Home

NCAA 09 Impressions (Fetter21)

This is a discussion on NCAA 09 Impressions (Fetter21) within the EA Sports College Football and NCAA Football forums.

Go Back   Operation Sports Forums > Football > EA Sports College Football and NCAA Football
MLB The Show 24 Review: Another Solid Hit for the Series
New Star GP Review: Old-School Arcade Fun
Where Are Our College Basketball Video Game Rumors?
Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 07-09-2008, 02:02 PM   #1
F**tb*ll F*n*t*c
 
Fetter21's Arena
 
OVR: 30
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 3,404
Blog Entries: 10
NCAA 09 Impressions (Fetter21)

Steve sent me the copy for the review so I wanted to get something on the boards so that people could get at least a little of my impressions of the game. I'll make sure to post more as I go, but until I find out how the mods want me to organize it I'm just gonna slap down my impressions of my first game USC vs. ND.

These were the notes I took while playing the game, in a few spots I made some additional notes in red which were things I wrote after I'd played a couple more games.

No longer when you enter the game are you in your trophy room. Not a big deal, but it made me feel a bit sad since I liked the trophy room. The trophy room is still in the game, I went to look for it after the game, but I kinda liked having it as the menu backdrop.

Graphics are pretty much the same as the demo. A pretty significant improvement especially when playing in HD.

Defensive player movement seems much more controlled and fluent. Now when you’re changing direction you really see your players slow down as you have to make a big cut to change directions and get back to cover deep if you were heading back towards the QB.

Your man is automatically strafing so he’s facing the QB and has his eyes toward them and he pretty much stays that way facing the line of scrimmage until you start pull down the trigger to sprint. Seems like a good change.

Some nice new wrap up animations

You can call back to back timeouts, I know that’s a no no in the NFL, but I’m not sure about the official rules on that in the NCAA I imagine that’s accurate to NCAA rules just thought I’d throw that in since I got put in a situation where I wanted to call a second timeout and it let me.

On the opening drive Notre Dame drove down the field on me and got to the goal line and decided to go for it on 4th and 1. They ran a play action fake where the HB dove over the line, the diving over the line animation was something I hadn’t seen before in NCAA and personally I found it to be a very nice addition. What I thought I saw was him diving over the top of the, but unfortunately I didn’t go back and look at the replay of it at the time I figured I’d see it again and I could examine it later since it was the first game. After a couple more games and me trying to dive over the pile I still haven’t seen it again, so I’m not sure if my eyes were deceiving me or what.

Nice HB animations where he will kinda lean to one side to avoid a defender.

Overall I only got the chance to play the demo a couple of times, but it seems as if there are way more animations in this that they didn’t get into the demo. After a couple of games I’ll go back to the demo and try to compare the two with more detail.

I really like the feeling of the throw when the QB bullets the ball to a receiver feels better and just nicer than past years.

I had one play where my HB goes out of bounds running a route on a broken play when I was scrambling with my QB and then the HB came back in bounds and caught the ball, they let it go and counted it for a first down. So far after a few more games this is still the only time I’ve seen this issue so I don’t think it’s going to be a big factor with the game.

On the Brightside of that play I found that when I was trying to watch the replay to make it into a created highlight it lets you back out before the entire play was finished if you want to change the angle you don’t have to sit through the entire play from that view. You can hit B and back out and pick a new view to watch it in. This seems big to me since whenever I was making highlights it was always such a pain to watch the whole thing over and over again while I was deciding which angle I liked best, so if you like the highlight feature then it’ll be something you appreciate.

The tackling seems improved and more realistic like you’re actually tackling someone not just flying at them and colliding with them. They ran up the middle and I flew in with my MLB and hit the HB normally last year it seemed like it would go to an animation of me just flying at the HB, this time it was me flying in at him and hitting him hard, but wrapping him up at the same time. Much better.

Interceptions seem as if they will be toned down this year. The ND QB threw the ball on an out route to a TE my OLB was out in coverage and was able to get out to knock down the pass. Last year it seemed like the defender would have been sucked into more of a vacuum animation going into the ball, instead it was a swat to knock down the pass and no vacuum.

Just before the half I called time out and it appeared on the screen that it was a 55 yard field goal attempt. It was only up briefly almost to the point where I wasn’t sure it was meant to be there, but I did think it was pretty awesome that they put it up there to let me know how long it was before I chose a play or anything like that. I tried to kick it and it wound up being about 2 yards short so kickers aren’t too over powering. Although that seems extraordinarily long for USC’s kicker.

I did pick up 2 interceptions in the second half one user controlled where I was able to get to the ball just before the WR with a OLB, another was the an AI player picked off a pass where they were trying to throw a screen pass to a HB.

If you blitz on a screen you’re really in trouble, it seemed true to life I had 3 guys about to kill the HB they passed it out to the HB on a screen and there were 3 blockers in front of him and they took it to the house.

ND hit a 51 yard field goal with a pretty good amount of distance left on it, looked like it could have gone 55. They later missed a 57 yard kick wide right, but it had the distance so I’d say you can probably hit a kick from roughly 60 yards if you’re perfect on the kick meter.

My initial impressions after one game are that I really like that it seems like the HB’s don’t just fall forward as much to gain yards after they’ve been hit. For the most part it seems pretty realistic. If they should fall back, they do fall back.

I like that you can loft the ball over defenders as I did that once when I was being blitzed and tossed it over a couple defenders to complete a pass.



*************************************************
************************************************** *****
************************************************

Wed 1:45 PST

For the people that want to keep checking back in I'll just edit my post to make it easier to find my impressions so they'll all be at the top. I'll try to do something like this each time I add more so you can find where you left off without too much work. And I appologize in advance for misspellings and things like that since I'm not really editing this stuff, i'm more just writing as I go.



After a few games of playing I’d say that overall it does feel like a better game. Obviously there are big improvements to the graphics both to the player models and to the field as it much more resembles grass than it has in the past.

As always with NCAA Football speed really kills it’s going to be much tougher for you to win games with teams like Michigan who might be talented, but are on the slow end when compared to other teams that have a great deal of speed at all the positions. At least I know I tended to feel more comfortable playing as most of the other teams more than I did Michigan cause they just felt slow. Michigan did seem to have their new playbook since tons of plays were out of the shotgun for them.

If you can get to the outside then it’s gonna be tough to catch a fast player, I think that’s why so many people were complaining about the screen passes in the demo which you also need to make sure you’re not caught on a blitz so it’ll probably be important to choose your plays wisely this year. Along with that speed it is somewhat annoying that when you throw a INT a lot of times it’s gonna go for a touchdown since the DB’s are just so fast.

Overal I would say that the game runs much smoother and just has a more natural feeling. Thus far I’ve been pretty focused on the passing game and trying to evaluate how that’s going so I haven’t spent as much time really looking closely at the running game as I would like to. So far the running game seems improved, I really like that even more than before it really feels like you have to follow your blockers, of course there are cut back lanes and opportunities like that when it’s really best to pull a bit of a Marcus Allen and reverse direction to go the other way, or find another hole, but as a general rule follow your blockers it’s going to help you in the long run.

I did find out how to hurdle over the line, you just need to hold the dive button as you are running into the line, fantastic new animation, at least it’s new to me since I don’t recall seeing it in 08, but right now the only place it looks like you can do it is for a Touchdown, I was hoping to see it for trying to gain a first down, but so far no luck. Might be my fault since I’ve so far only been able to do it once.

I have now seen another play where a player was slightly out of bounds, he had a foot out of bounds in the corner of the endzone and then he caught the ball with both feet in a couple seconds later so I guess they’re saying as long as you get back in bounds then you’re cool.

The AI still doesn’t throw the ball deep too much, they really like to kill you with the crossing routes in front and other short passes. The QB’s do seem very accurate, I know that was a concern of some. I’ll see about posting some completion percentages for games after I’ve played a few more and write them down.

Unfortunately you can throw accurately on the run and toss it far, playing on All-American I was able to throw the ball pretty accurately on the run, I was hoping to see some arrant passes while running, but usually they hit the general area that you were trying to get them.


The orangeness of the sunset games seems to be improved greatly, I know it was something that really bugged me in the demo a ton, but now it’s either completely gone or I’ve gotten use to it. Either way it doesn’t bother me at all, after it was driving me crazy before, so that’s a big plus.

I like the new loading menus, now instead of just seeing what the controls are you get info on the teams so you get a chance to learn about the teams. It seems like they’ve had that in the past, but I’m glad to see they brought it back. It’s not just the same info the whole time it’s loading it goes to like 2 different bits of info, if it’s a rivalry game they usually give a little background on the rivalry.

Getting the rosters out of the EA locker room was very simple. Just went into the locker it showed all my Xbox Live friends or had a sport to write in the name of another Gamertag, typed in PastaPadre’s gamertag, it asked me if I was sure I wanted to download them and then in seconds it was done and I was on my way. I predict amazing things with that since I’m sure people who like to spend their time working on rosters far more than I are going to do a great job of creating great teams of the past and all of that since it’s so easy to share them.

I thought I had heard there would be formation specific audibles in the game at this point I’ve found where to set my audibles but hadn’t seen anything formation specific yet. You can set audibles for all of the different playbooks, but it looks like it’s just the normal 6 or so that you can pick, and formation really doesn’t come into play on that. I’m still looking into it to see if there is another spot to edit them, but so far that’s the only spot I’m seeing.

After the pointiac Drive Changing play of the game they now show a few more brief replays, they’ll show the whole play of the game then they’ll show a few pieces of other plays.

Dynasty

In dynasty mode you now have your recruiting strategy where you can set what you want the AI to help you with if you don’t do it. There are three options Recruiting Board Assistance, Scholarship Offer Assistance, and Visit Assistance. This should be a handy tool for all since I know last year recruiting got to be a bit tedious after a while.

When recruiting next to the name of the top 3 schools that the players are interested in there is now a helmet of each school. I like that addition since sometimes the abbreviations are a bit confusing the helmet adds a good visual to go with it.

Depth Chart menu looks a little cleaner with the top players at the top and the select a substitute players at the bottom.

For people that wanted stats.

Game 1 USC vs. Virginia
Sanchez 195.8 rating 25 of 30 completions 253 yards 5 TD 2 INT’s 83% completions

Lalich 165 rating 33 of 39 complete 295 yards 2 TD’s 84% completions.

They really did toss it all over the middle against me and I’m gonna have to learn to stop it better. They don’t stretch the field much to throw it deep, but if you do leave a man open deep they’ll throw to him.

HB’s
Peerman 11 carries for 2 yards

Stafon Johnson 21 at 179 yards 1 TD
3 runs over 20 yards 1 run for 67 yards where I hurdled over a defender on the ground and out ran everyone else to the outside.

So after one game into my dynasty I’d say that it’s a bit easier to pass this year since I didn’t usually put up numbers like that in 08 although I also really like being able to put loft on the ball so I’m passing a bit more.

The HB numbers didn’t seem off for a USC tailback, I apparently stopped their run better than I thought, but we’ll see how it continues as I get more games in.

OSU up next so that’ll be a good test of if I need to go up to Heisman level or if I should stay at All-American.

To answer a few more of the questions I’m playing on the 360.

Yes you do get big returns often. I’m not running them back all the way, I don’t think I’ve returned a kick yet for a TD, but pretty frequently I’m getting up to about the 35-40 on KR’s. I’m holding the AI to around the 25 and on Punt Returns I’ve had one that nearly went all the way so you’re going to see Punt Return TD’s but they’re not just goanna be a gimmie.

I’m not sure what Ghost Juking is, so I can’t really comment on that.

So far all the games I’ve played have been rivalry games so I can’t really comment on if it seemed bigger or not. I’m starting up my dynasty now so I’ll let you know about that later.

Passing in the middle does seem relatively easy, especially for the AI I’m gonna have to really start focusing my D there because that’s where the AI likes to throw the ball.

I was playing a few games at 2 minutes earlier to try to feel out a few of the teams and see how different teams felt. Now that I’m doing my dynasty it’s 6 min. quarters. The first post was a 6 minute quarter game.

make sure to post more as I go, but until I find out how the mods want me to organize it I'm just gonna slap down my impressions of my first game USC vs. ND.

These were the notes I took while playing the game, in a few spots I made some additional notes in red which were things I wrote after I'd played a couple more games.

No longer when you enter the game are you in your trophy room. Not a big deal, but it made me feel a bit sad since I liked the trophy room. The trophy room is still in the game, I went to look for it after the game, but I kinda liked having it as the menu backdrop.

Graphics are pretty much the same as the demo. A pretty significant improvement especially when playing in HD.

Defensive player movement seems much more controlled and fluent. Now when you’re changing direction you really see your players slow down as you have to make a big cut to change directions and get back to cover deep if you were heading back towards the QB.

Your man is automatically strafing so he’s facing the QB and has his eyes toward them and he pretty much stays that way facing the line of scrimmage until you start pull down the trigger to sprint. Seems like a good change.

Some nice new wrap up animations

You can call back to back timeouts, I know that’s a no no in the NFL, but I’m not sure about the official rules on that in the NCAA I imagine that’s accurate to NCAA rules just thought I’d throw that in since I got put in a situation where I wanted to call a second timeout and it let me.

On the opening drive Notre Dame drove down the field on me and got to the goal line and decided to go for it on 4th and 1. They ran a play action fake where the HB dove over the line, the diving over the line animation was something I hadn’t seen before in NCAA and personally I found it to be a very nice addition. What I thought I saw was him diving over the top of the, but unfortunately I didn’t go back and look at the replay of it at the time I figured I’d see it again and I could examine it later since it was the first game. After a couple more games and me trying to dive over the pile I still haven’t seen it again, so I’m not sure if my eyes were deceiving me or what.

Nice HB animations where he will kinda lean to one side to avoid a defender.

Overall I only got the chance to play the demo a couple of times, but it seems as if there are way more animations in this that they didn’t get into the demo. After a couple of games I’ll go back to the demo and try to compare the two with more detail.

I really like the feeling of the throw when the QB bullets the ball to a receiver feels better and just nicer than past years.

I had one play where my HB goes out of bounds running a route on a broken play when I was scrambling with my QB and then the HB came back in bounds and caught the ball, they let it go and counted it for a first down. So far after a few more games this is still the only time I’ve seen this issue so I don’t think it’s going to be a big factor with the game.

On the Brightside of that play I found that when I was trying to watch the replay to make it into a created highlight it lets you back out before the entire play was finished if you want to change the angle you don’t have to sit through the entire play from that view. You can hit B and back out and pick a new view to watch it in. This seems big to me since whenever I was making highlights it was always such a pain to watch the whole thing over and over again while I was deciding which angle I liked best, so if you like the highlight feature then it’ll be something you appreciate.

The tackling seems improved and more realistic like you’re actually tackling someone not just flying at them and colliding with them. They ran up the middle and I flew in with my MLB and hit the HB normally last year it seemed like it would go to an animation of me just flying at the HB, this time it was me flying in at him and hitting him hard, but wrapping him up at the same time. Much better.

Interceptions seem as if they will be toned down this year. The ND QB threw the ball on an out route to a TE my OLB was out in coverage and was able to get out to knock down the pass. Last year it seemed like the defender would have been sucked into more of a vacuum animation going into the ball, instead it was a swat to knock down the pass and no vacuum.

Just before the half I called time out and it appeared on the screen that it was a 55 yard field goal attempt. It was only up briefly almost to the point where I wasn’t sure it was meant to be there, but I did think it was pretty awesome that they put it up there to let me know how long it was before I chose a play or anything like that. I tried to kick it and it wound up being about 2 yards short so kickers aren’t too over powering. Although that seems extraordinarily long for USC’s kicker.

I did pick up 2 interceptions in the second half one user controlled where I was able to get to the ball just before the WR with a OLB, another was the an AI player picked off a pass where they were trying to throw a screen pass to a HB.

If you blitz on a screen you’re really in trouble, it seemed true to life I had 3 guys about to kill the HB they passed it out to the HB on a screen and there were 3 blockers in front of him and they took it to the house.

ND hit a 51 yard field goal with a pretty good amount of distance left on it, looked like it could have gone 55. They later missed a 57 yard kick wide right, but it had the distance so I’d say you can probably hit a kick from roughly 60 yards if you’re perfect on the kick meter.

My initial impressions after one game are that I really like that it seems like the HB’s don’t just fall forward as much to gain yards after they’ve been hit. For the most part it seems pretty realistic. If they should fall back, they do fall back.

I like that you can loft the ball over defenders as I did that once when I was being blitzed and tossed it over a couple defenders to complete a pass.



*************************************************
************************************************** *****
************************************************

Wed 3:16 PST

At the end of week 1 I had a 5 star DE sign with USC in recruiting, which at this point I picked the guys I wanted the AI to recruit and for right now I’m pretty much gonna let them do my recruiting for me other than the fact that I’m controlling who we keep on the recruiting board which I assume is what order they’re ranked as well.

Not sure if I posted this earlier that in the preseason all-americans there were a some guy who made both the 1st and 2nd All-American teams.

OSU 24 USC 37

This game was looking closer than the score shows. OSU was tough to stop, they continued to throw the short routes and it was killing me. I ended up giving up a touchdown on a throw when the AI threw deep just because I had started taking the safety up to cover the underneath routes and cheat some because I was just getting killed underneath.

Going into the half I trailed 14-10 and really couldn’t move the ball much at all, I especially felt like I was getting nothing on the ground, if I tried to go up the middle with the run it’d be maybe a 1 or 2 yard run and if I tried to get to the outside it was usually prevented by the OSU OLB’s or DE’s so they pretty much killed my running game. My one TD in the first half came one an INT that I ran back, which I would add in another 2 more INTs ran back for TDs, one of which was early in the 4th with OSU down by 3 and driving inside my 10. Until the INT the QB hadn’t had an incompletion the whole drive, in fact that was the last thing that the commentator said before I snatched a ball out of the air and ran it back the other way. So there were a lot of INT’s that got thrown in the game, but I wasn’t complaining about them cause that’s what saved me. None of the INT’s seemed crazy or unreasonable they were all passes that were thrown to defenders or to a guy that had their route jumped, so they should have been picked off.

In the second half I was able to get my passing game going a bit, but still nothing on the ground.
OSU-USC
First Downs 18 - 16
Total O 321 – 222
Passing 253 – 196
Turnovers 6 – 3
PR yards 29 – 5
KR yards 229 – 80
3rd down conversions 7 of 11 – 5 of 10

QB’s
USC - Sanchez 20 of 28 for 196 yards 0 TD’s 3 INTs 108.8 rating 71% and a long of 35
OSU - Boeckman 28 of 39 2 TD’s 6 INT’s 112.4 rating 71% ong of 45

HB’s
OSU- Wells 16 att 68yarrs long of 17
USC S. Johnson 16 att 17 yards
USC Sanchez 4 att 26 yards

Overall thoughts, again speed is huge, OSU was faster than USC overall I think and it made it tough to do much they were flying to the ball no matter where I was. And the orange night sky is actually a bit too orange for my liking, but I can deal with it.

Now with recruiting there are little marks to show how you’re doing red errow pointing down, green arrow pointing up, or yellow bar going straight across. You can also see how many scholarship offers a player has and then you can check more info on that player to see what schools have offered them scholarships.

To answer one of the earlier questions the crowd seemed to get much more into the game as the game got more intense.

*************************************************
************************************************** *****
************************************************

Thur 1:35pm PST

Last night playing against Oregon and Oregon State I saw the QB’s completion percentages for the other team get much lower they were both right around 50%. I was very worried about the option attack since Oregon’s ability to run the option was horrible the QB would pitch it at times I didn’t think were the ideal time, like way too early, or on occasion I saw just a horrible pitch that went behind the HB and into the grass.

In my game against Oregon State I got my first KR for a touchdown, I nearly broke one for a touchdown on a punt return also, I’d say that against the lower ranked teams when you’re one of the big boys you can have a really big day on special teams.

Of course after seeing poor option play last night from Oregon the best thing I could think of to do to test that out this morning was go up against West Virginia and see how they ran it. They were much more effective and I would say ran it correctly, the only thing that concerned me a bit with it was that their HB would sometimes go out of bounds when I think he should have stayed in and pushed forward to try to fight for extra yards.

WVU was very aggressive twice they went for it on fourth and 1 in the redzone, both times they were able to convert.

They never gave up on the run or the option, even down 3 with 43 seconds left they were calling option run plays.

With one second left from near mid field they threw about a 10 yard pass across the middle instead of attempting to try to heave one into the endzone.

I really tried to focus on running the ball in this game so my yards per carry were probably lower than they would have been if I were mixing things up. I didn’t have a huge breakout run for a or break anything too long, but I felt as if I was starting to get more of a feel for the running game. Normally in games I want to just be sprinting with the HB as soon as I get the ball which ever direction I’m suppose to be going, but it seemed more effective to hold back on the sprint button for a second and then really look at the running lanes and then pick which way I want to go. Since I was running the ball so often I think their D keyed into that and there weren’t running lanes a lot of the time, but overall I think my running may improve in future games we’ll see. I liked the fact that when the running lanes did open being patient seemed to help produce better quality runs.

In this game before the half I threw a pass away instead of taking a sack it was called for intentional grounding, there was 3 seconds left on the clock and it stopped the clock, no time was ran off either. Again not sure where this falls as far as NCAA rules, I believe in the NFL they run a few seconds off the clock and I would have had to just go to halftime.

Again these stats were on All-American with 6 minute quarters

WVU - USC
Score 14 – 17
First downs 14 – 13
Total O 215 – 288
Passing 128 – 208
3rd Conversions 5 of 12 – 5 of 11
4th Conversions 2 of 3 – 1 of 2
Turnovers 1 – 1 (they threw an INT I had a fumble)
PR yards 0 – 16
KR yards 127 – 83

QB’s
USC Sanchez 212.1 rating 12 comp 17 att 208 yards 2 TD’s 70% Long of 65
WVU White 139.7 15 of 17 128 yards 1 INT 88% 20 yard long

HB’s
WVU Devine 23 carries 41 yards long of 7
WVU White 8 carries 43 yards long of 16
USC Johnson 32 carries 78 yards long of 14

Going back into my dynasty after the WVU game these are my stats and thoughts from USC vs. ASU.

ASU- USC
Score 10-44
First downs 10-16
Total O 210 – 337
Passing 204 – 172
3rd down 3 of 11 – 7 – 11
4th down 0 for 1 – 0 for 0
Turnovers 2 – 0 (both INTs)
PR Yards 0 – 115
KR yards 265 – 136 (I had one that I returned for a TD in this game)

QB’s
USC Sanchez 188.2 rating 11 of 15 for 166 yards and 1 TD 73% long of 39 yards
ASU Carpenter 128.5 rating 17 of 26 204 yards 1 TD 0 INT 65% long of 26

The field never starts to wear down or look used up, at least not in good weather games, I’m going to have to try a rainy game to check there.

The stats don’t specify what it’s talking about, sometimes it will show what happened on the last play, other times it’s the game, and sometimes it’s season stats, but there isn’t anything around the stat to tell you what the stat is specifically telling you, you just need to figure it out. Which I don’t think is a big deal, usually it’s pretty easy to tell what the stat is, normally I can tell if I’ve been ran on for 500 yards in a game.

You need to create a specific playlist on the Xbox dashboard for everysong you want to use. If you have multiple songs in the playlist then it’s just going to play the first one over and over. It will start from the very beginning of the song. So whatever song is number one on your playlist is going to get played over and over again right from the start. This isn’t anything EA doesn’t know since looking in their manual they tell you that for best results you’re going to need to set a playlist for each song.

If you have a song going for a timeout it will continue to run until just a bit after the play begins, unless however something else triggers another song to start. For instance if you have music set to go when a timeout is called and it’s going to be 3rd down for the opposing team then the timeout song will end when you get to the line of scrimmage and the 3rd down song will begin.

I went back in and made some playlists and it works I guess as you’d hope it would. Whatever occation you set previously cues up the music and the song plays. It actually ends up being pretty awesome, I guess maybe it would be cool if you could put a couple songs in for those situations and it could cycle through them, but I’m good with how it is, seems like a very good adition to the game. Now as far as creating playlists on the Xbox dashboard that seemed like a huge pain to me, obviously I don’t know what I’m doing there since it seems to not be as straight forward to make a new playlist as I’d like it to be, but for those people dying for a custom soundtrack go ahead and work on that until you get the game I’m sure it won’t take you long to master creating playlists.

For people that will complain about not being able to pick the point in the song that it starts playing and stuff like that it you can rip burned CD’s onto your harddrive (just found that out today, never tried to put music on before, kinda cool) so go edit your song on the PC and then burn a CD to rip onto your drive or stream to your Xbox I suppose and it should workout.

You can set a soundtrack for all the different teams or just make a specific one for all the home teams, although that might get annoying hearing your own soundtrack used against you on the road, so you’d probably want to go team specific.


Random things I like and don’t like that I don’t think I’ve hit on.

I like to drag animations sometimes they do it from a bit too far from the sidelines, but overall I think they’re pretty good and smoother than what I can recall from last year.

I don’t like that teams with slow QB’s like ASU will run QB run plays, they ran it a few times during the games option handoffs to the HB and decided to run with the QB and each time it wasn’t pretty for them.

I really like the custom soundtrack, I’m glad that I took the time to do it, normally I don’t think I would have bothered, but I did it since a few people wanted me to check. I love coming out on 3rd down and having headstrong come on to kinda pump me up for getting a stop on 3rd down. As I said earlier I just wish I could have had a couple songs for those situations to randomly cycle through, but once I figure out creating the playlists on the Dashboard it won’t be a big deal to just change the songs every now and again, should be an easy thing to do.

I don’t like that there is a tackle animation that seems to somewhat frequently continue to come up that the player getting tackled’s leg just seems twist while he’s getting tackled, it’s not like an unrealistic bend or anything like that it just keeps making me think the guy is gonna tare something as he goes down.

I really like the animation of a player hurdling over another player, it’s not over used and when it happens it’s just nice. The first time I saw it my HB hurdled over a fallen LB on the outside and then sprinted down the sideline for a TD, I’ve done it other times and been flipped end over end for going up at a bad time, but I still really like the animation.

I like the cutback lanes that open up and how you can be rewarded if you are patient and wait for things to open up. It’s not always gonna happen, but it’s nice when it does.

I don’t like that too often if they run a HB screen they throw to the HB if he’s open or not.

I like that the players don’t seem to be locked in on their blocks. I just had one run where there was good blocking and I could have run up the middle and picked up 5, but since it looked like all my Lineman had their men locked down I thought I could bump it outside to a TD and instead both the DE and DT slid off their blocks to the outside when they saw me head that way and the DE pulled me down. Not sure if I described it well, but it was just nice to see.

I don’t like that passing routes to the outside seem to be too effective. I’m having fun with being better able to go to the air this year, but sometimes it’s too easy to just throw a 5 yard out and have it go down the sidelines for a big gain.

Now I’m going to play some games with SDSU so I can get some impressions of how things work when you’re playing as the lower ranked team against the smaller schools and then the bigger schools.

I think tomorrow I’ll probably start branching out into some games early in the day playing on Heisman level, and maybe trying to ajust the sliders then I’m hoping later in the day I’ll be able to find some people online to play against. So that’s the update for now, and the plans for the near future.

If you have any other stuff you want me to try to checkout or look for let me know and I’ll see what I can do.




*************************************************
************************************************** *****
************************************************

Thur 3:48 PST

So I tried a game of SDSU vs. UNLV and quit about half way through because I felt like I was pretty much doing whatever I wanted to them. Then I played one game of SDSU vs. Tennessee and it was a pretty close game, but I quite pretty soon into that one too because I felt like I had seen enough of All-American and I really have a sense for what you’re going to get there and moved up to Heisman.

HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN HEISMAN

Ok, for those people that have been skimming I just wanted to make it clear that we’re moving onto the heisman difficulty now.


My first game on Heisman I played SDSU vs. Boston College since their ratings were suppose to be pretty close. And I tore them up, the score won’t indicate how lopsided this one was since I think I was up like 45- 20 or somewhere around there going into the 4th then I threw a couple of INTs, and they started getting points on the board, but for the most part in that first game I wasn’t feeling too overwhelmed by the difficulty on Heisman and think that I’ll probably start playing with the sliders soon. I’m gonna try a game of SDSU vs. Ohio State to see how lopsided that gets, then maybe go back and revisit USC vs. Ohio State.

Overall on Heisman level it was weird that it seemed like the return game saw even more big returns, I ran one KR back for a TD and they were consistently getting to around the 35-40 on me when I kicked off. I wanna say that it was probably the teams that had a lot to do with that, but we’ll see.

It did really seem much more difficult to throw on the run, a couple of times it actually let me throw on the run while I was scrambling around, one or two times it was a pretty arrant throw, and then a lot of other times when I tried this it didn’t actually let me throw on the run it slowed me down and made me plant my feet. I don’t remember that on All-American at all so it’s something that I’m going to keep looking into as I play, and then go back and look again at All-American to double check. But the fact that you can’t toss great passes on the run on the Heisman level is definitely a good sign.

There also seemed to be a lot less INTs there really wasn’t any until the 4th quarter when I started getting a little bit crazy, and I think they threw a couple in the 4th quarter also, the AI had 3 for the game so they must have had one earlier in the game. Again not sure if it was just because these teams have DB’s that couldn’t catch or not.

Here are the stats: Again these stats are on 6 minute quarters playing at the Heisman level and at this point all the sliders are just at their default levels.

BC- SDSU
37-45
First Downs 11-16
Total Offense 319-395
Passing O 277- 268
3rd down conversion 2 of 7 – 6 of 13
4th down conversions 1 of 2 – 3 of 3
Turnovers 3 -3
PR yards 0 – 5
KR yards 229 – 215

QB’s
SDSU #9 147.1 21 of 32 264 yards 3 TD’s 3 INT’s 65% completion 38 yard long
SDSU #2 66.8 1 of 2 4 yards 0 TD 0 INT 50%
Boston College #10 149.2 rating 21 of 30 276 yards 2 TD 3 INT 70% comp 67 yard long
BC #13 1 for 1 for 1 yard

Rushing
SDSU #24 21 att 111 yards 2 TD’s long of 52 yards
SDSU QB #9 5 att 27 yards
No backups saw the ball.

BC #1 12 att 40 yards 2 TDs
BC QB #10 3 att -4 yards
BC #6 1 att 6 yards

I have been giving my backup carries the ball at other schools, there usually weren’t too big of numbers for them so I just left them out, because passing is much easier this year I think I’ve been running less so generally my backups don’t see nearly the playing time. But they do come in on occasion. I’ll try to keep better track of that.
__________________
Twitter:@Fetter21
PS4:Feter21

Last edited by Fetter21; 07-10-2008 at 06:47 PM.
Fetter21 is offline  
Reply With Quote
Advertisements - Register to remove
Old 07-09-2008, 02:20 PM   #2
All Star
 
callmetaternuts's Arena
 
OVR: 41
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: St Pete (ish) Florida
Blog Entries: 10
Re: NCAA 2009 Impressions (Fetter21)

Thanks for posting your impressions, much appreciated. Sounds like things are lookign good in the 09 version.

Edit: FIgured id post a question or two and if you dont answer them, no big deal.

What level are you playing on?
How did the pass rush and passing game feel? Too easy, too hard?
__________________
Check out my Tampa Bay Buccaneers CFM Thread.

You too can be a 5* recruit at FSU.......

Quote:
Originally Posted by TwelveozPlaya21
add worthless Xavier Lee to that list..
Quote:
Originally Posted by MassNole
CFL here he comes. Pfft, wait that would require learning a playbook. McDonalds here he comes.
callmetaternuts is offline  
Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2008, 02:20 PM   #3
Pro
 
Sigma4Life's Arena
 
OVR: 9
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Texas
Re: NCAA 2009 Impressions (Fetter21)

Great write-up. I appreciate the info. Do you think you'll have a chance to take it online?
Sigma4Life is offline  
Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2008, 02:30 PM   #4
Rookie
 
OVR: 3
Join Date: Jul 2006
Re: NCAA 2009 Impressions (Fetter21)

seems good so far. can anybody confirm about the back to back timeout rule..is that okay within the ncaa rules?
rickyb316 is offline  
Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2008, 02:30 PM   #5
F**tb*ll F*n*t*c
 
Fetter21's Arena
 
OVR: 30
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 3,404
Blog Entries: 10
Re: NCAA 2009 Impressions (Fetter21)

I'm currently playing on All-American.

As far as the pass rush goes right now it seems like the AI gets to me a fair amount and I'd say I my team gets to them when I blitz, but not an overwhelming amount of pressure if I'm just rushing 4.

Yes I will have a chance to get it online, I hope, but unfortunately now there isn't anyone on there for me to play against.
__________________
Twitter:@Fetter21
PS4:Feter21
Fetter21 is offline  
Reply With Quote
Advertisements - Register to remove
Old 07-09-2008, 02:32 PM   #6
MVP
 
therizing02's Arena
 
OVR: 20
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Downtown Chi-Town
Posts: 4,169
Re: NCAA 2009 Impressions (Fetter21)

Excellent write up man. Thanks for the impressions. EA just needs to release the da*n game now!
therizing02 is offline  
Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2008, 02:33 PM   #7
MVP
 
therizing02's Arena
 
OVR: 20
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Downtown Chi-Town
Posts: 4,169
Re: NCAA 2009 Impressions (Fetter21)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fetter21
I'm currently playing on All-American.

As far as the pass rush goes right now it seems like the AI gets to me a fair amount and I'd say I my team gets to them when I blitz, but not an overwhelming amount of pressure if I'm just rushing 4.

Yes I will have a chance to get it online, I hope, but unfortunately now there isn't anyone on there for me to play against.
Fetter,

Can you confirm Bill Abner's concerns about the ghost juking, kick/punt returns, and bad AI play calling?

Thanks.
therizing02 is offline  
Reply With Quote
Old 07-09-2008, 02:35 PM   #8
All Star
 
callmetaternuts's Arena
 
OVR: 41
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: St Pete (ish) Florida
Blog Entries: 10
Re: NCAA 2009 Impressions (Fetter21)

How is the atmosphere, did you feel like it was USC vs ND or like it was any other game?

Did you feel like the middle passing game was too easy?

How did the running game feel? like you were in control?
__________________
Check out my Tampa Bay Buccaneers CFM Thread.

You too can be a 5* recruit at FSU.......

Quote:
Originally Posted by TwelveozPlaya21
add worthless Xavier Lee to that list..
Quote:
Originally Posted by MassNole
CFL here he comes. Pfft, wait that would require learning a playbook. McDonalds here he comes.
callmetaternuts is offline  
Reply With Quote
Reply


« Previous Thread | Next Thread »

« Operation Sports Forums > Football > EA Sports College Football and NCAA Football »


Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off



All times are GMT -4. The time now is 12:05 PM.
Top -