Customer Reviews

NCAA Football 11

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I would have to say that this is probably the most enjoyable football game to come out since the earlier NCAA Football's (i.e. 2005, 2006, 2007). There are many good changes that seem under the surface and are not extremely noticeable at first, but the quality of the game has definitely gone up for the next-gen consoles, although it's a disappointment that the next-gen versions have not caught up to the last-gen versions in terms of gameplay. This seems like it may be changing with the current iteration of NCAA Football.

Now, I'm not saying that this game surpasses the best of the NCAA Football franchise; it's just one of the best of recent times. The running style seems to be changed, which is great; the previous running style seemed extremely fake and unreal, and this one takes a step in the right direction. Jukes still don't factor in player momentum as much, but player acceleration does take a while, meaning that if a player goes from standing still to running or running one way to running the other they are forced to slow down, cut, and accelerate. This does wonders for the game. There are still some gameplay quirks, glitches, and whatnot, but that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes an option pitch will be caught by the defense when it would've been fought over or actually fumbled by the RB, and fumbles do happen more than occasionally, but the game is an obvious step up from last year's model and the year's before.

Road to Glory was not touched at all. That is a major disappointment to me :(. That was, and still is, my favorite game modes, and the fact that they payed no attention to it is sad. But the dynasty mode, especially recruiting, was taken off the hook to another level. Recruiting can be done on a PC, iPhone, iPad, probably even a Zune HD (HEY! I HAVE ONE OKAY?! AND THEY ARE COOL!), which immerses you even more and makes you feel like a coach. This may be a little over the top for some players, and that's fine; just do what you normally do. The online portion of NCAA Football '11 is really neat-o, and in my opinion it may be my most played game over the summer.

Dynasty is as fun as ever. Make your team the super team, take a terrible team all the way, continue an already established dynasty like Florida, Alabama, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, or Oregon and improve their dominance, whatever you want, it's still there. At one point my hopes went really high. I saw that there was an option for switching teams for conferences and I went all like "No way! They figured some conference shake-up would happen and made sure that you could put teams in other places! Cool!". But no, it was just a team switcher, you couldn't actually build your own super conference. That gave me a super sad face.

The interface is cool. The main menu looks a lot like the Xbox 360's UI, which was intriguing, but I got over it (I have both, so I know what the 360 interface is). Sometimes it takes a while to load, but that is forgivable. When it is auto-saving you can't do anything at all on the game. The scoreboard (onscreen) is a replica of the ESPN scoreboard and is very nice to look at, even though you probably won't be looking at the scoreboard that much, unless you're really bored. It's still a great feature and makes the presentation of the game more believable and a lot more "gameday-like", if you know what I mean (chips, beer [pop if you're under 21 like me], dip, hot dogs, the whole nine yards).

The graphics are awesome. If you're into just graphics, you won't be disappointed by these. EA games are meant to be played on the PS3, so if you have both consoles, get it on the the PS3. The lighting effects are great and the uniforms look vibrant and more beautiful than ever. The field looks nice, but when it does replays and shows you a long view of the field it is obvious that the grass doesn't pop up. I know that's not a deal breaker, but it would be cool and interesting to have, would it not? Helmets look great.

The commentary is still recycled, and recycled heavily. If you've played these games before -- which I assume you have -- you'll find yourself mouthing or speaking the sentences with Brad Nessler and Kirk Herbstreit (I miss Corso =[ ), or maybe just turning the commentary off altogether. It gets pretty annoying after a while.

I love it. If you love college football and were angry at the previous versions, I would highly recommend picking this copy up, because EA is starting to get the college football experience right.

EDIT: After a couple more days playing the game, there seems to be some more oddities within the actual gameplay, which is expected, but is also extremely annoying. In addition to the defense catching your pitch, sometimes players suddenly stop when they are running towards the ball or going to catch a ball, which is kind of frustrating as you'll be expecting them to continue forward like any self-respecting football player would do and then they suddenly stop. Running backs, at certain points, will cut back into the middle of the field -- towards the rest of the defense -- when there is a massive amount of open yardage on the edge and they most likely would've had a touchdown. These are just a couple of gameplay quirks that i noticed that really don't change how much I enjoyed the game, but for some people they will be deal-breakers.

ANOTHER EDIT: As I said in my previous edit, sometimes the players running will suddenly stop while going towards a ball. This killed me in one of my games. Michigan vs. MSU, I go down 17 to nothing, score 28 straight with the backup QB, MSU scores 17 more to make it 34 to 28, I score another TD to make it 35 to 34. 1 minute and 30 seconds left in the game. MSU is at their 19 yard line. They throw deep on the first play. I say to myself, "Let's let my computer controlled player run towards the ball so I don't accidentally make him run the wrong way". Seems sensible, right? WRONG. He runs...and stops. The receiver catches the ball at my 30 yard line. I stop them for a 3 and out, but they hit the field goal and go up 37 to 35. I can't do anything about it, I go 4 and out and they kneel the ball. GAH!!! (Played on All-American). Really?!

First and foremost, let me state that I am a sport fanatic and that's not limited to college football. Like 99.9% of sport games available, the yearly copy is simply a rehash of the previous year's game plus a few new gimmicks (EA is obviously the King of this). I am not much a of Madden player, however, as I prefer its college counterpart because I find an enormous amount of fun in recruiting. And it's in this field that EA seems to make players' lives difficult in the sense that they make it harder than it has to be. This year, I can say with a clear conscience, recruiting has taken an ENORMOUS step in the right direction.
Let me continue my review in the form of bullets, rather than paragraph form.

PROS:
-Recruiting now takes a mere 10 minutes per inquiry/pressing of a certain pitch, offering a scholarship, scheduling a visit, making a promise (which can now be done IN season), negatively recruit against another school, etc. In years past, pressing a certain pitch could take way too many minutes from your 10 hours of recruiting time.

-Recruiting takes on a game-show-like twist. Recruits will now ask you about certain pitches rather than the other way around. Once they pick a topic, you can either "make a pitch", "ask them how they feel about it", "compare to another school" (aka negative recruit), "Change the topic", "make a promise", "schedule a visit", or "offer a scholarship". I don't know if this is considered a PRO, but it's a breath of fresh air for this central cog in the game.

-You can change the "recruiting difficulty" if you don't want to keep saving and redoing certain weeks of your dynasty if a certain prospect keeps going to another school. This is nice because sometimes I don't want to lose all the 4/5 stars to the SEC...

-The "Locomotion" game play engine is a large step towards achieving game play comparable to the KING of football games, Madden. In years past, the movements of the players were "jerky" (can't think of a better word), while this year this game offers a much more fluid football. You'll know the difference once you pop the disk in your system. Personally, I'm pretty satisfied with the actual game play. It runs smooth and tackles/catches all look exceedingly accurate. The graphics are really beginning to utilize the full capacity of the PS3 system and I can only hope that EA builds on that rather than maintain it for the next few years.

-Unique entrances for each team. I think this is a gimmick on EA's part just to say they added something new to the game but for people who go to BCS conference schools (I'm an Oklahoma Sooner, myself), you will definitely enjoy this added feature. You've got every thing from the Wolverines running under the "M CLUB Supports You" Banner, to the Clemson Tigers touching Howard's Rock before running into the stadium, etc.

-Unique offenses. College football is innately different from its pro-counterpart because of the unique offenses the majority of schools play. This year, such offenses are highlighted. From the triple-option at Georgia Tech, to the no-huddle at OU, to the Pistol-set at UCLA, etc. It certainly gets boring running the Pro-set for every team, doesn't it?

-The entire interface of the game has been retooled and again, this is a huge breath of fresh air for loyal fans of the game who have to see the same things year in and year out.

Cons:
-The "Pay-to-play" recruiting features are STILL here and it's awfully annoying because they include the options among the other FREE features and I suppose sometimes I forget it's not free and end up clicking on it (sorry for the run on sentence). They call them "time-savers" but paying on top of the $60 + tax you pay already? At least with the Map add-ons for COD MW2, you play them every other game so you get the most use out of it. The features EA makes you pay for are just side features that would surely enhance my satisfaction were they included.

-At the end of the day, if your preference is for the most realistic football experience, you cannot look towards an NCAA game for it. I know I said this had great game play, but it's obvious that EA saves the best for Madden, as millions of more people would prefer the NFL. Which makes one wonder how good Madden 11 will be...

-Same old commentary...... wish they would completely revamp that.

-Each team still only has one unique (if at all) TD celebration. It would be nice for each team to have multiple interpretations of their respective celebrations (i.e. V for Victory/USC, the Gator Chomp, etc.)

-I've noticed that there is A LOT of lag when scrolling through options in dynasty mode. I don't know if everyone else out there is going through the same problems.. my PS3 is not even a year old yet and it's the slim line one so I doubt its my system.

-More to come?? After a few days of playing, I haven't seen anything else yet. And I will update as I see them!

THANKS FOR READING!

I haven't owned an NCAA Football game since probably back on the PS2, but I had read really good reviews about this game. I've played a couple weeks now and thought I'd share some of the things that I liked:

First off, the graphics are really nice. Very sleek and clean. The gameplay is fast and easy to pick up, especially if you're used to playing Madden. The time it takes to play a full game on the default settings seems pretty decent for me (ie, it won't take you an hour to knock out a game).

Next I love the customization ability on this game. You can create your own College by using EA's Teambuilder website. Pick out your stadium, pick out your uniforms (at least 50 choices there), pick out your colors, upload your own log. I love that level of customization and hope that will be a feature that EA uses in all of their sports games going forward (especially FIFA).

I like that you can also customize your players easily online in the Teambuilder site instead of using the controller. Juice up their stats. Change them all to Freshman if you like. Change their names manually or have them randomly created. If it's a common name, the announcers will pronounce it during the game commentary too.

Then you can swap your made-up school with another existing school, and start a Dynasty that goes year after year (not sure how far out it runs). You can customize your non-conference games to adjust your strength of schedule. So I must say I really love that piece of the game.

The recruiting in the Dynasty mode is a bit manually intensive though. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I personally kind of like it, but if you were only interested in the actual gameplaying of the dynasty, then you may be upset at how much time it requires.

Having played a couple seasons tweaking my strategy, it does require some devotion. You can't really auto-simulate it, or at least, not if you want a good freshman recruiting class. I turned off all of the Helper Options, which helps give you more control. I also limited myself to about 20 prospects, as this helps keep the board from being uncluttered. I preferably only add guys who have you in their Top 3 initially. I also found that if you wait around until mid-season, you can start recruiting some Junior-College (JUCO) transfers since they seem to wait until longer in the year to sign.

The recruiting piece almost feels like a Role-Playing-Game (RPG). You check back each week to see if you've moved up on their list, or you get upset if they committed to someone else after you wasted hours of recruiting time on them. If you want to do a good job at it, it'll probably take as long each week in recruiting as it does to play the week's given game. I haven't tried online dynasty against others yet.

Overall though, I think NCAA Football 11 is a really good football game. I agree with a previous reviewer who said that now NCAA Football doesn't feel like Madden's poor, red-headed step-child.

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First let me say that after taking a long hiatus from EA football games, I recently poked my head in to see what's happening behind its developmental door and frankly, I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. It's surprising since I've bashed the heck out of the EA football games in the past. So here's me giving credit where credit is due. EA is clearly working hard on making this game great.


Now with that being said, the gameplay has its wonderful moments as well as truly awful moments. The overall pacing of the game feels spot on and adds to the drama. However, the crowd animations in the background during Touch Downs look extremely cheap and sadly begins the first step in taking you out of being "in the game".

I enjoy a lot of the animations when players are hit or interacting with each other, it's not far from perfect but it's serviceable and adds to the overall excitement. However there's tons of clipping going on especially during some of the end zones celebrations where the player clips straight through walls and into the crowd. Yet another step in taking you out of the drama.


The gameplay during my brief time in the single player felt like the best video game football to date and shows me that EA is heading in the right direction, but once taking the gameplay online the game begins to fall apart. I would run into glitches that literally cost me games. One game it actually worked in my favor where some guy was stuck in the hand off animation and dropped back about 15 yards all the way to the back of the endzone ultimately giving me a safety. That's once again another step in taking you out of all the wonderful drama. I guess in this case the game is literally backtracking in developments...


Now here's my biggest critique. The level of complexity in controlling your team has become mind numbing. The game clearly has been catering to the long time loyalists of the game and because of it those gamers are reaping the rewards. Here's the thing, I've played the 2K games as well as previous Madden games (rentals mind you) and the controls were so much more fluid and responsive in NFL2K that I was able to reassign every DB to the opposite side of the field and still have time to manually go man coverage in a zone coverage package before the ball was hiked. It was that fast.

I think the game is headed in the right direction, but I'm sure the same was said for the previous six games since any hint of any competition.

C+

The best football video game I've ever played was Madden 10, even though I've always LOVED playing the NCAA game as a big college football fan.

After Madden 10 was released and I played it into submission, I thought I would never go back to NCAA. I thought the 09 and even 10 versions of NCAA fell flat and were bland.

NCAA 11 fixes all of that. After only a short week of play, I've totally gone back to the NCAA bandwagon and this is the best NCAA game yet. The graphics, and particularly the animations are the best the series has seen. The gameplay is super solid as well, making it challenging but not cheap. You can chose any type of play style or playbook and play anyway you want and it all feels legit and smooth.

The dynasty modes are slightly unchanged but have a new interface which I think is again the best yet.

I'm playing the online dynasty with a group of friends for the first time, and being able to recruit online from your P.C. to your online dynasty is an amazingly fun and addicting obsession to help you kill time during a lunch break or during Chemistry 101.

While I am debating owning both Madden and NCAA in the same year (Have heard great things on Madden, including the addition of Gus Johnson doing the announcing) I am not debating getting Madden as a replacement for NCAA for the first time in three years.

Madden might have to wait its turn.

(EDIT: After playing it more and more the shine is starting to wear off. It isn't nearly as good as Madden 10, in my opinion, though the setup of recruiting, both online and offline dynasties is FANTASTIC and the best yet. Very visual and easier to follow along with.

That being said, I have a major problem with the passing because it is so uneven. Some routes take forever to develop and your line, no matter their skill and if it is max protection, just don't give you enough time to execute.

And many times I've fired a bullet to my WR, and out of nowhere a DB, who is not even on the same side of the field or aware of the fact that I'm throwing it to A DIFFERENT receiver than he is responsible for somehow makes an amazing break on the ball and flies across the field to knock it down. BS.

There are ways to make the game even and fair, but that way is NOT to make the AI be superman.

If this just happened once in awhile I would be ok with it... but, sheesh, it happens once a series or more. Not acceptable.

After playing the Madden 11 demo a few times Madden is much more legit and fair in terms of not having "superman" on the field.

Just got it yesterday and played my first game of the season--an epic battle between my mighty Wake Forest Demon Deacons and perennial powerhouse Duke.I poured a beer and settled in. Immediately noticed that the graphics are significantly better than last year--I am not a technical gamer, so I can only describe them as infinitely better than the cartoony NCAA 10. I typically fast forward thru the opening directly to game play, but of course I wanted to see what was coming so I went through the opening which really does a nice job of building the anticipation (even in a Wake vs Duke game)culminating in the players running out of the tunnel. Not exactly Florida v. Alabama, or Michigan v. Ohio State, but still exciting for an ol' ACC guy. Kickoff--underway. As advertised the game play is much smoother and the running much more lifelike. The player will not speed off like Wile E. Coyote when you sprint or juke on a dime. I found running to be challenging but not impossible.Passing, too, seems much more fluid and lifelike, and granted I was playing Duke, but I found putting pressure on the QB to be not quite as impossible as I found it to be in last year's model. Overall, the speed of the game has been vastly improved from the herky jeky NCAA 10, to a much more fluid pace. The play calling is far better than last year once I got used to the change--it offers a fairly easy switch from plays by formation, type or selected by coach, and it much much more variety. For those of use who occasionally need a prompt re audibles, etc, the presentation is clear, and I think unobtrusive on the screen. I am a casual guy, and I know nothing of frame rates, etc. All I can say is that the visual presentation is a huge improvement over last year, as is the game play. And no Corso reading his lines like a kid in the fifth grade play makes it worth the price of admission. If you gave up on this one give it a try again.

And in case you're wondering--Wake 24-17 on a two minute drive in the fourth capped by a sweet 24 yard TD pass on a bootleg roll out. Probably doesn't bode well for the season that I squeaked one out against Duke.....

EDIT:Played a few more games, and moved up to All American since Varsity seemed to easy. Here's what I noticed. (And I am not an All-American--I'm really a novice). I find playing defense to be very difficult. It seems to me that cycling thru the players is not as quick as it was in the previous version. When I switch plyers to make a tackle, most frequently on running plays, it strikes me that I often don't activate the tackler I really need quickly enough and the opposing runner will just go right thru me. I will also say, and I think this is a good thing, if you go for a tackle or a big hit and you are not in position, good night nursie--the guy is gone. And forget what I said about QB pressure. At the A-A level I can't get any. According to the manual hands up when your lineman is engaged is right stick up. Well that does nothing for me. The only way I can get hands up is with R1 and that is a really cumbersome move to make when your trying to do other things. I cannot get pressure on the QB. When I try to bull rush, 90% of the time my lineman ends up doing a face plant. When I try a finesse move to go around I get locked down, and low and behold the WR is ALWAYS open. Yet, the CPU apparently does not have this trouble as it is in my face on EVERY SINGLE PASS PLAY.It is aggravating as heck, but this game is still a blast.

This is one of the better football titles I have played and is easily the best in the NCAA series thus far. The gameplay is smooth and the pacing is almost ideal. Presentation is top-notch; but where the game shines is the mechanics. In game mechanics (running/passing game) and defensive pre-snap are excellent and I would recommend to anyone looking to get back into the series as it tops thus far.

I've read some pretty comprehensive reviews for this game but I guess this is aimed at someone like me; a veteran PS2 NCAA gamer who recently upgraded to the PS3. Obviously the graphics and animations are breathtaking, and the new running scheme is much more satisfying, but I want to touch some points that some of the other reviews have omitted that I found really hard to adjust to.
First of all, the control scheme is customizable to a certain degree, but some of the actions are locked, especially those dependant of the analog controller; in the PS2 version you could assign the upper R & L button for jukes and cuts for running the ball, or swim moves & rips for fighting off a block in defense, and after more than 5 years of playing like that it took me quite a bit to become adjusted to having them only assigned to the analog stick.
Second, while playbooks have become more tailored to each of the schools style of play, they seem to have removed the option to create your own playbook; which was a HUGE disappointment for me. I mean, I like having some Wishbone along with my Pistol sets for keeping my buddies of balance and I don't see how it could have been possible to not include it after all those years of having the option for the PS2.
Third I don't care one bit about the Road to Glory option, and I spend most of my time in Dynasty mode and while the new recruiting system is really fun, there have been some omissions to the Dynasty that I have really missed; and the same as with the playbooks after having them for all those years is really hard to get adjusted to not having them anymore. The first thing is the omission of the spring practice drills; these were not only great to give a little stat boost to your players, but those drills really helped me get back into the rhythm of the game after a long time without playing, plus they were great teaching tools for newer players to get a hang of some skills that most casual players might not be bothered to learn at first, like pass coverage or punt returns. The second omission is the lack of the stat boots that players might show during the season, and it was really great watching the stats of some promising freshman rise during the season because you actually took the time to play him.

And finally like most players I miss Lee Corso; lets face it the narrators for this game are there mostly for the gameday atmosphere because the commentary is kind of late and inaccurate anyway, but at least Corso made some comment or anecdote that occasionally could be fun, and his lines are sorely missed to somehow enliven the play by play commentary. If they didn't think he was that necessary for the actual ingame aspect at least they could have kept him for the pregame predictions or some live action footage.
All in all I'm quite happy with the game and if they include Corso again next year, spruce up the commentary and include the custom playbook option again this could be the perfect college football game

I purchased this game and all was well for the first month.Out of the box it was probably the best NCAA game I can Remember since 2004-2005. Very consistant (No wicked rubberband EA is known for), fairly realistic and competitive on All American Difficulty. Well, EA Decided that this year they are going to do LTPs (Live tuning package)to "fix" parts of the game that they notice are out of tune.Well as this idea sounds good on paper As of Aug 11 patch 2 was released and well what this does is seemingly takes a great game and makes it a toss up between this and NCAA 2007 current gen (Consensus worst edition ever). Now pretty much the game cheats in order to make it a close game, if you are losing you will avg 20 yards per carry and catch every pass, If you are losing you will get the run stuffed and you will miss wide open passes. This is not rubberband ai this is more like a see-saw AI. It is not that it is harder it is much less enjoyable when I know that 1st down I need to run, then on second I need to call run and audible to play action to get 15 yards. The AI is still easy to exploit but the game is now soo broken you are limited to what plays you can pick. I would say wait to see if they fix the before you purchase it , because this game is not fun as it stands. I will update this and give a better score if they fix this. If this is how they leave off I will be pretty much done with EA.

This was the first college football game I bought since 2007. And it was great. I loved it and the overall presentations was excellent. I would definately buy this if you cant afford 2012 as there are plenty of updated rosters online for free.