The Gamer’s Middle Finger is going to take a week off from the usual unbridled rage to review EA Sports newest release, NCAA Football 12.  For the uninitiated, college football is the amateur version of the NFL played by collegiate student-athletes.  Except in the South.  Below the Ohio River, college football is a hybrid of family, religion, Grandma’s apple pie, and sex.  It’s hard to explain to an outsider, but you just have to see an evening college football game in a Non-Kentucky/Non-Vanderbilt SEC stadium.  Of all the yearly sports releases, the NCAA Football series is the only one I buy on an annual basis.  Is it still worth a perennial purchase?  Yes, but not by much.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first.  The default controls have largely been unchanged since 1998.  You still press X to snap the ball, and then your controller’s buttons to throw to the corresponding receiver.  Tap for a lob pass.  Hold it for a bullet throw.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  This is one of the things I like about the NCAA/Madden series:  I know how to play when the game comes out every year.  There are usually only a few minor control tweaks to learn.

The graphics are essentially the same as last year’s edition, which means they’re starting to show their age.  I know the series has its graphical defenders, but you can’t put NCAA Football next to MLB: The Show and not see the immediate and striking differences.  The presentation is basically the same as well, although the more popular schools get their actual field entrances prior to the start of each game.  It’s a nice touch, but I found myself wanting to skip them for the most part and just get to the field.  EA Sports has also hyped 3-D grass this year.  To be honest, I never really had time to check out the pretty grass because I was trying to read the defense and avoid a sack.  You only really get to see it in instant replays anyway.

 

I was a little disappointed with the sound.  The crowd yells at appropriate times, but is actually quite sullen the rest of the game.  Brad Nessler and Kirk Herbstreit call the action again.  It’s become popular on the internet to hate on Lee Corso (Who doesn‘t the internet hate?), but he is missed in this booth.  There are often gaps in the commentary that needed to be filled.  The Sunshine Scooter is better than awkward silence.  Nessler and Herbstreit are fantastic at what they do.  I just wish this was reflected in the virtual world.

As a fan of this series from the beginning, it’s been fun watching the franchise evolve from its debut in 1998 to its current iteration.  Be it prospect recruiting or online dynasties, I can’t think of a better improvement than this year’s revamped zone defenses.  I dare you to not smile the first time you see an opposing DB point at a WR and pass him off to the next defender as the receiver runs through a zone.  Combined with QB’s who will actually overthrow receivers 4-6 times per game, it makes for much more realistic passing stats, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment when you drop back, find the proper hole in the zone, and complete a pass.

You will also find opposing defenses aggressively patrolling the flats.  In past versions of the NCAA franchise, you could exploit the flats for easy 7-12 yard gains.  In NCAA 12, your RB will need smelling salts if you float a pass to the flat.  Defenses have further been improved thanks to the death of suction blocking.  An elite pass rushing defensive end is finally an elite pass rushing defensive end.  He is no longer absorbed into an offensive tackle never to be heard from again.  From an offensive standpoint, suction tackling is gone as well.  Remember the old days when your RB had a seemingly clear path to the end zone on a sweep only to be magically run down by a LB whose Speed rating was 15 points lower than yours?  That doesn’t happen anymore.  The whole game just looks more realistic, though it hasn’t reached the true physics-based action of Backbreaker.

Dynasty mode gets one major change, and that’s the introduction of the Coaching Carousel.  You create a coach (Men only.  Sorry, ladies.) at the beginning of your dynasty and select a job.  You can go straight to the top and be a head coach, or you can select an offensive or defensive coordinator’s position.  If you accept a coordinator’s position, you are only responsible for calling plays on your side of the ball and recruiting.  You can simply call the plays and let the CPU execute them, or you can take control yourself on the field.  Regardless of which side of the ball you choose to coach, there are goals in your contract you must meet or find yourself in the unemployment line.  For example, as an offensive coordinator, you will be expected to average a certain number of points per game, gain X number of offensive yards in a season, and get at least Y touchdown passes.  Performing well and meeting goals will ensure that other schools will come looking for your services at season’s end.  I liked the immersion of this feature, but found it a little unrealistic you could pretty much take any job you wanted from the get go.  It would have been more realistic if you had to start out as a coordinator at a small school.

Staying in Dynasty mode, recruiting is unchanged as well.  I have mixed feelings on the recruiting system.  The game rewards you for being a vigilant recruiter and taking the time to talk to each recruit as opposed to doing a ‘quick call‘.  You’ll make much more progress by doing your own recruiting than trusting the computer to do it, though it is time consuming.  Recruiting in Dynasty mode is the sports game equivalent of grinding.  My chief complaint with recruiting is that it feels pre-determined at times.  I wish the process were more transparent where I could see exactly what the other schools are doing with recruits.  I’ll spend 60 minutes with a recruit and still can’t surpass State College U who spent 20 minutes with the same guy.  I also don’t understand why my recruiting pitches are chosen at random by the computer.  If my Coach Prestige is a D+, why should I ever have to bring that up with recruits?

Finally, it should be noted that creating Custom Playbooks is now an option, though it is slightly cumbersome and needs a faster way to filter through plays.  I’m usually content with Kentucky’s playbook, but it’s nice to see EA Sports listen to their fans, as many have asked for this feature.

 

Road to Glory mode also sees upgrades this year.  In an effort to squeeze more play time out of RTG, you now get to play your entire senior season of high school football, and your created player can play both sides of the ball.  Iron Man football, anyone?  You can upload one of your created teams from Team Builder and edit the names of the high school teams on your schedule.  You can also edit their color schemes so you can actually recreate your high school’s rivals, even adjusting how good each school is.  Once you’ve created a player and selected a position (or two), you pick 3 colleges that you’re interested in.  As you play your senior season, you get awarded points for your performance that go toward earning your scholarship offer from your selected schools.  As you might imagine, you have to earn more points to get a scholarship to LSU than you do at Middle Tennessee St.  Furthermore, other schools will start to show interest in you as your virtual self turns on Friday night’s lights.

The other big change to RTG mode is the introduction of Coach Trust.  As an 18-year old freshman, your head coach doesn’t have the same faith in you as he does a 5th year senior QB.  If you’re playing QB, you have to earn the right to call hot routes and pre-play audibles with solid QB play.  I thought this was a very realistic twist to the game.  Furthermore, every game and practice earns you XP, which in turn can be used to purchase stat upgrade packages.  Many will decry forcing RPG elements into a sports game, but I loved the fact the developers gave me a valid reason to take practice reps.

So where does NCAA Football 12 go wrong?  I love when a game ups the difficulty, and its developers demand my best.  However, demanding the best is a two-way street.  While the Ninja Gaiden series is a workout for your fingers, you tolerate it because the controls are sublime, the camera doesn’t fail you, and skill will prevail.  NCAA Football 12 has increased the speed of the pass rush and the intelligence of the pass defenders to enhance the difficulty, which is why it is so frustrating that your WR’s and TE’s drop so many passes.  The slightest bit of contact between a defender and your intended receiver results in a dropped pass, leading to many controller-tossing moments.  I usually averaged 5-8 drops per game.  In another odd glitch, a perfectly thrown pass would bounce off your receiver’s helmet another 2-4 times per game.  I’ve seen this happen in real life.  It usually happens a handful of times over a season and makes good fodder for blooper reels.  It doesn’t happen multiple times per game EVERY game.  It’s very disheartening to dodge a pass rush, find a hole in the zone, and float a pass over a defender’s head only to have Stonehands drop the ball, that is if he’s even looking for the pass in the first place.  However, there is one group of players who NEVER drop a pass…

Those damn linebackers.  They are back and better than ever.  The linebackers in NCAA Football 12 are some sort of Deion Sanders/Ray Lewis hybrid.  They still have their 83-inch vertical leaps and it is virtually impossible to get a pass over their heads.  There are many instances in each game where a linebacker standing 10 yards from the line of scrimmage jumps up to intercept or knock down a pass that’s being thrown 25 yards downfield, which I thought was a scientific impossibility.  And who needs two hands to make an interception when only one will do?  After you throw your 3rd INT to a leaping linebacker in the same game, the urge to go play something else becomes very strong.  This is essentially suction pass defense.  They got rid of suction blocking and tackling; let’s hope they do the same for suction pass defense next year.

Finally, play action pass plays still result in too many sacks.  A running joke among fans of the franchise is that play action should just be called “sack action” because the slow and deliberate play fakes turn 2nd and 1 into 3rd and 9.  There’s no excuse for this issue not to have been addressed by now.  Play action passing is a staple of productive offensive football.  The fact it’s still broken after all these years is…well…offensive.

But you still come back to the game because it’s college football.  If you’re a Saturday tailgater, have www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com as your home page, or were the clutch kicker of Georgia’s 1980 national championship team, this is your game.  It is a step up over last year’s edition, mainly for the improvements to the defensive AI, Coaching Carousel, and the improvements to RTG.  At the same time, it is getting harder and harder to justify a yearly purchase.  For NCAA Football 13, just give me a roster update and take two years of development time to fix the aforementioned problems and bring us THE DEFINITIVE COLLEGE FOOTBALL EXPERIENCE in NCAA Football 14.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to call this 5* RB recruit and tell him Notre Dame’s prestige is a little overrated right now.

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