After years of tweaking, polishing and adding features, the guys at EA Tiburon have finally pinned most of the elements of simulated college football down, leaving the developers free to focus on what really matters.
Mascot games.
No, seriously, while it’s certainly hysterical to watch a front line of Bucky Badgers side-flipping through the hapless Iowa Hawkeyes, the mascot mashup mode isn’t the best new thing about the ’09 edition of EA’s Division 1-A pigskin extravaganza.
No, that’d be the new online dynasty mode, a long-overdue feature that fans of the series have been clamoring after for years. Fantasy leaguers will probably do a few side-flips of their own to realize that it’s possible for you and 11 of your Xbox 360-owning pals to run an entire season online with only a couple of glitches. (Let’s just say you’ll want to be careful how you edit and manage your rosters between game sessions.) This is a huge and welcome advance for the series, bringing it into its next generation.
 Wreak Cav havoc in the latest—and dare we say greatest?—version of NCAA Football 09. |
Just like last year, the graphics here look amazing, with each team’s stadium looking remarkably realistic. EA’s been in love with the concept of home field advantage in its college sports sims for years now, and in NCAA 09, it matters even more. You can pump up or silence the crowd before big plays, and if your quarterback gets rattled enough in that tough road rivalry game—think the Cavs in the fourth quarter at Clemson—your receivers will actually begin to forget their routes on pass plays, and you’ll really be screwed.
Unfortunately, not everything is quite as well implemented or intuitive. Play a handful of games and you’ll begin to notice some of the flaws emerge, like the way ACC teams dominate in October and fall off the charts at bowl time. The way the CPU quarterbacks can complete short passes at will, especially late in games. The alarming lack of sacks you’ll rack up, despite any and all efforts by your linemen to bust spin moves. And the ways the new juke move feature can turn most screen and sideline passes into 80-yard plays after the first tackler whiffs on them.
None of these things are the equivalent of an NCAA death penalty, but they’re the beginning of a sizable laundry list for NCAA “Big” 10, the natural title for next year’s decade edition. Hey, Tiburon: Feel free to send those marketing royalty checks my way.