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Current gen:
Basic impression - This is NCAA 2007.5. If you're expecting anything different than that, then you are going to be disappointed. The auto-motion really adds a lot to the playbooks and the game, and they improved a few aspects of the game that were annoying (return camera), but honestly this is going to be a game that a month or two into it, you will feel like you've been playing this game for 2 years. Do not expect revolutionary stuff.
- Spy glitch was not fixed. This was pointed out to a member of the production team who was surprised to see it, so maybe it will be fixed for '09.
- Deep ball was somewhat less effective, for a number of reasons. First, DBs wait a LOT longer to bail out of backpedal on cover 3 and cover 4 zones, so the bullet streak is more or less eliminated. DBs were also made more aggressive in terms of going for INTs and making some plays on the ball. The current gen gameplay producer told us that this was something that he really wanted to focus on this year.
However, the deep ball is still ridiculously accurate, and there are issues with DBs reading the play correctly and keeping WRs in front of them. It is also still embarassingly easy to user catch deep balls. This was pointed out to the production team, and they are aware of the issue, but it is unclear if it is something that EA wants to fix in the future.
- QBs running straight backwards was still a problem. Basically guys, this is probably always going to be a problem. The developers explained to us that they haven't found a satisfactory way to combat the problem without alienating casual gamers. Vision cone is dead to NCAA. Never going to happen. Was a collosal problem for Madden for casual gamers.
- DBs still backpedal away from a running play for no real reason at all. Again, this was pointed out to EA staff, and we were informed that they were aware of the issue, but had not fixed the problem. We actually had an interesting play where I ran an option play against one of the producers, and I was able to go into replay and show them about 4 things that were stupid. First, the Safety was backing up 40 yards from the LOS and not pursuing the play. Second, my offensive center ran that entire 40 yards without touching anybody and pancaked said safety. Third, the QB was getting drilled as I hit pitch and it was a perfect pitch. Fourth, a defender who was in position to make a play on the pitch man took a embarassingly ******** angle to make the play, and I scored an easy TD to the outside. Basically this is again a situation where they are aware of these problems, but at this point there doesn't seem to be a great deal of motivation to fix these issues. So again, this will be a year that you will have to manually control a Safety and play the run.
- Zone blocking was vastly improved (although I didn't get a chance to break it down and figure out why it worked). We talked to the playbook guy, and he made it clear that it was a major goal of his to get those plays up and running. I can tell you guys that the playbook guy that they have working on this game is arguably the most dedicated guy on the staff in terms of getting football stuff in the game, and he's definitely a person that I feel good knowing that he's working on the game.
- The auto-motion stuff was simply sweet. That's the bottom line with it. WhoUTestin, I know you asked about the flexbone. Yes, they now have plays where the wingbacks motion into the backfield and get a handoff from the QB. You can run iso plays from this, but they also have jet sweep motions where a guy runs directly behind the QB and gets handed the ball. Basically every flexbone play (even the passing plays) involve auto-motion. But the really cool thing about this is that they also have plays with auto-motion, where a WR or HB motions and goes out for a pass. Also, I found plays with auto-motion, where a blocker will auto-motion into the backfield and become a lead blocker. They also did a really good job of putting in complementary plays, so they'd have a auto-motion play that's a fake to the HB then a WR sweep, then an auto-motion where the ball gets handed off to the HB up the middle, then an auto-motion play action pass all off of the same thing. This is something that numerous producers highlighted to us, that they wanted to make sure that they put complementary plays for all of those plays. Also, just FYI, the auto-motion is in next-gen as well. Both me and cdj really felt like this was an awesome feature, and something that I think guys are going to look at next year as a really cool addition to the game. Basically this feature gives a whole new breath of fresh air to the playbooks.
- There was some confusion about whether it was a hardware issue or a software issue, but we had problems with guys auto-juking in the open field (I actually had a guy auto-juke twice and run out of bounds). One of the producers said that they did something where guys would sometimes auto-juke if there was a defensive threat, and I did notice it happining in situations where appropriate, but the major issue was that we were getting auto-jukes in the open field with nobody around. The first couple times it happened, we thought that we had accidentally hit a juke button or something, or that a controller was broken. The issue, however, was seen using 3 or 4 controllers, with multiple teams, in multiple situations. EA staff was made aware of the issue.
- cdj hit on it earlier, but the new bluff play art is a cool minor thing that guys who play head to head games in person will really love. You can show fake play art that misleads your opponent.
- The return camera is off in multi-player games, and is now optional for single-player game. As a point of interest, we specifically asked about getting on/off switches for other gameplay "features", and were told that EA did not want to do this because they feel that it undermines the feature. Basically the impression that I got is that they only do this when a feature is failed, but it's too big of a pain to remove it from the game, so they just turn it off by default or give the user a way to turn it off. Guess EA isn't ready to admit that momentum, jump the snap, impact players, and HFA are failed features. It was interesting to hear though, that we talked with some members from EA's staff that discussed some of their own views on those features, and without getting into any specifics, there are definitely people on staff that are sympathetic to our positions on those things. They have some guys on the production team that are doing what they can to look out for hardcore gamers, in terms of what new features they add, and even if they aren't able to always win the argument, it is a bit reassuring to know that there's at least somebody in the room arguing the point.
- No playbook editor. Basically what we were told is that they don't view this as an option that is worth the development time in terms of selling any more games. It causes all kinds of extra quality assurance strains, and they don't think anybody would really use it. So if you guys want to get a playbook editor, go out and get a bunch of people to email EA about how you need to have it in the game, otherwise it's basically a dead issue, in terms of current gen.
- We asked about momentum being toned down. What we were told is that momentum was basically unchanged this year. Again, EA is aware of our position on the issue, but at this point it is not going to be altered.
- We did not get a chance to play any human vs computer games, so I can't comment on jump the snap. Again, we explained the problems to producers, who were aware of the issue, but it is unclear if this is anything that there is a motivation to do anything about.
- Pulling blockers are still useless for the most part. We still saw multiple times where blockers ignored relevant defenders, or were unable to make any sort of block on a man. So short of read plays and the new auto-motion, the running game will be exactly the same on '08. Our position on this matter was made clear.
- We noticed a field goal get blocked from a guy coming up the middle, which is something that I basically never saw on the game last year.
- There appeared to be a slight issue with the clock. At least twice we had a situation where the game was paused and one of us called timeouts, but a full second ran off the clock after we unpaused the game before timeout was called. In one instance this happened with 0:01 seconds left in the half. Producers were present when this was discovered, so they are aware.
- Still have an issue where if there's an auto-replay, you cannot challenge the play. This appeared to be something that producers were sympathetic to finding a fix for in the future.
- I did notice a few new running plays, which were called "power" plays. I called them a few times and did not experience tremendous success, but they are new to the PBs. They also had play action off of these plays. We didn't have a chance to dive into playbooks too much, so I can't really comment on how different things are. I did notice a bunch of new things in the flexbone playbooks, and in some of the next-gen playbooks that I saw, so there probably will be some things. Hook 'em, I know you were concerned about the I form option. I checked today and both Ohio and Buffalo have the same crap version of I formation. Texas aTm still has it in their PB. I wasn't able to go through everything and look for the I form option, but if I had to guess, I'd say that it's going to be the same as last year.
- We hammered very hard the concept of custom playbooks online. We were told that there were concerns with cheesers, but after having a pretty frank discussion about how some of the previous issues have more or less already ruined the game on that front, I feel that we may have made some progress there. It was unclear where online play stands at this point, but we definitely made sure that they understood our confusion about the fact that online features have actually been taken OUT of the game since '04, as opposed to the opposite way around.
We were told that the LSU, white on white uniform glitch had been fixed, but we had no way to confirm that.
- Final synopsis on gameplay. It plays like a tweaked, more solid, but still ******** in a lot of areas, NCAA 2007. If you are sitting there hoping for more than that, it's not going to happen. And we definitely get the impression that current gen is pretty close to the end of the run in terms of improvements, renovations, or anything like that. So my advice to anybody considering upgrading at some point, is to just get it over with. And that brings me to....
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06-25-2007, 03:34 PM
) 08 is more of the same with some nice little features added in. While the intelligence of the safeties in pass plays may not be terribly improved (still back-pedalling), it did seem that DBs weren't getting burned as badly as they did in 07. Though, there was still some holes and ability to User Catch. The little touches they added (listed above) are great and welcome to the franchise.
