NCAA Football 09 Review
- Posted July 14th, 2008 at 23:36 EDT by
- 9,367 views
- 9 Comments
Review Score
- PSU Review Score
- 7.5
- Avg. user review score:
- 6.7
Summary
NCAA 2009 is a step above its previous installment and shows EA Sports is dedicated to improving the brand name they’ve created.
We like
- Online Dynasty is fantastic
- Custom Stadium Sounds system is innovative
- Atmosphere is dead on
We dislike
- Shimmy can toy with the AI
- Broken defensive zones
- Player vs. player experience
See PSU's review on Metacritic & GameRankings
(continued from previous page) ...of that, the commissioner will have the ability to customize schedules for each user-controlled team. This is good for creating equal schedule strengths or lining up bitter rivals up against one another. Out of all of these features, I think the best part about it is the fact that if you and a buddy are in an online dynasty and he comes over, you can choose to play your game offline in a lag free environment.
Owners will then be required to fulfill their pre-season tasks and set their teams to “Ready to Advance” in order to help move the league along. If you happen to get stuck with a straggler, you’ll be able to set him straight by either removing him or forcing him to continue via the simulation option. Another cool aspect to this mode is the ability to voice-chat with any owner who is currently browsing the league page. This can make for some fun trash talk and make it easier to set up times to get together and play your league game.
I’m sure the question is in your mind by now in regards to how the game plays in the online department. I’ll dive into that section right now.
Online Play:
Online play offers up pretty much the same modes as it did last year with the exception of the Online Dynasty previously mentioned. Ranked games will be the expected five-minute quarters on the All-American difficulty setting and will carry much of the same issues that I have previously laid out within the player vs player discussion.
For those of you wondering if lag is a problem, I’d have to say for now, no. The servers are exponentially better than last year’s offering and the game runs smooth for the most part. There may be a slight delay between instances that are just common amongst online sports gaming, but overall the experience should be very enjoyable. I’d like to point out that this online testing was performed with only three total users online and I therefore cannot make a judgment call on how the server will be once 4,000 people have logged on and started playing.
Even if this leads to a minor bog down in terms of connection smoothness, the game will undoubtedly offer up a better online atmosphere than that of NCAA 2008. EA Sports has definitely taken a step in the proper direction for straightening out their past online server issues and I look forward to these minor nuisances, such as the slight delay, being fixed.
Conclusion:
In the end, NCAA 2009 is an amazing improvement over NCAA 2008. As a sports gamer, that’s all I can truly ask for in a yearly edition. Though the game does feel as though it possibly faltered from the alpha build I had the chance to check out in New York, it is still a respectable representation of collegiate football. While some may find the kinks to render the game unplayable, I feel the vast majority of users will appreciate what the game has to offer and enjoy those aspects the most.
Comments
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funItalian
- 7:38am BST - July 15th, 2008
- 3
sounds like NCAA 09 has great graphics and an overall feel of what collegiate football should be and the review helped a lot, but I just can't help but to think the player v.s. player game play is not up to par. Without great gameplay the game itself is not worth the $60 purchase in my humble opinion. Maybe I'll rent it first just to see if it's worth the money.
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mcwups1
- 11:15am BST - July 15th, 2008
- 4
"Dynasty Mode:
Dynasty Mode has always been the backbone of the NCAA franchise, offering users the opportunity to lead a college program to national dominance. The mode gives the player the responsibilities of red-shirting players, creating recruitment boards, setting depth charts, customizing your schedule and even inviting future prospects to watch your team play."You mean, like a coach would? Huh? Too bad you can't really "coach"....you have to actually "user-control" the players, which defeats the purpose behind "Dynasty Mode" to begin with. Yeah....real good job EA. Just sit back on your lazy butts, add a little something, and collect all that money from people who don't care about quality. I might rent it, just to see if they actually took Josh Portis off of the "Transfer" status, after being at Maryland for 3 years now. Nah....I won't.
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I95SOUTH |
I95SOUTH- 1:19pm BST - July 15th, 2008
- 5
I play NCAA football every year. You have to know whats its about. its not just a football game. I played football for 18 years and I have to say EA does a great job with the NCAA games each year bring something great with it. Im sorry but the rate it should never go under a 8.5 even with last years game being the worst one made atleast an 8.
psn id: I95SOUTH
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VictorValiant
- 2:53am BST - July 16th, 2008
- 6
Gameplay can be tweaked with the sliders and there may be some major bugs with the sliders, such as assigning the wrong attribute to a slider. This is being investigated by some gamers at another site's forum. I'm not sure about this website's policy on linking to another forum, so if it's ok, I can do that.
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Jaxnole22
- 3:36pm BST - July 17th, 2008
- 7
I always get the game- it has changed.
Here's a question- i own ps2- why do i have to "add" every player and number to both dynasty roster/ and the fbs just to play other people and points pursuit etc? am i missing somthing, like add roster to fbs and it when i pick dynasty it adds the corrected players?
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