What You’ve Missed: NCAA Football 12 Review - cursive's Blog

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What You’ve Missed: NCAA Football 12 Review

Posted on January 13, 2012 at 08:52 PM.

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We are going to try to catch you up on some of our reviews from some of this falls biggest releases. For most fans of the sports games genre, we know that NCAA Football is the first sign of a fresh batch of our favorite games. So it only seems right to go back and revisit what we thought about NCAA Football 12 as well as a fresh look into the game a few months in.

When NCAA Football 12 dropped on July 12th 2011, there was a lot of anticipation for the game based off the demo that was released two weeks prior. But as most of you know you can’t judge the way a game is going to play until you get the real thing in your hand. But in the case of NCAA Football 12, the presentation and player interaction clearly made a huge jump in the right direction. Presentation is one of the high points in this game and you will see the difference from the moment you put the game disc in your system. Everything from the menus, pre-game, and tackling animations have a slew of new sights for you to enjoy. But we have to go back to what counts, after all this is a football game and the one thing we should be judging is the action on the field.

The Breakdown:

With a launch-day patch that covered over 30 issues in game play and mechanics, there was hope to have one of the best football simulations ever. There is definitely a better feel for player control giving you more of an advantage when selecting a player on the field and taking over.
On offense the biggest upgrade over last year’s release was the emergence of what felt to be a real life running game. With overhauled blocking mechanics as well as the removal of player suction, the running lanes would clearly open up with blockers intelligently moving to the second level and your running back would be able to squeeze through the smallest of holes and get by defenders not ready to engage in a tackle. The age old “rocket catch”/”jet packing” has been toned down, but you will notice some effectiveness of curl routes.

Defensively there was an emphasis put on the way zone coverage would play and we can say it lived up to the hype. Players were floating from one assignment to the next that didn’t seem predetermined but actually from smart decision making AI. Issues of the past are no longer the glaring problems they once were. A primary example is defending the flats now get covered correctly and don’t get left open for an easy 10 yard gain. The lack of suction with players not only helps the offense but is immensely huge when players are working through and off blocks. It gives you a sense of a pass rush off the edge without having to over blitz.

Final Note:

Even with the run game getting work as well as the pass defense, don’t think that this game is unbalanced in anyway. EA Sports took some of the biggest concerns users had last year and created the most balanced football game that has ever hit the market. There are features that I didn’t cover in this review, but I’m not overly critical of game mode additions. However I honestly feel outside of what’s covered in my review, the game mode additions might take away from how far this game has come. Now if you are into Road to Glory and Online/Offline Dynasty modes, the additions made to each have been countered by just as many negative issues. Luckily for us, at the time of this review many of the issues that plagued these modes have been fixed with a few patches released by EA Sports.