The next college football season is just around the corner, and with it comes another college football game. NCAA Football 11 is a good game for the sum of its parts, but there are some issues that should have been resolved before its release.
The big thing EA has been touting up to the game’s release is how it represents each school in a unique manner, from the stadium and fans to the team’s play style. For the most part they do a good job of it. Playing this year’s OU-Air Force game in Norman, it actually comes pretty close to feeling like a real OU game. You can see the dorms to the south of the stadium and the field house to the north, “Boomer Sooner” plays after every score and the controller vibrates when the road team is on third down or in the red zone.
It also attempts to accurately represent each school’s game plan, “120 ways to win” as EA calls it. OU has what the game calls a “Multiple” offense, which uses several plays and formations. Other sorts of playbooks include Pro, Spread, Air Raid, Pistol and the Option. It’s nice to have options, but with 120 schools can’t all be unique.
The game’s big strength/time-waster is Dynasty Mode. The normal, offline Dynasty isn’t much different from the way it was last year: you pick a program, you try to meet certain goals, recruit the best players and win several national titles. The recruiting is interesting, you gauge the importance of various factors to high school players and tall about different topics to get them to sign with your school. I played as the University of South Florida in this mode, and there’s always a sort of satisfaction from being able to pry a good player away from Florida or Miami by promising playing time.
Online Dynasty is a very interesting mode, though. As the name would foreshadow, you’d take your dynasty online to try your luck against other players, or you play a private dynasty against just your friends. It’d be an interesting burn to rip away a 5-star caliber player from a friend after they have a soft commitment to their school, and then talk trash about it. The cool thing is that you can take care of your online dynasty from any computer or iPhone, and try to land that 5-star running back while waiting in line.
Road to Glory is the same as it was in previous years: you take one created player from the high school state playoffs through college to hopefully several Heismans and national titles. It can be frustrating when you don’t agree with the automated play-calling, or teammate AI. I was playing as a running back from the University of Washington, and the quarterback scrambling and getting tackled without any timeouts cost us a game against USC. The scenes with ESPN’s Erin Andrews are the same as last year’s game.
The online content will require the usage of EA’s Online Pass. It comes with the game when bought new, but costs $10 on a sued copy, or a seven-day free trial in the case of rentals. The game frequently tries to market several assistance features in Dynasty Mode, known as time savers, that cost a little bit of money, $1 to $2 each, that help to recruit better or streamline the process a little more.
The game as a whole has some issues of note. Aside from the occasional AI irritation, the camera angle will sometimes show from the opposite end of the field when kicking a field goal or extra point. There also was an instance in a USF-Rutgers game when my quarterback was going to snap the ball and just kept running backwards for about 30 yards. It didn’t cost me the game, but it was still strange. The game occasionally freezes for a couple of seconds after auto saving or as the ball is snapped. None of these issues break the game, but they’re still annoying and will hopefully be fixed in a patch.
As a whole, NCAA Football 11 is a fun experience, but I think EA could have done more. If it improves Road to Glory and fix the bugs for NCAA, it could have a consensus No. 1 next year.
Score: 7.5 out of 10