NCAA Football 11: Thoughts and Impressions

The new locomotion system deserves a standing ovation. There's a careful balance that goes on between momentum, control, and acceleration and it feels like NCAA got it right. If you're running in a full sprint and want to change direction, your player responds immediately, but not in an unrealistic way. If you hit in either direction on the left stick, the player immediately plants to make a sharp cut. It won't result in an immediate change in direction, but its enough of a move to change the pursuit angle of oncoming defenders and fake them out. You can tack a juke or spin on to it to get even more elusive.

The animations are crisp and consist of a wide variety. Through two games, you very rarely see the same animations with at least 2 to 3 "wow" moments. Unfortunately, although pro-tak style gang tackling is supposed to be in the game, I do not recall seeing any animations with more than one defender involved in a tackle. The collision detection is done well however, so it could be an issue of tuning the amount of times gang tackles occur.

Defense has been tough on All-American difficulty especially against the pass. Defenders sprint out to the flats and respond to the deep ball. Defensive Ends and LBs still make out of this world plays in pass coverage which is extremely annoying, but if you've played EA football games for the last couple of years, you should be used to this by now. I swear if one more DE in a contain assignment picks off another 15 yard post, I'm going to destroy something.

Although run blocking is improved, it doesn't look to be overpowered at this point. If you sell out to stop a run and know which side its going to, it was pretty easy to stop it for little to no gain. That's all you can ask for in a football game. It's still early however, so I'm sure there are still loads of overpowered plays to be discovered by the gaming public.

User catches seemed to be toned down. "Rocket" catching with the right stick has been totally removed from the game. (it was there in the demo) I was able to do it the old fashion way by turning your receiver around manually and haven't tested extensively what the success rate is. There is an ongoing debate about whether the "rocket" catch is a glitch or not. My position is it's not, I can post tons of youtube videos of real life rocket catching.

Instead of taking user control away, the easier way to fix rocket catching is to raise the injury percentage when a player is hit up in the air. Routinely players are flipped and land on their heads on the game after a jump attempt and don't get hurt. If an NFL player lands on his head, he goes out on a stretcher for precautionary reasons. Make it high risk high reward. A jump catch is a thing of beauty, but receivers don't do it that often in real life because they put themselves at risk of injury.

Other Features:

I took a quick peek at online dynasty and the mode looks great. Recruiting hasn't changed much, but the presentation and feel of online dynasty looks huge. I haven't had the opportunity to do extensive recruiting yet but if you've played the last couple of NCAAs it is very similar.

One drawback is you can only have 12 users in an online dynasty. Considering Madden allows 32 users, that may be a slight drawback, but the mode has so many other features it is a minor one.

Teambuilder is huge. The fact that you can search created teams based on a number of criteria is out of control. Case in point. I searched by my hometown and someone had created all of the local colleges and high schools in the area with accurate uniforms. Their stats were through the roof but like boxer creation in Fight Night, the possibilities are endless.

Post your thoughts and impressions.