Played NCAA 2003 again AND...

[sammyinafrica]

Guys...I use a PS2 and have only had 3-4 freeze ups the whole time. guess I am the lucky one

What baffles me is that on AA difficulty you do not get the "Psysic AI" ie flips the D to your offensive call, you rarely get ROBO QB , You almost never get caught from behind by a slower player but bump it up to Heisman and instead of the CPU having better reaction speads, excaping blocks more quickly , WHATEVER....what you get instead is "cheating" ie the 56 speed LB catching/covering a 98 speed RB/WR. A QB with 75 accuracy and 70 throwing power throwing across his body while preforming acrobatics only to make the perfect throw.

IMO AA is the best level to play on BUT it becomes far to easy even with sliders slanted in the CPU favor. and Heisman is just agrivating to play at times. Not usually against tough opponents(I can handle the "catch up" AI with these teams 'cause good teams come back) but typically against weak foes. If I am A+ accross the boad and my oppenet is C's, then if I have a 25 point lead in the 4th "usually" the team with the much better athletes will continue to roll. But ...well you know what happens. I know this happens in real football but not to the same team 4-5 times a year every year. like I said I hope that this can be fixed. AND to EA's credit I am sure fixing the problems is not as easy as it sounds.

Man do I sound like I am complaining about the best football game I have played or what?....but It sure felt good!

Can't wait to play 2004

[CM1847]

I have the Xbox version or 2003 and I got 1 serious freeze where I had to clear the harddrive to fix it, but other than that I've had no problems. I play on AA and it gives me a good challange(with adjusted sliders) if I'm a not so good team. Playing at Ohio I get trounced by top 25 teams and all the conference games are close, I've ended up with 5 and 6 wins the last two seasons. When I play a season as any decent team I win 10+ games, but I find it really hard to go undefeated for some reason. So basically I think the sliders and difficulty need a little adjustment, but for a sports game I've had for 8 months, 2003 still presents a good challange.

Playing on AA I don't see the ROBO QB very often, it does show up in spurts and is pretty annoying, but I can just accept it as a QB getting hot or something, as long as it doesn't go on all game long(and it usually doesn't). And I honestly can't say I've seen any catch-up AI while playing. Sure, teams come back on me every now and then, but that's football, it's never been consistant enough to bug me.

As far as imporvements, the DB pass deflecting AI needs to be fixed, but doing that will put the completetion %'s at an unrealistically low rate so something will need to be done to account for that(that's why a lot of problems aren't as easy to fix as it may seem, there's gonna be stuff you have to balance with to keep the game realistic).

But I'm definitiely looking forward to 2004, EA had improved the game with every version, I can't wait to see what they've done to 2004, you can bet that most of the AI issues we have will be delt with, plus extra stuff, it should be great.

[kirkdawg]

I play on AA too and the only time I see the robo QB is when they do some 180 degree turn and wing a 45 yard pass across the field off their back foot as my DE is crushing him. The DB AI could be fixed if the DBs had the ability to look over their shoulder for the ball like a WR would (not that they ever do) All too often my DBs will stop and turn around to see the ball sail over them to the WR who gets an additional 30 yards before my safeties can get over to make the stop.