Solid Effort
Another year, another NCAA football title. Now, admittedly, it would be hard for EA to make me hate a college football game, but this game actually was somewhat less enjoyable than last season.
I've played all of the titles thus far and have thoroughly enjoyed them. Even though they tend to use an updated version of the prior Madden engine, the atmosphere of college football is second to none and even coming close is usually more than enough to make the game a joy to play. This season's iteration, however, was the first one I found a bit of a grind to complete.
First off, technical problems abound. Without installing to my hard drive, the game wouldn't finish a single game. It froze on 5 straight games. After that, it didn't freeze as badly, but load times were still obscenely long, frame rates would plummet at the drop of a hat, and switching between menus is a constant battle of the device locking up. This is a major seller for EA Sports and these technical glitches are inexcusable. Over a week after launch, no patches had been released to begin to deal with these issues, so who knows if they will EVER fix it.
Game play is solid enough. But the AI still has some problems. The pass defense, to me, is more realistic, but rushing defense is still a bit of a joke. Break a tackle and you can EASILY set up blocks to go for a huge gain, even in the highest difficulty level. You can run every single play and the computer doesn't seem capable of adapting to your incredibly shallow strategy. Yet, if you run 20 straight plays and then try a pass, they will still drop back into decent coverage. True, they will let the occasional big play just run right by them, but the defense of the pass is actually solid.
The dynasty mode still has the same problems it always had. Recruiting still seems to be as much of a crap shoot as anything. You can be the first guy on a recruit's list and be preferred by a considerable margin --- and it will STILL take weeks for them to sign with you. Or they will just mysteriously sign with somebody else out of nowhere. It seems to be blind luck that is behind all of the signings and not really worth the ridiculous amount of time that it takes (seriously, the time between weeks takes so ridiculously long simply because the recruiting part of the equation is just a marathon).
The online dynasty is decent enough --- but it's not enough to overcome a tedious single player effort. The online dynasty had some problems that EA has fixed so it's not really fair to hold it against them --- but the same problems with the single player dynasty exist here as well.
Road to Glory is still hampered by the camera which makes some positions nigh impossible to play. Running with the camera zoomed in on you is a chore because you have no real chance to set up blocks. If you're not a QB in RtG, then you won't have a lot of fun on offense. You can play both sides of the line if you so desire and defense is easier --- but, still, playing anything besides DL seems too difficult because your vision is not wide enough to really cover routes or pursue the runner terribly well.
I got bored playing this after a while (I tend to nail almost every single Achievement in these types of games and I got too bored to even pursue some of them) and that is disconcerting. I don't know what is lacking here (the tech glitches ARE worse than prior editions, but these aren't NEW glitches), but something definitely is missing and the game was a step down from prior efforts. Still worth playing --- but less worth full pricing than ever before.
