According to everything we read pre-gameplay videos, the presentation and game stadium "experience" would be greatly enhanced in '12. To me, this should extend beyond canned team intros. But unfortunately that's all we've seen in videos in terms of progress - and the extent to which these intros are scripted and canned means that they are really not much progress at all.
My biggest peeve in '11 is the in-stadium, in-game experience. Particularly
sound. Yes, I am aware that there is the possibility of downloading custom stadium sounds. I personally don't use consoles for online gaming, that's PC territory for me if I ever get the urge, so custom content doesn't really help me much. (Besides, I have issue with developers in any game adding the ability to customize something and then ignoring it in their release version completely because "the community will fix it".)
So, this post focuses on the stock sounds that come with the game release.
What irks me most is that the developers designed stadium sounds that make it seem like they've never been to, or watched on TV, a college football game. I know this isn't the case, some of the developers are diehard fans. So why ignore this essential element of gameplay presentation?
Here are three simple suggestions that would greatly enhance the feeling that
you are there during a game
1- Modernize the tunes that bands play
Playing a game of NCAA '11 is like sitting through a 1946 West Point parade. It's like the game developers looked up "classic band anthems" and picked a playlist from Notre Dame's old glory days.
Long Way to Tippecary, really?
(I'm speaking of course of songs for 3rd down conversions, 4th down stops, etc. I greatly enjoy the classic authenticity of the actual school fight songs.)
College bands since then have updated their play-by-play repotoire a little. Most bands, after there is a big play, or TV timeout now play covers, or quick knockoffs of popular modern songs instead of lengthy John Philip Sousa ballads.
I recognize that game developers can't put many popular songs that bands would actually play in the game because of licensing issues. But why not give us generic songs that at least sound modern? More percussion and less lengthy trumpet flourishes is a good way to start. There are one or two of these already ingame, but they should be the norm.
2- Fix the PA announcer
Unfortunately as far as I can tell there's no way to turn this guy off without dulling out all the stadium sounds. If I could, I would, because he is an immersion killer for me. Here's why:
a) There needs to be more than one voice, so that different stadiums have at least the chance for breaking the monotony. This is so easy to include in the game I can't believe NCAA hasn't done it already. You don't need a voice actor. All you need to do is record him saying numbers 1-99, words like "gain", "loss", "incomplete", "complete", and "on the play". Probably would be at most 5MB worth of recording on disc...I think they can find the room for one or two more PA announcers.
b) The things the PA announcer says are sometimes so inane. Every single play is "
call it about a ____ yard gain". That "call it abouta..." gets real old, fast.
After the game, we are told (while the rest of the stadium is dead silent for some reason) "Thank you so much for coming out and supporting our team. Please drive home safely". Ironically, college football is one sport where I'd bet about half of those in attendance
don't drive because of proximity to campus. That's always struck me as odd. And do we really need the feel-good cheer for "supporting our team"? It's like something they'd say after a D-III school loses with 150 in attendance...it sounds weird when you hear that said in The Big House or The Swamp.
Nit-picky issues maybe, but they are immersion
killers.
3- Crowd behavior
I actually think the crowd is "decent", but in my opinion some critical improvements could be made.
a) Noise for big 3rd and 4th downs should be amped up even further. It's just not loud enough in some cases, particularly late in the game. In a perfect game world I'd love to have the crowd making that particular "AOOOOOOAOOOOOOO" sound on these downs. As it currently is in '11, it's just a loudened version of the everydown crowd.
b) A little bit of recognition for certain scenarios. When the home team is up big and is running out the clock in the end of the game, the crowd should recognize it and be loud throughout, not erupt instantly when the click hits 0:00. It's so startlingly fake when that happens.
Similarly, KR and
PR and other long runs are always very artificial sounding because the crowd goes silent during the run and then erupts the moment the goal line is crossed. There should be a coding element that loudens the crowd incrementally the longer a player is continuously running. That way we'd get a nice crowd response for long runs that even don't result in a score.
To summarize, I'm just pretty dissatisfied overall with the apparent lack of effort put into this year's NCAA. Without great reviews I'll probably skip it this year, and that's a shame because I really enjoyed '11 and saw the potential for a more complete game in '12. It's examples like the sound-related issues above that are seemingly easy enough to fix, that the developers have completely ignored in favor of canned intros, fixed length dreadlocks, and...grass.
What do you all think about the default sounds? And (coming from someone who has never downloaded any of the custom sounds available) are custom sounds worth it?
06-18-2011, 01:37 PM
