NCAA Football 13 - First Take

I've been faithfully buying the NCAA Football franchise since probably around 99 or 2000 (though I didn't buy 2005 for some reason).  I've said before that NCAA 2006 was the best in the franchise.  And after NCAA 12 came out, I stuck by that, and said I would not give EA any more money towards the NCAA Football franchise.

So I bought NCAA 2013 used.  Waited a few weeks.  Didn't preorder, so I wasn't awarded with extra Heisman players to use in the Heisman Mode.  Oh no.

Glad I waited.  Glad EA did not get my money.

As I play, I'll keep a running, updated log below of all the issues I encounter.  Things that are broken, things that make no sense, and things that I think would make things better.

• I'll be brief on visuals.  Nothing has improved in years.  Crowds still look terrible and repetitive.  Sidelines look even worse.  Populate the sidelines more.  You know what?  Why not have your actual teammates on the sideline instead of just random players in uniform.  They show up in the nice little cut scenes, but that's it.  Any nobody reacts to a player or ball coming to the sideline, or into the endzone.  It all looks great from the blimp view, but once we get down to field level, it feels so cheap.  How many players are on a football team?  I feel like just enough for maybe the first string by watching everyone run out at the beginning.  It's like a History Channel reenactment of some epic battle using only 20 people.  You know what it's SUPPOSED to be like, but this comes up incredibly short.

• Ok, not so brief, as there are more things I keep thinking of.  The fields still look terrible.  So you added grass last year.  Great.  The art in Road to Glory high school games, and I'm assuming it does the same for Create-a-School, looks terrible.  Might as well have put those letters on an 8-bit machine or into a pixel editor in ResEdit (c. 1994).

• The lighting on the score at the end of a game is way off.  Can barely see any of it.  Did you spend all your time on animations for the Nissan and Sparq logos flying in and out that you didn't do this?

• Speaking of Sparq - it's just thrown into RTG with no real effect on anything it seems.  Here's your number based on how you've done, but that's all.  But were' still going to leave a big Sparq thing in the drop down menu as one of the options to click...oh wait, you can't click it.  It's just there.  Highlight it as you go through the menu, but there's nothing to do with it.  I feel like Officer Barbrady should show up when you highlight it saying "Nothing to see here.  Move along people."  There are a few other menu items like this as well.  WHY?!

• We've had the same zombie-looking players for how many years now?  The face models need updating.  Emotion looks forced if it's there at all.  Nobody looks like they're trying.  Why can't we just customize a face instead of scrolling through 50 of them?

• Is a visor supposed to fit onto a Schutt Ion4D helment like that?  Just wondering - it looks odd.  There's a gap on the side between the end of the visor and the beginning of the helmet.  Part of your peripheral vision would not get the benefit of the visor - probably pretty distracting.

• The physics engine is nowhere near better.  Tackling players still seem to latch on from irrecoverable distances.  As a running back, you'll get stuck on a lead blocker and not be able to go anywhere.  The slightest bump may knock you over.

• Running the ball just doesn't work right.  Want to run it to the outside with no lead blocker?  Great, so long as your goal is to be bumrushed by an OLB or DB who never falls for a fake or misdirection.  Want to run up the middle? Better not get your knee caught on the butt of your OL - you won't go anywhere, and a DL will suddenly pounce on you like a cougar from Red Dead Redemption.  The animation looks the same.  Scenery is better in RDR though.

• The option still doesn't work.  It's hyped as one of the "improved" features this year, too.  The AI has no idea how to run it, so if you're a RB in Road to Glory or Heisman mode, you're SOL.  Expect losses almost every time.  And if you're the QB in this situation, the pitches still don't always work right.  And none of it looks natural at all.

• In Road to Glory, why auto-generate names for everyone if I've already got a roster full of names?  Now I'm playing in an alternate universe with the same teams but everyone has names I've never heard of.  So much for getting me prepared for the season.  Probably won't play RTG much longer just because of this, unless the game mode is really that enjoyable.

• On this subject, a few more RTG thoughts.  If I want to watch a play, let me continue to watch the whole time while I'm not on the field instead of having to pick to watch EACH play separately.  If I'm the player sitting on the sideline, show it from THAT view.  Make it really feel like I'm at the game.  At least, as far as I can tell, the right playbooks are used when you go to a college team now.  But man, the playbooks in the high school level are quite monotonous.  Maybe that's how they should be?

• Speaking of cameras in RTG, what about when you're actually playing?  If I'm running a route one direction, and the ball is thrown the other, I NEVER get to see what happened.
• Why can we not get video of a simulated play, yet? If you watch it, you can see it.  But if you simulate it, that play is lost to history.  If this is the case, is it actually that the outcomes are different from each other depending on which method you used?  I've done a fair bit of simulating and watching in the past - I feel like this is indeed the case.  Offenses seem to fare better when you simulate - meaning the gameplay doesn't allow the offense to work that well, even controlled by the AI.  Too bad.  I'd love to be able to get highlights from a specific game that was simulated during my season, or if I simulated a specific play, and it turns out someone returned a kick 97 yards, I'd like to go back and watch that.

• Why, when I've become the starting RB, am I still on the field goal block team?  Why am I still returning kicks?  You really don't give real coaches any credit.

• Position battle.  Cool idea.  Except it was not a battle at all.  Once I got 700 arbitrary points, I had the position.  I should be able to see how my competition does.  Go play for play.  I bet he would have beaten me - he's got a higher OVR.  I don't deserve to start after 3 games as a freshman RB at a 6-star caliber school.

• Why should I be punished in practice or games because of a bad play call or a great defensive play?  I lose 7 arbitrary coach trust points because I lost yards.  What was the play call? A screen pass that was busted as soon as I caught it.  Or an option play that tossed me the ball when someone was right next to me.  Or just really good defense stuffing me a yard behind the line.  If I were a coach, I'd lose confidence in my runner if he didn't run straight at that line of scrimmage and try to barrel through them.  Maybe if he was continually ineffective I might lose confidence, but not if on one play he lost a yard.

• I was a 5-star recruit.  I got the achievement for it.  Didn't get the reward for being a 5-star recruit in my Legend Score.  I've come to expect things like that to happen.  Like in Mass Effect 3 when I got the achievement for helping the colonists on Eden Prime, but not the in-game recognition.  

Controller hasn't flown from my hand yet, but it could happen soon.  Briefly popped up at one point, but wasn't a projectile.

More to come as I play.  I only started playing last night, and have only done one exhibition game and a bit on Road to Glory.  Dynasty mode will be a bigger test.  Lots of things that I've had issues with in the past, but there seem to be a lot of improvements EA is touting.