Look, I love the franchise. I've picked it up like a loyal lad every single year it's been available. Like so many others, every year I have some small amount of misguided faith that perhaps the serious issues that have plagued the title in the past have been addressed. Like so many others, every year I find myself disappointed once I realize that behind some fluff, the same limitations, bugs and flaws are still present.
I suppose that's not entirely fair. Things do get fixed, but for every step in the right direction, new problems (problems that should NEVER get past a reasonable amount of testing and QA) present themselves. So sure, defenders take better angles this year, and now HB screens are only crazily effective rather than unstoppable. Sure, QB sneaks now see the signal callers just sort of slumping forwards like they're having a cardiac event, which has "fixed" rampant abuse of the same in years past. Sure, they don't call the same plays over and over and over again (like a bomb out of shotgun on 4th and short) in modes like Road to Glory anymore. I appreciate all of this work.
What I don't appreciate is that every single time the AI completes a long play and then hurries to snap the ball, I'm called for offsides because my slow plodding DLmen haven't made it across the line of scrimmage yet (in the real world, they can't snap the ball until it's been set by the officials). I don't appreciate that the rosters aren't just hosed, but they're comically hosed, like someone somewhere just assumed that casuals wouldn't care, and the nutty hard-core types would just be tweaking them anyway. I don't appreciate canned animations being stacked on top of canned animations, rather than having real physics introduced.
Another year, and more fluff. Now Erin Andrews follows your career in Road to Glory. Now the Ohio State marching band will run Script Ohio in the Shoe before games. Now you can spend points in dynasty mode to negatively recruit against other schools. Now you can spend real world money on cheats (Want to always be a 5-star recruit? Want to know which recruits will sign with you? Want an extra pipeline state?). Now you can make your own schools/teams (funny, I thought that was a "new" feature like 5-7 years ago). You can find lists all over the place of the changes, my point is not that they don't update the game, it's that most people who play it would really prefer that the core game, the basic play and functionality of the game, be addressed before we load up with sugary video clips of Erin Andrews and various band formations.
I feel a little disingenuous giving the title 2 stars, because I'll play it, and I'll play it often. As a college football fan, I'll get to 'see' teams play that won't in real life, I'll get to right wrongs that happen during the season (at least in my own silly brain), and I'll get to take in some of that camaraderie that comes with immersing in college football with other passionate fans. And, like a good little addict, I'll be sure to line up again next year to secure my copy of NCAA 11 -- which won't have many of the fixes and changes fans have been clamoring for all along, but will introduce new fluff, new bells and whistles, but a whole new chorus of bugs and flaws to go along with them.
To be fair, some of the brand new issues (this year) that have most outraged fans since the games release on July 14th have been addressed with a quick patch. Online league commissioners may now prevent the use of purchased upgrades that would otherwise afford one player an unfair advantage. The rosters have been at least partially adusted. The sliders are fixed (funny how that's been a recurring issue). That's not really the point though. For what little they did from last year to this year, it simply shouldn't have gone to market with the flaws that it did. EA knows they have a captive and passionate customer base, they know people like me are going to plunk down the cash for the title year after year, perhaps there's just no incentive to really break new ground and advance the franchise when you hold a monopoly on it.
It's a great game (and that's not a contradiction of anything else I've said, believe it or not), but every year we pay the same price for it that we would a standalone title developed from the ground up. Are you seeing updates, improvements, and new features worthy of full-game cost? After so many years in development, after the "next-gen" consoles have been out in the market so long, shouldn't there have been a more meaningful and apparent evolution of the game? Season Showdown is a wonderful new feature, so it's not like I don't appreciate some of the aforementioned fluff. It's just not worth that full game price every single year, year after year, which is why I find myself writing this review, and lamenting the fact that I remain addicted, while EA continues to seemingly do the absolute minimum, and with no attention to detail, every single year.
I'll close the way I opened, because I know daring to knock the game and EA isn't going to sit well with some -- I love the franchise, I play the game religiously, and that's not going to change this year. I just wish I felt a little less like a chump with every new annual release.