NCAA Football 14 updates: Game will feature Kinect, Ultimate Team, more

With college football’s offseason more than halfway over, we can start thinking about things that mean we can start thinking about college football, like NCAA Football 14. We already know Michigan-quarterback-turned-Jaguars-running-back Denard Robinson will be on the cover, that the game will feature revamped presentation, and that it should have better blocking due to a new gameplay system, but let’s learn more about the new game.

Here’s some of the most recent items in Polygon’s storystream on the game.

- You’ll be able to use Kinect commands in the game - vocal input like audibles and calls to hurry-up your teams offense, much as the last edition of Madden had. So you can call plays like the QB - no word on if the new game allows you to hold up Oregon-esque play-calling signs, though.

- The game will now feature neutral site games, to account for bowl games and the many early-season matchups between elite squads played in NFL stadiums. The Georgia Dome is in a trailer, and Polygon reports Soldier Field is in the game, so it seems likely many of the important postseason games played in stadiums EA Sports has already mapped out for Madden will be featured.

- Ultimate Team mode is in the game, which is sort of intriguing: if you’re not familiar, its a play mode in other EA Sports games where you are given a starter pack of players, but earn points or gain them by selling the “cards” to buy other players, allowing you to build a team and play as it. Hitch with the NCAA, though: the players supposedly aren’t real, rather fictional representations of the real-life college athletes. In other games, real-life accomplishments of athletes change the value of the players’ cards, that can’t happen with the NCAA. It’s not clear whether this feature will give you the cards of the “fictional” players or perhaps past college football greats, but its a weird fit.

- Polygon had a nice feature on how NCAA’s makers cope with the wide number of teams, styles and inherent unpredictability of college football.

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