NCAA Football 09

College football has never been this good!

Posted 4 years ago By - Jay Acevedo

Did your little brother ever say to you that his teacher confused him with you because you were such a great student? Well, can you imagine how hard is to be a football game from the NCAA franchise? Living in the shadow of his big brother Madden is a tough call. Nothing irritates me more than hearing people say because Madden is the ultimate experience in the virtual pigskin world, the NCAA game is less interesting.

Over the last two years, the NCAA Football franchise has shown some signs of greatness and this years’ version is no different. Well actually it is different: it’s better than the previous games and it’s the best NCAA Football experience yet. And for once, a NCAA Football game can finally receive the same respect his big brother Madden gets. Here’s our review for NCAA Football 09.


Gameplay

Most of the aspects of NCAA Football 09 have been greatly improved from last years’ version. Right from the start, players will notice that some offensive moves against the defence can now controlled with a hybrid mix of face buttons and right thumbstick movements which brings a whole lot of flexibility when you’re trying to evade your defenders. Perhaps the most interesting additions to NCAA Football 09 are directly linked with the performances of your kickers and quarterbacks.

The first addition is called “Quarterback Quiz”. If you throw an interception, you’ll be prompted to answer a "Quarterback Quiz". The game will present you three choices of defensive schemes to choose in order to determine the correct defensive play that led to the interception. If you answer correctly, the quarterback will regain his composure for his team’s next possession. Choose wrong and your QB’s composure for future possessions will decrease. Adding the fact that quarterbacks playing on the road can be rattled by home crowds, forcing them to misread routes and/or completely forget plays, the crowd behaviour will be amplified with an incorrect guess on the "Quarterback Quiz", making the quarterback see the route arrows turn into shaky lines. While the realism of being an NCAA quarterback is greatly shown here, it continues with the kicker, which brings us to the second addition. Let’s say you’re lining up for a field goal in order to increase your lead or win the game and your opponent calls a timeout. By taking a time-out, your kicker is being “iced” by your opponent. From there, your kicking meter will be covered with ice, the camera angle will change to a more dramatic view and because you need more distraction, a heartbeat sound effect will be heard and your controller will rumble. Although some people might be turned-off by these two additions, the player looking for challenges will find their match.

While last year NCAA Football put the emphasis on the Campus Legend mode, this year’s version shifts the focus back to the Dynasty mode, which is not a bad idea at all. Personally, I never really liked the Campus mode and NCAA 09 isn’t making me change my mind. But that’s just my opinion. But I know for a fact that the Campus Legend fan base is considerably huge. To that fan base reading, I don’t want to disappoint you, but this years’ Campus Legend mode has been stripped of many of its features and brought back in a very simple way in order to play the support role. Still, Kudos to EA Tiburon for bringing the Campus Legend mode back either way for those who really want to know how cool and flimsy being a scholar athlete is, but I got this feeling that the mode won’t be the selling point of the franchise anymore. But cheer up, the real fun is in the Dynasty mode, especially this year. Why? Because for the first time, you can create a Dynasty online with your friends in order to make things a bit more interesting. You and 11 of your friends can join a conference with a fully customized team and battle your way up to the championship. Of course, Dynasty means that you can recruit and sign players to play for your program but the fun part comes from the fact that can also battle over the best recruits available during your season. If your friend hated you because you made him lose the championship by freezing his kicker, you can make him even madder after stealing his #1 prospect from his pipeline.


While playing a Dynasty online will require a certain amount of participation and dedication, EA has given the players some tools in order to make it fun and reliable, even if the participation rate isn’t as good as you planned it. From the start, a commissioner will be assigned in your 12 team online dynasty in order to oversee the progress of the league. If one of your buddies is not playing that often and/or quitting the league, the commissioner will be noticed and penalties will be given while all his players attributes and skill progress will be simmed for the rest of the season. Yes, I’m sold on Dynasty Online. This addition makes it so much fun and interesting that frankly, playing a Dynasty offline isn’t that fun any more…really.
It’s worth mentioning that most mini-games from past NCAA Football versions are making a return this year (tug-of-war, bowling, etc…) and a fantasy-oriented mascot game mode is also present in the game. Of course you will understand that mascot football is cute and funny…but there’s not much to say about it. Okay two things: your mascots are beefed up to a 99% rating and they can do flips and crazy jukes while playing. There you have it…

Everything in NCAA Football 09 is great but I do have one negative thing to say about the game. Last year, the defensive line and linebackers weren’t balanced well enough resulting in crazy offensive displays while containing the opponent’s defence was dreadful and painful at times. It’s sad to see that NCAA 09 still has these problems and I hope (really) EA Tiburon will fix it just in time for next years’ version. Now that Online Dynasties are (apparently) here to stay, it will become frustrating to deal with it in the future.

Graphics, Presentation, Audio

Yes, NCAA Football 09 has a lot to offer but it would be all quickly forgotten if the presentation, the sounds and the graphics were horrible. That’s not the case here. Everything in the game stands out great, especially at 60 frames per second. While players and stadiums are once again well rendered, the animations are fluid and look greater than ever since most of the collision and clippings glitches from last years’ version are now fixed. While everything on the field is clean and beautiful, it’s off the field that the visuals are…normal. Crowds and sideline animations still stiff. No sports game is perfect but I hope the developers will try to reinvigorate the crowd and sideline visuals. I want my teammates to move away when I’m going outside the field, to pick me up when I’m down in pain or shout at the other players...maybe for 2010?


If you just bought a surround sound system, nothing’s better than a football game to test it. I’m a Michigan fan and nothing is better than playing at home on my couch, turn my surround sound on and hear the loud and crazy sound fans cheering and the fanfare playing. Just like being there with 100,000 other people cheering my Wolverines. Cool addition this year, you can add custom songs to your game experience by ripping songs to your hard-drive and using them in different situations like playing the “Imperial March” after scoring a touchdown or playing some Kanye West’s “Stronger” at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Kirk Herbstreet, Lee Corso and Brad Nessler are back for game commentary and analysis and once again they’re bringing the goods like it should. Of course, if you played past NCAA Football games, some chatter from past versions will be heard here once more and it’s understandable, technically of course. But I had moments where I said to myself: “Did they record new dialogue?” I don’t know if they did, but it shows how deep commentary can be. Either way, the commentary quality matched with the rest of the audio experience makes NCAA Football 09 great.

Conclusion

As a fan of the NCAA franchise, I’m delighted to see the progress EA Tiburon has made over the years and I’m surprised and happy to see how close NCAA Football 09 is to be “The Most Authentic & Complete NCAA Football Game Ever”. In my opinion, NCAA Football 09 is the best game of the franchise up until now and a must have in your sports game collection. If you’re a hardcore fan of the series, no doubt you’ll be getting this game… and you won’t be disappointed.

Casual gamer, if you’re reading this review and you’re looking for a football game to play without caring about the names, the trade deadlines, budgets and all, this game is also perfect for you… until you get the Madden Fever of course.
Can’t wait for the 2010 version…

Verdict: Buy!

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