NCAA Football 12 - Xbox 360

At The Top Of Its Game?

Matthew Kato — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:25:00 GMT

The year after a championship can be tricky. You may be the team to beat, but you still have a long road ahead of you as you try to recapture that magic. Last year, EA came out with a great college football product that captured the feeling of the sport. NCAA 12 builds upon NCAA 11 with a list of improvements, but how much better is it?

Going into this review, I was most interested in NCAA 12’s promise to fix the magnet tackles and catches from years past. For the most part, developer EA Tiburon succeeded, yet the game feels much like it always has. The new tackling button doesn’t create unrealistic whiffs, nor does the catch button facilitate unbelievable grabs. You won’t see wide receivers slide across the field towards the ball or tackle animations engage too soon. True multi-defender gang tackles don’t occur, either, although they look better than they did last year because multiple defenders can throw their weight around to change the trajectory of the runner.

The franchise’s improvements, however, are balanced by an ongoing problem – the AI’s lack of ball awareness. While I’m glad that receivers don’t magically shoot forward to make catches, there are times when the opposite happens – the ball sails by them and they don’t even put their hands up to catch it. The AI’s ball awareness improves as you move away from the default difficulty, but even then you’ll see the occasional defender letting the ball carrier run by without attempting a tackle or an AI QB make some glaringly bad throwing choices. At least defenders are more aggressive, moving fluidly in their zones, jumping passes, and providing tighter coverage in general.

NCAA’s gameplay wrestles with the constant process of improving the past, and I think Dynasty Mode’s new Coaching Carousel reveals a need to update the series’ recruiting component. The Coaching Carousel lists goal-based expectations that influence your coaching prestige and keep you gainfully employed. This provides more structure to Dynasty mode, but it didn’t change how I went about my business. Recruiting was renovated just last year, but I wish the points you get for talking to recruits were more spread out and distinct (right now you can get a similar amount of points for seemingly disparate answers) and that recruiting encompassed the physical and mental traits of players instead of just discovering whether they like the campus weight room. Improving recruiting could take the coaching experience to the next level.

Road to Glory’s additions are more numerous than the Dynasty changes, but stop short of being a full overhaul. Earning coach’s trust through your play and working your way up the depth chart isn’t hard, and I have mixed feelings about the mode. It’s fun to upgrade your player and unlock the ability to call audibles, but that’s all stuff that I wish I had from the beginning.

NCAA 12 is better than NCAA 11, and yet I feel like we’ve come to the point in the series’ lifecycle where the changes – while all worthwhile – are getting harder to notice. Perhaps that’s because of all the hard work has already been done. Consider the game’s online dynasties, which are already full-featured enough that one of its main new additions – being able to sim ahead a week from your computer – is an optional pay-to-play feature. When things are going this good, it seems insane to ask for an overhaul of some core features like recruiting. But as they always say in football, you’ve got to fight for every yard.

NCAA 12's Road To Glory Starts Here

Matthew Kato — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 22:43:00 GMT

Road to Glory mode has been ill-served in the past few years, but EA Tiburon is focusing its attention on the mode for NCAA 12 with some structural changes.

The feature is being helmed by ex-Auburn running back Alex Howell, who wants to bolster the experience through three main new features: expanding the high school segment of the mode, Coach's Trust, and the upgrade store.

Players start Road to Glory mode playing through a full high school senior season. You can even edit your schedule and import teams from Team Builder to replicate your real school's actual schedule. The better you do, the more recruiting points you earn. During your senior season you'll be actively recruited by schools of varying prestige and location, and you can even be recruited on both sides of the ball since you can play both offensive and defensive positions during your high school season. Based on your performances each week, you accrue recruiting points that go toward earning you a scholarship at the three schools you put on your short list before the season starts. If you're putting up impressive numbers, more schools may approach you about scholarships as well. You can also walk on elsewhere if you like.

Once you get to college, you have to work your way up the depth chart by earning Coach's Trust points. If you're not a starter, these are earned by excelling in the newly formatted practices, which now boast 25 reps in a single session. You may also have an opportunity to earn points as a backup if you see the field via an injury or during mop-up time. When you pull even with the player on the next rung of the depth chart, you'll have to compete against them for the spot in a glorified practice session called a Position Battle.

Deep Inside NCAA Football 12

Matthew Kato — Mon, 23 May 2011 16:00:00 GMT

This year's installment throws a number of new features at its Dynasty mode, and we tell you exactly how you can make your mark.

DYNASTY MODE

Custom Conferences

Instead of just being able to swap teams between conferences, now you can expand or shrink conferences from four to sixteen teams
You can set conference rules from allowing Thursday games, protected rivals, division names/alignment, scheduling of conference games, location of the conference championship game, and more
You can also edit the bowl tie-ins, so the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl could not include the Big 12 or remove tie-ins altogether and just go off of straight BCS rankings. You could even make it so independents like Notre Dame don't have a tie-in to any bowls, which sounds like a great plan
No conference creation or BCS playoff-style tournament
Conferences can be changed from year to year

Create a Coach/Coaching Carousel

Start out as either a head coach (use an existing coach or one create one from scratch) or coordinator. Coordinators naturally only call and run plays for their side of the ball. Coordinators will still recruit, however
Can edit any coaches/players that are existing on the disc. This can be posted as a file online for others to download
The game wants to replicate the coaching carousel of the NCAA, so your contract status and goals will be closely monitored from year to year. Depending on the school, you'll get goals like getting a bowl birth, having a top recruiting class, winning a national championship, and much more. For coordinators, goals will be stat based
Your coaching prestige and job security change from week to week, so you'll have to ride the rollercoaster all season, and this also affects your recruiting. If you're on the hot seat, for example, players may be less inclined to sign onto your program
AI coaches will retire, get fired, and hop from job to job, and this will affect the entire coaching landscape. The AI will hire coaches based on things like whether a candidates is an alum or not, coaching style, etc. You will also get offers while you are currently employed
Although you can start out as a coordinator, when you are a head coach you do not hire your coordinator positions
In online dynasties, the commish sets what level everyone is at, whether that's one-star defensive coordinators or full-on high-caliber head coaches

Online Dynasty Web Browser

Commish can advance the week from the web – but only if you pay a one-time fee of $2.99 or 240 Microsoft Points
You can super-sim your games versus the CPU on the web – including calling plays, modifying your depth chart, and more. You can also pause the game at any time, sim forward a quarter, etc. Again, however, this will cost you a one-time fee of $2.99 or 240 Microsoft Points
Both of the above browser features can be bought in one Commissioner Pack for $6.99/560 MP, and the pack also includes the ability to be commish to up to five dynasties

Misc.

Custom Playbooks: Add remove plays and formations at will. You can set up exactly how you see your playbook, from grouping all medium passes to putting all play-action plays together, and more. This is not sortable via your NCAA browser page
Recruiting in Dynasty mode has been tuned, but not changed greatly

For more on NCAA, check out our screens and trailers below (including this story on the game's zone defense), as well as our previous preview detailing some of the gameplay changes.

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NCAA 12's Defensive Lockdown

Matthew Kato — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:52:00 GMT

NCAA is trying to implement some important gameplay changes to this year's game – including a new tackling system – and now EA has released a video showing off some improvements to the game's zone coverage.

Here you'll see designer Ben Haumiller talk about how the new zone coverage will make skinny post passes and dump offs in the flats harder. It also looks like defensive players will be more aggressive in attacking receivers traveling through their zones.

For more on NCAA Football's improvements, check out our latest preview.

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Continuing a Dynasty

Matthew Kato — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:00:00 GMT

NCAA was a better game than Madden last year, and it was partially due to what designer Ben Haumiller has called an all-encompassing approach to development. Instead of highlighting a marquee focus for the year, the NCAA team made sure that they made improvements in a wide swath of areas. It paid off then, and hopefully it'll do so again in NCAA 12. Haumiller promised additions to various areas of the game, including online dynasties and custom playbooks, but right now EA Sports is talking about two features in particular: the game's presentation and its new tackling system.

Last year, a big deal was made about a new visual presentation, and this year the improvements continue with a new lighting system that uses different layers of exposure to reveal extra player detail as well as provide a visual pop. Moreover, lots of work has been done to beef up the custom team entrances, whether that's the spear of Florida State's Chief Osceola or Colorado U's bison. Best of all, these will be shown from different angles each time to help keep them fresh.

For fans of schools without famous pre-game ceremonies, don't worry, your team won't lack excitement. The game's presentation as a whole is being improved through things like more of a presence from ESPN, bowl- and conference-specific intros, and end-of-quarter highlights just like on TV.

NCAA 12's new presentation is alluring enough, but arguably more important work is being done to the title's gameplay. Suction/magnet tackles, blocks, and catches have plagued both NCAA and Madden for years, and while Haumiller wouldn't say that the game contained a whole new physics system, it is clear that the it's much smarter about the way it runs animations.

Tackles don't initiate until a defender makes contact with the ball carrier, which not only cuts down on animations (which were sometimes also mismatched) from running too early and thus causing players from unnaturally sliding towards each other, but this new contact system also creates more realistic tackles.

Since tackles are no longer initiated until direct contact is made, naturally gamers' timing is going to be off when they go to lay a hit on the ball carrier. While the right analog hit stick remains, the game has also changed the dive tackle button to a more generic tackle button. Press it just before contact and your defender will break down in anticipation of contact. Thus, it will help wrap up and drive through the ball carrier.

You can apply these new interactions to other areas, whether it's offensive linemen moving their feet to actually engage a defender correctly or receivers catching passes. Haumiller showed off how this applied to WRs diving to catch balls. Since the game no longer slides receivers into position before they make the catch, diving at the right time can ensure you grab those balls thrown just out of reach.

Better AI zone play from your defenders has also been added to shore up some of the franchise's legacy issues, and this means that a linebacker or corner will now trail and shade receivers out of their zone before passing them along to the safeties.

According to Haumiller, these additions and improvements are just the tip of the iceberg, and if that's true, then the series will have likely once again followed a winning game plan to success.

For more on NCAA, check out the video below as well as our previous coverage including:

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The Grandeur of NCAA 12

Matthew Kato — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 22:56:00 GMT

The first details about NCAA 12 are slowly coming out, and this teaser trailer from EA Sports showcases some of the college pageantry in the game.

Today the publisher also announced that former University of Alabama running back Mark Ingram has been voted as the cover star for this year's game, which comes out on July 12.

You'll probably notice in the screens and the video below that the game is looking pretty good thanks to a new feature called HDR lighting. You can see the first developer diary about HDR lighting in this previous preview. This new look is augmented by increased presentation, including more pre-game festivities to get your blood going.

Stay tuned for more on NCAA 12 – including news about some important gameplay changes – in the coming days.

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The New Look of NCAA Football 12

Matthew Kato — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:22:00 GMT

A couple of the developers at EA Tiburon talk a little about NCAA Football 12 and give a tease of some of the new features in the game.

This video trailer/developer diary (featuring producer Ben Haumiller and art director Jean Adams) talks about the HDR lighting in the game. Last year NCAA 11 introduced a new look for the franchise that was pretty cool, but this clearly takes things to a new level. It's about how different parts of the players are lighted appropriately and how exposure makes things pop.

It's also worth noting that these aren't just still shots, but appear to be taken from a paused replay, allowing art director Jean Adams to pan around an actual scene from the game. Will it look this good in real life? We can't wait to see.

Apart from the new uniforms, you'll also notice turf coming up from the field and what look to be different kinds of tackles from defenders, including sliding.

We expect to hear more on the game as spring goes by so stay tuned. Until then, enjoy the video and screens below.

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Here's a look at a comparison shot of the grass between this year and last year's game