07-15-2013, 10:55 AM
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#1
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MVP
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My shoddy review of NCAA Football 2014.
I'll keep this short and sweet as you guys know the offerings for this game. I don't know why I get bought into the hype of spending 60 bucks a year on this thing. It's always a buggy mess and 14, while it has some genuine nice things bout it, falls on its face in the quality assurance department. First thing that is wrong. The custom stadium sounds ruin your experience. Each time before a custom sound starts, the audio cuts out completely for 2 seconds or so. It's maddening when a person with lots of sounds and you hear the audio cutting in and out every 15 seconds. Mind you, I can do without my own fight songs/music/chants, but we know how bad E.A.'s presentation continues to be. Commentary continues to be dull and void of anything that stands out but it's to the point where I'm glad I can hit mute. But worst of all. The crowd. Or shall we say? What crowd? Can they be less involved? Did EA go to a high school game and record on a tape recorder with a mono microphone and use that as their atmosphere? I have my crowd up to 100 too. Doesn't matter where ya play, Florida, or Toledo Ohio. You can only picture a college atmosphere in your inner consciousness, because in reality, you got nothing with NCAA Football 14.
The fight songs are the same generic 5 piece band they've used since NCAA 2002 on PS2. I've truly had it with this garbage. So what about stat screens? well? The stat overlays at half time and end of quarters are ESPN all the way and does give it a tv style presentation. But it doesn't save the rest of it. The life or lackthereof on the sidelines continues to be dead. No pun. Literally. Motionless bodies of sidelined players, cardboard cutouts of cameramen and non-existent of life. Really? This is 2014 NCAA?
The new infinity engine isn't too bad. Its the best the game has probably felt yet. You can finally interrupt an animation and when a second defender is going after the runner, he can affect the play regardless if the other defender is affecting the base runner. So you can have 2, 3, 4 even 5 guys truly make a difference on a tackle. Running, passing, feels better, blocking is better and I finally feel I can play defense, while it's still broken in parts. With hurry up offense players, it's difficult for a defense to get set as usual. Zone still doesn't seem very effective. DBS still seem to be suckers for curl and slant routes. Especially when you start boosting up the difficulty. Sometimes the CPU QB can go like 100% for 2 quarters and not break a sweat. I recommend lowing the CPU QB sliders to under 40 to make for a more realistic experience. As always, don't bother playing online. Game is unplayable with the unstoppable plays and cheese game that they always ways to exploit this game. E.A. has done nothing to make this a better and fair online experience. Stick with playing with friends or the CPU.
Graphics are great in spots, downright shoddy in others. The grass/fields look amazing. Animations are well done and the tackles are pretty intense at times. Player models, ehhh, let's just say, they don't look any worse than they did the last 3 years. The stadiums look good, that is until you look at the fans who are the continuous worst looking fans in sports games. They are motionless cardboard cutouts. There is no life on sidelines, at all. No bustling people, no cheerleaders, no cameramen and the players and coaches just stand there like zombies.
Overall. I do regret spending the 60 bucks this year. I'm already getting bored with it. It still doesn't feel like college football to me do to the poor presentation that E.A refuses to truly improve. If they fix the audio cutting out, that will help. But it can't fix a horrible presentation that has been with this game since the PS2 and XBOX days. Probably better to wait for next gen. Save your money.
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