NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

[youALREADYknow]

NCAA 2009:

The game with 20 irrelevant player ratings, broken gameplay sliders, broken BCS formula logic, stumbling defenders, terrible kick coverage, boom or bust passing offense, no CPU deep passing, warping players, superjumping defenders, and a plethora of online dynasty bugs.

Oh yea, and the addition of a great mode in Online Dynasty.

Online Dynasty will be the only positive memory from NCAA 09.

[sportyguyfl31]

I have no clue what game this guy was playing.

This game was an abomination in every way, and a slap in the face to anyone who really loves the game of football

[Bumble14]

Quote: Originally Posted by sportyguyfl31

I have no clue what game this guy was playing. This game was an abomination in every way, and a slap in the face to anyone who really loves the game of football

Really?

Don't you think this is a little overly dramatic?

[mercalnd]

Quote:

This in turn, allowed me to generate more pressure on the CPU QB, and I began seeing myself get 3-5 sacks per game with powerhouses like USC and Florida, and 1-2 sacks per game with weaker schools like Purdue and Baylor. To me these were realistic enough numbers, especially when you consider the fact that you really do not see that many sacks in your average NCAA game

Yet another person who assumes pass rush only means sacks. While it's realistic to get 3-5 sacks in a game with a great defense, if the opposing QB has all day to throw on the 25 to 35 other passing attempts in that game then there is still a major pass rush problem. A good pass rush has a major impact in the game that is not necessarily visible by looking at the stats. It forces quicker throws, bad decisions, shorter passes, etc. You may have been getting a realistic number of sacks but I highly doubt you got a realistic pass rush.

[rudyjuly2]

I agree that NCAA 09 was pretty darn good and that many people over exagerrated the problems with the game. However, the biggest problem I had with the game was the horrible cpu rushing game. It was just too weak on every difficulty level and the sliders were so watered down that it was impossible to fix.

The cpu running game has traditionally been garbage on default levels but I had always been able to tweak it to something realistic until this year. That problem alone caused me to stop playing the game in December. Pick up games are still fun but I'll enjoy playing basketball and baseball games for the most part until the next release.

[TrevJo]

I only bought this game for Online Dynasty. While waiting for the right people to come along with an OD to join, I played some Campus Legend. It was pretty fun. I joined the OD and experienced major issues with online play. Turned out to be an issue with my cable modem dropping packets for a few seconds at a time at an average interval of about 15 minutes. Still frustrating though that what wasn't bad enough to kick me off Xbox Live was bad enough to kick me off the EA servers. And, there was no option in Online Dynasty games for the other user to invite me back in. So season 1 of Online Dynasty was ruined by connection problems. Season 2 was pretty good, and then in the offseason we ran into the Online Dynasty Players Leaving glitch. Right now we are all pretty pissed off.

Online Dynasty was a brilliant idea. Along with the revamped recruiting from NCAA 08, those are the only two features EA has added that made the game better. And they almost pulled it off. However leaving in a major clitch like the players leaving thing on online dynasty ruined that. They need to stop trying to add so many features and do a better job of perfecting the ones they have. But, everyone wants flashy new options in their game so it will never happen.

[JAKEHB20]

i absolutely love this game. yes there a few bugs and stuff but i havent played an ncaa this deep from launch day ever. Online dynastys are amazing. if you can find the right league with house rules and all that, its golden. I'll probably play this game until 2010 comes out.

[JAYMO76]

YOU GAVE PRESENTATION A B?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Are you kidding me? Hey I like NCAA 09 but a "B" for presentation?

DIRECT QUOTE:"From a presentation standpoint, NCAA 09 turned in yet another weak (or should I say, Notre Dame-like) performance. For the third straight year on next-gen consoles, gamers had to live without any type of pregame Gameday festivities, bowl patches, special bowl presentation, highlight shows of any type, pride stickers that actually equate to on-field performance, and many of the other small nuances that fans of the franchise took for granted during the last generation."

Does that caption above sound like a B to you?

Atmosphere in NCAA FOOTBALL 09 is a joke. Where is dynamic attendance? where is the pre-game? where are the cut scenes? where is the bowl game feel? The list is endless.