General

The Siren Call of NCAA 10 is Strong

Jun 5, 2009, 7:31 PM UTC

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â†µâ†µEvery year around this time EA starts releasing details for the new edition of NCAA football and I get sucked in again, thinking maybe this year it won’t drive me crazy because half the passes get dropped or chucking bombs is an easy recipe for ridiculous victories or the computer throws sixty interceptions every game or the cliff between “All-American” and “Heisman” difficulty level resembles Devil’s Tower. â†µ

â†µâ†µAnd every year I bother to get the game there’s this window when everything is shiny and new and wonderful until the Darkest Evil rears its head. I mean, it took them like six years to allow you to sim the rest of a game that you were up 60 at halftime in, and they screwed it up in a way—if you set your quarters longer than five minutes, which everyone does, they simmed an excessive number of plays—that a child could have spotted and fixed. Really, I’d be happier if EA would just take one year to *#$&ing fix everything and featured huge splashy advertisements asserting things like “NEW REALISTIC GUYS WHO CATCH THINGS… WE CALL THEM ‘RECEIVERS’.” â†µ

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â†µBut even though they didn't do this, I have to admit that a number of the whiz-bang features in this year's edition seem pretty sweet. I don't care about the "team builder" stuff—and am in fact suspicious of EA's attempt to leverage more money out of the ability to save more slots—but this is pretty awesome:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥There’s a gameplanning screen; on this you can tell your team how often to jump routes, strip the ball, etc etc, which should cut down on pure insanity from over-aggressive secondary players late in the game.
â†µâ‡¥You can “set up” plays by, for instance, pounding off tackle repeatedly and then going to play action. This might be a little arcade-gamey for my tastes if it’s not implemented correctly.
â†µâ‡¥There’s a “defensive keys” feature that allows you to sell out on a particular sort of play—say that fullback dive from the one—in a far more aggressive way than pinching your line or shifting. Good for defeating cheese merchants. You know who you are.

â†µâ†µâ†µIf it works, of course. If it works. There’s also an effort to prevent jerkos from ruining your online experience, and GT fans will be delighted to see the Flexbone return.â†µ

â†µâ†µI’m still going to be in wait-and-see mode. The last couple years the Blog for the Sports Gamer has gotten its hands on an early copy of the game and attacked it with a skeptical eye, which was hugely useful in my decision to buy or not. I went with “not” last year. â†µ

â†µâ†µThis, of course, only means I will have the urge ever more strongly this year. Here’s to hurling the controller across the room.â†µ

â†µâ†µ(HT on the links: College Game Balls.)â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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