he College football season is once again creeping up on us, and as the Fraternities clean out their beer lines and the Oscar Meyer folks dream of massive hot dog sales, Electronic Arts is readying their first next generation colligate football title. We take to the gridiron with NCAA Football 07 to see how ol’ faithful does on its first outing on the Xbox 360.
As EA Sports is doing with all of their titles, they’re “building the game from the ground up for next generation” with NCAA Football 07. While that has meant basically stripping a game down to a bare minimum feature set with next-gen while offering current-gen gamers the full enchilada, NCAA Football 07 at least has some meat on its bones.
NCAA Football 07 for the Xbox 360 includes the new Momentum System, Dynasty mode, a new NCAA Photo Album, new mini-games, ESPN Updates over Xbox Live, and ESPN Instant Classics. Current-gen players will get the added Back to School mode which is the remixed Race for the Heismann mode from last year, Spring Drills (think Madden Mini-camp), and the added bonus of ESPN Radio updates to the ESPN integration. It almost makes you wonder why you’re paying the extra ten dollars, right?
Upon starting the game you’ll be greeted with a new presentation, and much like Madden, the game skins itself to your favorite team. We chose to roll with the Wisconsin Badgers and saw images of our cheerleaders, marching band, and crazy shirtless fans with B-A-D-G-E-R-S painted on their chests. Well it is Wisconsin mind you, but then again, if you’ve ever attended a Wisconsin Game at Camp Randall Stadium, these are definitely memorable images that you may or may not remember – depending on how much you pre-partied on State Street.
The control set feels much like the Xbox version. EA added a “jump the snap” button where you time it right you can cream the Quarterback or stuff a running back for a loss of some serious yardage. Quarterback Precision and Vision have been brought over from Madden (it’s not on by default), yet for each pass play you have to press the left stick to initiate it, and there’s no way to keep it on all the time. This confuses me greatly. What, suddenly you have to turn the Quarterback’s eyes on, or make him more precise?
EA is introducing analog kicking with NCAA (it will be in Madden as well), and while I didn’t think I would like it, it’s turned out really well. However, decent punts are much trickier to land. You’ll really need to get a feel for how powerful your punter is before really being able to land a decent punt in the proper place.
Play calling in NCAA Football 07 is almost identical to the way Madden 360 is laid out, except EA has exchanged “Ask Madden” for “Ask Corso.” You can have the old school way of picking plays by formation, play type, or by specific player. For those that want deeper play calling it’s available, and those that want to stick with their favorite players they’ll also have that option. However, it won’t be too advantageous to always favor specific players all the time.
One of the focuses of NCAA Football 07 is the new Momentum Meter. Momentum will swing the better each team does. For example, in one game I ran it on 4th and 1 and received no momentum. But throughout the first half I caused two fumbles, in one which was on a kick off where I ran back for a touchdown, filling the meter. However, momentum can be finicky, and the defense intercepted a ball and ran it back for a touchdown depleting my momentum and filling the opposing team. It seems to give your team a slight stat boost at certain moments - especially in home games. Since momentum can change in an instant, it makes for some extremely interesting games.
The Back to School portion has been stripped from the next-gen version, so you’ll find your longevity in the Dynasty mode. Here’s where you can perform In-Season recruiting, Red shirt players, analyze your depth chart, customize your schedule, and then play through your season. Recruitment is handled through a handy map that shows where your pipeline states are. You’ll have the option to sim through any of the portions you’re not interested in, including certain games, so you have the option of only playing divisional games if you want to.
New Mini-games include Bowling, Tug-Of-War, and Option Dash. In Bowling you’ll play through ten frames with the ball spotted at the ten yard line. A touchdown on the first play is a strike, and the second a spare. Tug-Of-War starts you at the 50-yard-line, and each team takes turns running one play until one of the players scores. Six plays are chosen randomly – and when beginning the game you can create rules to only have running, passing, or option plays. Finally Option Dash throws you in a two minute situation where by using option plays you try to gain points by successful completions. All of these mini-games can be played versus the CPU or another player. Mini-games cannot be played online, unfortunately.
Online features include an ESPN Ticker that will display real world sport stats while you’re in menus. Unfortunately, this ticker never shows up in gameplay, and I would like the option for it to pop up periodically like it would while you’re watching ESPN to give you updated scores or breaking news. Online gameplay is based around the usual setup. The game also features online leaderboards, which track your skill points and record. Finally the EA Sports Nation setup options allow you to enter an e-mail address to have your online end of game stats e-mailed to you. I would have liked the option to have my offline matches, whether single player or multiplayer sent to me as well. The more fun e-mail I get at work, the better. No, really boss, these are spreadsheets!
While NCAA does look better than last year’s Madden for the Xbox 360, we noticed a number of shortcomings with NCAA Football 07. When panning the stadium, or during close ups of the players there’s noticeable frame loss. Only when looking from the standard back view does everything run well. Animations are decent, but are often repeated for both teams. All the stadiums we played in were represented phenomenally well, and while EA is touting this new Smart Fan system, they seemed to be cheering all the time. Obviously they would be louder when big plays were made, but not once did the crowd go silent..
Presentation in NCAA is one of the better ones in years, but it’s not without its flaws. Play-by-play is handled by a mashup of ESPN’s collegiate commentators - Brad Nessler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Lee Corso. Commentary on the whole is well done, but it lacks details on specific star players. Camera work is decent, however the cutaways are a bit boring, with the same stadium pans or cameras coming out of one of the team’s tunnels. Just as most EA Sports games, NCAA Football 07 has specific elements like drive summaries or replays sponsored, which plays along well with the television-style presentation. While most of the time it doesn’t interfere with gameplay, the graphics for the Old Spice Red Zone Report block the entire interface while in the huddle so you can’t see the clock. This forces you to snap the ball to get rid of the graphics, which is quite annoying.
Other new elements that stand out are Snap Shots of replays, and the new ESPN Instant Classics. During the replay mode you now have the option of capturing the big moments with a snapshot of the action, which gets footnoted with the teams playing and the date. Unfortunately you cannot share these pictures over Xbox Live. Lastly, a game you play that has a number of tide turning moments can be deemed an ESPN Instant Classic. While you can’t replay games that get this honor, you’ll be able to view a summary of the game and check out basic team stats.
It’s not too surprising a lot of people remained skeptical after Madden was released for the Xbox 360 that NCAA would fall short, and although it’s done a number of good things for the first effort, it’s still not the same depth the current-gen crowd will be getting. So why pony up an extra 10 bones for the Xbox 360 version? It depends on how deep you want to go. Personally I like the HD, widescreen treatment, and audio for the 360. But if you want all the other frills, current-gen is yours for 10 bucks cheaper. It’s a good first effort, but hopefully when this franchise hits all next-gen consoles next year we’ll see a full feature set across the board.