NCAA Football 11 (Playstation 3)

The NCAA Football games have been amazing since they came out. NCAA Football 11 Brings The Game To The Next Level!!!

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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!

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NCAA Football 11 is a great game of pigskin that hardcore college football fans are really going to enjoy. The core gameplay has been taken to the next level with some cool animation varieties as well as sweeping changes like the elimination of turbo and adding dual analog control. On the field all of these nuances come together with the new look to make a cool, original-feeling game. However, if you don't take advantage of the connectivity offered by Online Dynasty, then the list of modes is going to feel outright dated. If you do take advantage of the new features in Online Dynasty, you're in for a lot of fun with only a few frustrations.

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