NCAA 09: Unfinished Business

Well, there are a TON of issues with NCAA 09 that have seriously taken away a lot of the fun factor for me. From brain-dead AI to things that simply don't work as they should, the game is a buggy mess. Bill Harris over at Dubious Quality has a list made up that sums up the problems beautifully. It reads:

"Game design:
--speed differences are greatly exaggerated (breaks basic gameplay)

Special teams:
--kickoff and punt coverage (horrendous)

Offense:
--CPU quarterback completion percentage (way too high)
--CPU quarterback pass selection (almost no deep passes)
--CPU quarterback response to blitz ("psychic" power)*
--CPU quarterback (ineffective as runner)
--CPU running game (ineffective)
--CPU running backs (overuse of jukes and special moves)*

Defense:
--CPU defensive line (unable to pressure quarterback)
--CPU defense (unable to play man-to-man coverage)
--CPU defense (pursuit angles totally broken)

Officiating:
--penalties (almost none called)

Please note the * by two items: QB response to blitz and RB overuse of special moves. These are subjective evaluations, and hence have a different designation than the other items, which are easy to objectively document.

It's not difficult to see all of these gameplay issues. It doesn't take an expert or a perfectionist. All it really takes is some basic familiarity with college football and an open pair of eyes, because these issues are very, very obvious. Bill Abner (the dean of sports game reviewers) was one of the earliest people in the country to have a final copy of the game, and he quickly documented many of these problems."

Bill could not be more right on the money. The gameplay is just plain broken in many important areas and the sliders that are there to tweak gameplay are ineffective at best. Why was this game shipped with so many problems? Well, that brings us to another brilliant post on another excellent blog, Shawn Drotar's 5WG. In an searing article, entitled EA's Bobbled The Ball, Will It Still Make The Catch? Shawn tells it like it is:

"NCAA Football 09, in particular, definitely feels like a potentially brilliant game got rushed; something that’s bound to happen with sports titles - it’s telling when Electronic Arts’ CEO, John Riccitiello, makes a clear point in an interview with VentureBeat, noting: “I don’t think the investors give a shit about our quality. They care about our earnings per share.” I appreciate Riccitiello’s candor here, because the truth is this: it’s the number of sales, not the quality of the titles, that matter to the multi-billion dollar business; that’s Capitalism 101."

Further, Shawn adds:

"Whether these games can be “patched” or not is only partially germane to the discussion. It’s simply not realistic or proper for EA - or any other developer, for that matter - to expect its customers to purchase essentially unfinished products and hold to the hopes that said company will eventually deliver the complete experience. Nobody went to see “The Dark Knight” last weekend hoping that the film’s climax would turn up in mid-September."


EA is aware of the problems and is working on a patch to address some (but not all) of them. They hope to have the patch released sometime in September. That's 2 months after the game's release. By then, Madden will be out and many people will have moved on from NCAA 09, perhaps even trading the game in for credit towards the purchase of Madden. Will EA care? No, because they will have already gotten your money twice.

Everyone knows games are bound to have a bug or 3 when they are released. But that's not what we are talking about here. We are talking about fundamental problems that keep this game from resembling anything close to a real football game. Is it still fun? In an arcadey way, yes. But this game is supposed to be representative of real college football. After all, by snatching up the exclusive rights to make an NCAA football game, EA has assured that they are the only game in town.

So the patch will eventually arrive and perhaps it will make the game play much better, perhaps not. I'll keep my fingers crossed because I love college football. But given EA's track record, the fact that they already have our money and that they have no competition in the market, I won't be expecting too much.

But boy, Madden sure does look good this year...