NCAA Football 12

Game Info

NCAA football has always been that game you pick up before madden just so you can get your football fix.  This year it looks like it might give Madden a run for its money.  NCAA football has been around for more the 12 years now and this is the 6th game for the current systems.  For NCAA football it’s a little harder to make big changes to its game because there really are not too many roster changes and you can only do so much to a football game to make it different each year.

NCAA has done a very good overhaul on the graphics from the gameplay to the 3d grass to the dynamic lighting the game looks gorgeous.  The thing that everyone is talking about are the pre-game mascots and the 3d fans, that’s all cool but who wouldn’t rather hear about how the game has improved, most people just skip all that stuff anyway.  EA Tiburon has made a quantum leap forward in game play do to the new momentum system.   Gone are the fixed animations of the past and bouncing off tackles.  When you hit someone you feel it. This new system is the greatest improvement in football video games in the last 10 years.

There are two major game play modes in the game, Road to Glory and Dynasty.  In Road to Glory you create yourself and take this player from the high school playoffs to the BCS championship to the NFL.  This time around you can play on both sides of the ball, for me I was a QB and SS.  Road to Glory is basically an RPG, you start out with nothing and through your game play you become a better player.  When you begin your player might not even be a starter, you have to prove yourself in practice.  Even when you start you have to earn the right to call audibles or to call hot routs even to switch the run play to the other side.  Road to Glory is a fantastic mode that everyone should try.  Dynasty mode is probably the most popular mode in the game, you can take a team if you want through 30 years of playing games, recruiting, switching positions, and everything else a coach does you will get to do.  This year in dynasty you can even switch up the conferences so you can put your favorite team against anyone you want.

The game play this year in NCAA is all about one thing momentum.  If you are a running back and a defender stands you up and someone else comes and hits you, gone are the days when that second guy just bounces off.  Instead your running back just gets smashed.  EA has improved the zone coverage a lot so when a receiver runs across the middle the defender will follow and hand off that receiver to the next guy so it’s a lot harder to throw those slants.  Now there still are some lagging problems that remain in the game.  One of the biggest problems is receivers not catching the football.  Now I’m not talking about them dropping the ball I’m talking about them hitting their helmets and  just plain not looking for the ball and sometimes they don’t know where the side lines are and  just run out of bounds.  The QB also can’t just make a simple dump off to the running back without throwing the ball out of bounds.

There are a few online options, you can take any team you want and test your skills against anyone in the world or you can get a couple of friends together and play the Dynasty mode online.  This way you can compete to get recruits and take your teams to the BCS championship.

In closing NCAA Football 12 is the best of the series to date.  With the all new graphics and the dynamic new momentum system, that changes the rules on how you play any football game, plus being able to see all your favorite schools opening mascots and celebrations.  Even with the problems that were mentioned earlier it doesn’t break the game at all and I would recommend this game to any football fan out there.