NCAA 11 - College Football is Back Baby ! - Gotmadskillzson's Blog

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Gotmadskillzson's Blog

NCAA 11 - College Football is Back Baby !

Posted on July 15, 2010 at 04:43 AM.

(5)

EA Sports: NCAA Football 11 Photo

First let me start off to say, after playing NCAA 10 I was kind of let down last summer. Played Madden 10 was impressed with the whole pro tak thing and kept hoping & wondering if or when NCAA will get it. Because for years new features were always added to Madden 1st and if it was successful, it was eventually ported over to NCAA a year or two later.

So as the year rolled on this year, which went fast by the way, I one day turned on my 360 and seen the NCAA demo was out. With glee I immediately downloaded it. Graphically it was better then last year's version. After playing a couple of games, I popped in NCAA 10 and immediately seen how different the visuals were.

Demo was kind of short though, even with different teams to play with. I heard about the dual stick control but it wasn't available in the demo to test. So I was like yeah whatever. July 8th rolled around and a good number of OSers scored early copies and were given impressions. Came this past weekend it must have been 3 dozen OSers with this game early.

Reading the impressions, watching the highlights and looking at the pics, I kept saying wow this game looks so REAL. You know for years commercials would look one way but the in game wouldn't look as good. But with every highlight I seen I keep saying it looks so REAL, just like the commercials.

Tuesday morning, went down bought the game. Installed it to the hard drive and was instantly surprised in a HUGE way. The intro to this game is the best intro I have ever seen in a sports game. It was as though EA knew it had to hit a home run this year and knocked it out of the ball park on the 1st pitch with the intro.

Speaking of the intro, I was surprised they have all the schools intros in this game. That was something I wanted to see for over 10 years now. Anyway lets move on to game play.

Out of the box, default everything the cpu AI plays more challenging then they ever did before in a NCAA football game. The huge theme this year is 120 ways to win. Which in plain english means all the schools in the game play different. No 2 schools play a like, even if they have the same playbook.

Running game is greatly improved. They have pro tak this year like Madden had it last year. However they went one step further and added locomotion engine on top of it. Which is a thing of beauty to see. Running backs shift their body weight on cuts and jukes now. Every movement has momemtum now.

Turn too fast or lean too forward your player will actually stumble and fall to the ground. Speaking of leans, this is where dual stick controls come in. The right stick is basically your player's center of balance. Hold it in a direction and your player's body will lean in that direction. No canned animations this year. You want to dip just the left shoulder, now you can. Total control !

The passing game didn't get ignored either. Lead passing is done very well this year. WR's make sideline catches, back of the end zone catches, even full diving body extended catches. And no matter where you throw, the WR will actually try to drag a toe inbounds, even if they have to twist their body to do it.

The days of tip passes and players just watch it fall to the ground is OVER. Tip a pass in this game and players will dive for it or extend their hands and try to snatch it out of the air before it touches the ground.

EA Sports: NCAA Football 11 Photo

NCAA 11 doesn't stop there. Online dynasty is back with new features such as recruit from anywhere that you have a PC access. So if you at work or college computer lab. You can log on and recruit away from home, how cool is that ?

If anybody that was afraid to give this game a try, trust me, this way different then NCAA 10. Hands down the best college football game I ever played since the 90s. The visuals and animation will blow you away.

NCAA 11 - 9 out of 10

Comments

# 1 cam21224 @ Jul 15

Great write up Skillz.

Reading all these reviews & impressions got me kinda depressing, I still haven't pick this up.

More of an NFL guy not that big on College sports, catch games on tv when I can.

With that said, will I still enjoy it if I love any kind of football period?

# 2 stlstudios189 @ Jul 15

I totally believe that this game is awesome but, I am also more of a pro football guy but, if Madden is not as good I will be picking this up instead.

# 3 TreyIM2 @ Jul 15

Funny how I just posted, yesterday, about how I thought the dual analog controls weren't in the demo and had been playing "regular style" the whole time - NAH! It's definitely in there. I switched to auto turbo (which I only tried once or twice, prior) and, POOF, the demo felt real different after that WITH the dual controls. It's a game changer for me and I WILL be picking up the game, after going through a bunch of fence riding. Once again, I can't stop playing the demo, now, after the initial newness of it wore off about 2 weeks ago. Feels new, again, different and better than ever. Bout to get in some more demo before I head out the door to run my errands for the day, which includes PICKING UP THIS DAMN GAME! Lol.

# 4 Aggies7 @ Jul 15

Nice write up...Good impressions.

# 5 Gotmadskillzson @ Jul 15

@cam

Yeah if you love football overall you will definitely enjoy this game. The biggest difference between this and Madden is the atmosphere of the game. Nothing like doing a big play, seeing the mascot and cheerleaders go wild.