Why is NCAA better than Madden?

[Aggies7]

I personally enjoy player lock on defense and the camera angle that comes with it. I also believe the presentation is ten times better in NCAA.

[Dats ignant]

As far as 11 goes, I think it is a lot better than Madden. NCAA took a step forward this year and Madden took another tiny step back.

NCAA- lineman and everyone else make proper blocks, which is a HUGE deal to me.
This was the one thing that had literally sold me on the game. Seeing an offensive lineman double team and break off to a linebacker is just amazing and allows for a better chance at breaking a big run.

Madden tried to make the game more realistic by taking the turbo away but it made the game a little worse.

[Dats ignant]

Also to add, EA made a HUGE mistake of adding Gus Johnson to the commentary. Biggest head scratch ever because it gets annoying very, very fast.

I am a Packers fan, you know how many times a game Collinsworth says something about "Rodgers following in the footsteps of Favre"...sad.

[8]

I was always a madden guy.. Some years I would get NCAA and others I wouldn't, but this year I've had madden in my PS3 once... played a couple games and went right back to NCAA. It's just more fun for me right now and the gameplay feels better IMHO.

[SENS_AK27]

After being a long time Madden player I was told by a friend to rent NCAA 11. As a Canadian I don't really follow actual college ball in real life. I was immediately engrossed in everything this game brings to the table for the Dynasty buff that I am. I'm having one helluva time playing as USC but may be tempted to try some SEC or BIG 10 teams. All the points brought up by the previous posters are the reason why NCAA is way better then Madden.

[Carolus Rex]

How diffrent is the NCAA demo from the current version?

[89OneHanded]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheCreep

Basically the same game? Exactly.

I must disagree. A lot of people have touched on some excellent points, especially Deegeezy and z Revis, but I think these are starkly different games, even if most of the animations are cut and pasted from one to the other. I am a football fan in general, I love both the NFL and NCAA irl, but I've almost always preferred Madden over NCAA. Not this year. There are three different things that really stand the two games apart for me, and what all three reasons come down to is realism.

1. The difficulty. This is one of the most important things for me, because I play football video games far more than any human being has a right to, and once I get used to the more subtle changes in the gameplay from year to year, I get to the point where I can beat Heisman or All-Madden CPUs 70-10, 90% of the time. Which is not fun or realistic. So I tweak the sliders over and over until I start getting 21-17, 23-20, 10-7, 14-17 type games. I can do this on NCAA this year, the sliders do an excellent job of making it easy for the user to continue raising the sliders to compensate for the CPU's predictability. On Madden, this is impossible, because defense does not exist. The players are standing in their zones, but they don't do anything, even if the ball flies past their face. The wide receivers make a cut, but the corners keep running straight as if they forgot what their job is supposed to be. It makes Madden feel arcade-y, which I will get to in a moment. Because of this, my games in Madden always end 63-35, 59-24, 49-41, 77-38. No matter how hard I turn up the sliders, I cannot possibly throw for less than 400 yards. I cannot possibly run for less than 150. When the CPU is on offense, their possessions will be something like this: -1 yd run, incomplete pass, completed pass for 11.1 yards. Incomplete pass, incomplete pass, 68 yard TD. The big plays are impossible to stop, no matter what you do with the sliders. There is nowhere near any semblance of realistic NFL gameplay in Madden 11.

2. The way the plays are run, the blocking, the coverage, the animations...I can't put my finger on it, but it allllll feels so arcade-y. I don't know how to possibly describe it better than that. NCAA feels a lot more real. It is still a video game with flaws, I'm not hailing NCAA as the second coming of Jesus, it's just more realistic than Madden this year.

3. By removing plays from the playbooks, the play choices in Madden feel like all the same ones from last year. It feels like there was no creativity involved in the playbook creation, no research of plays the teams actually ran during the year. NCAA is the opposite however, every playbook I choose, I can FEEL the style that the team runs, and I really feel like the creators put a lot of time into researching the styles of each team.

Just my two cents, but I really do completely disagree that these are anywhere near the same game. They just look like it, because of the cut and paste animations.

[Senator Palmer]

Quote: Originally Posted by Carolus Rex

How diffrent is the NCAA demo from the current version?

It's been forever since I've played the demo, but off the top the retail is more polished. The lighting is better. It moves a little better as far as momentum. It's still fast compared to Madden, but there is more momentum as far as sudden cutting and pivots by receivers. The pass rush is a lot better. Coverage is miles better, some would say too good.

The CPU is smarter. It will test you deep more often, BUT in the retail, your defense against the deep pass is better. That's a few of the things off the top of my head.