Played NCAA '13 for first time in 7 years, some thoughts

[Sundown2600]

Picked up 13 for 10 bucks at GS, fired up my old fat boy PS3 (it works!) and took this game for a spin. I game on PC and use a 1440p monitor so I was expecting to be dissatisfied with the visuals, but I was pleasantly surprised. The game looked really good on my old 720p lcd. Like really good. Some aliasing was noticable when the players break huddle and cam zooms out, but it was far from ugly. I'm not a fan of the size of the football (seems too big) and the hunch backed look the players have, but these are small gripes as the visuals are honestly more than acceptable for a game this old. Years ago Madskillz brought up the fact the player to field size ratio was off, as in the players being too big for the field. This jumped out at me after playing PS2 NCAA on emulator for so long. It's very noticable and there is not enough space to operate. The field side of the field looks very short and the boundary side feels like a phone booth. On another note I loved being able to go into the menus and see uniforms and gear that closely resembles what we see in current college football. Revo helmets absent from the later PS2 games and the ability to mix and match available jerseys and pants was one of the best things EA ever did. It's a touch I really appreciate. The stadiums, crowd, textures, sounds and atmosphere was just such a huge jump over the previous gen. Good nostalgia over all in the visuals and sound dept.

One of my biggest complaints back when from this gen was the lack of fluidity in player movement compared to PS2/Xbox and that stood out immediately during the first few plays. Player weight and movement is not well implemented when using the left analog stick. There is a herky jerky suddenness to the players that makes hitting holes and picking spots very difficult. Movement and analog responsiveness took a huge step backwards compared to PS2 and it's one of the reasons these games are not considered outright superior to the previous gen, which honestly they should be superior we should not even be debating which gen is better, but unfortunately that door for debate remains open. Bad nostalgia, bad memories. Yuck.

Gameplay wise is where this game shines. Even though player movement is complete crap the way plays are executed and the subtle details from whistle to whistle completely blows away the gen before. This just looks and feels more like real football from a gameplay standpoint. It's satisfying to see a DB slip and recover trying to react to a WR breaking off a route. The way the defenders flow to the ball, the tackling everything in this game is much more realistic to the previous gen. Formations and playbooks are insane. Option routes are nice to see and absent from previous gen. I know the CPU runs the option better in 14, but with the slider set I used and default AA the CPU ran the ball well. My defense in one game caused two fumbles on back to back possessions where as 14 fumbles rarely happen. I have yet to see any injuries however. This is an area previous gen was much better at. Fatigue works extremely well and I remember being frustrated with this in the 10 version of the game. Definitely an upgrade over the later PS2 titles, although fatigue worked decent in 06 and amazingly in 2005. Overall Gameplay and how the animations contribute to it brought up some great memories.

Haven't dived deep into dynasty yet but overall it was nice to play 13 again. I used a safety glitch fix slider set and did not see it once. Also on default AA never saw it. I will continue to play and test but over all a good exp. Gonna try and find 12 and 11 asap.

[Sneakyfast]

waiting on a copy of 12 to arrive let me know how it is

[DougAlvarez]

Yeah, after firing up 05 and 06 on my og xbox I can't finish a full game of anything form the 360/PS3 or after era unless its APF 2k8.