscenter recaps. This game has nothing. At the very least, they could have stamped the ESPN in-game artwork on the score displays and play selection screens. That isn’t too hard, is it?
Bottom Line:
NCAA Football 07 continues in the long line of EA’s popular football series. While this is a good iteration of video game football, it will certainly frustrate anyone who wants to see things like viable goal-line defenses, power running, gang tackles, or really any sort of fair, realistic and legitimate play by the majority of positions on the field. The Campus Legend mode is a good step forward, although it can get boring. The bread-and-butter of this game is once again the deep Dynasty Mode, which will keep anyone entertained for a long time.
The problem with this game is that it almost directly competes with the mega-hit Madden series. If you’re a die-hard fan of the college game, this is a great pickup. If you aren’t, you might want to wait for Madden.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
|
| 7.9 |
Posted: 2006-09-02 08:32:15 PST