NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

[JAYMO76]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

YOU GAVE PRESENTATION A B?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Are you kidding me? Hey I like NCAA 09 but a "B" for presentation?

DIRECT QUOTE:"From a presentation standpoint, NCAA 09 turned in yet another weak (or should I say, Notre Dame-like) performance. For the third straight year on next-gen consoles, gamers had to live without any type of pregame Gameday festivities, bowl patches, special bowl presentation, highlight shows of any type, pride stickers that actually equate to on-field performance, and many of the other small nuances that fans of the franchise took for granted during the last generation."

Does that caption above sound like a B to you?

Atmosphere in NCAA FOOTBALL 09 is a joke. Where is dynamic attendance? where is the pre-game? where are the cut scenes? where is the bowl game feel? The list is endless.

[JAYMO76]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

163.2 PASSER RATING... that needs to be toned down. Oh by the way... that's not one game, that's the entire season!

[youALREADYknow]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

Just read the article... this made me laugh.

"Retrospective Review Score for Gameplay: A"

Great job undermining the legitimate complaints of the hundreds of people here in regards to the flimsy AI in this game.

[stoncold32]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

I agree that NCAA 09 was pretty darn good and that many people over exagerrated the problems with the game. However, the biggest problem I had with the game was the horrible cpu rushing game. It was just too weak on every difficulty level and the sliders were so watered down that it was impossible to fix.

The cpu running game has traditionally been garbage on default levels but I had always been able to tweak it to something realistic until this year. That problem alone caused me to stop playing the game in December. Pick up games are still fun but I'll enjoy playing basketball and baseball games for the most part until the next release.

I gotta disagree dude. This game is borderline terrible if you've ever played the PS2/Xbox versions. You say the biggest problem is the CPU running game, but I think it's WAy more than that. What about the CPU never passing deep? I think I've counted a total of two pass plays where the ball traveled at least 30yds before the WR caught it....and both of those were in the same game.

-QB option/running is broken. I put in NCAA 2004 a couple months back and I had forgotten how good the QB's ran the option in that game. In '09, the QBs run like they are confused.

- Defense if just too slow. If a 80's speed TE get's a step on you, it's over, no matter who your DB is. Just put the controller down and get ready to go back on offense.

[Keith121212]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

Really?

Don't you think this is a little overly dramatic?

Not at all. NCAA Football '09 was TERRIBLE. Beyond that arguably. How anyone can say the game has A+ anything is beyond me.

[KingVMSU]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

You have got to be kidding me.

Opinions are like....well you know the rest.

This game was brutal on all level with exception to looks, it was beautiful.

[Rocky]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

NCAA 2009 for the XBOX 360 featured the worst gameplay in the series....EVER

Yes.

EVER

Go back and play NCAA Football 2007 for the PS2 and you will see great gameplay crippled by terrible pursuit angles. That was the one flaw in otherwise a great game....and somehow NCAA 2009 for the 360 seemed to make them worse. And this is on top of a whole hosts of defensive problems.

The PS2 version is light years ahead of Next Gen in the gameplay department.

[sportyguyfl31]

somone else sid it earlier, the shining moment of the game is its visuals. It was artful.

Everything else just sucked on ice.

Pursuit angles, quicksand running when you tried to switch to a player to control yourself. Teams running qb keepers with clod footed pocketpassers, hitting 50+ yard FG with just about any kicker I want to...and on, and on, and on, and on.


This isnt just the worst NCAA football title ever, it is the second worst EA Football title on next gen, only beating Madden 06.

[Pared]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

I haven't played NCAA much this year. Many of the same issues that plagued the game in head to head matches remained... CPU play was a "chore" and the game lacked the enthusiasm of college football.

I enjoyed '08 but with the CPU actually feeling worse this year, there wasn't much else left to do with the game.

Look at previous years; No matter how bad NCAA was, people would not move on to other games. They would overlook the issues and still play the game. Recently, other games have done a much, much better job of capturing their sport than NCAA has. People would rather play MLB, NBA NHL, and FIFA games over this. The same holds true for Madden.

It's just deep issues with the engine that seem to persist. I loved all the other stuff they added to the game, like the team celebrations and such... but they couldn't overshadow the same issues that are there year after year. And this year, with the wide open gameplay being instituted... many more were introduced.

Even with their problems I would prefer to play NCAA '04, '05 and '06.

[rudyjuly2]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

I gotta disagree dude. This game is borderline terrible if you've ever played the PS2/Xbox versions. You say the biggest problem is the CPU running game, but I think it's WAy more than that. What about the CPU never passing deep? I think I've counted a total of two pass plays where the ball traveled at least 30yds before the WR caught it....and both of those were in the same game.

I just listed the biggest problem which I think is the cpu running game. I would agree that the cpu never passing deep is a big problem but #2 on my list. In terms of the speed issue, the biggest problem there was RBs running routes against LBs. I also thought the QB's were too slow.

1. Improve the anemic cpu rushing attack. With the horribly watered down sliders this year, that wasn't possible.
2. Bring back the deep ball! The cpu never threw it deep and it was rare to see a WR actually get behind a DB as well. Better cpu QB AI in general.
3. Improve the DL moves and map them to the R-stick. Playing as a DL sucks and is no fun currently.
4. Better player control on defense. It's too hard to manually defend the pass.

[rhombic21]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

My review of NCAA Football '09 is this:

The AI issues, particularly on defense, combined with the lacking playbooks, made head to head play a lot less fun than it probably could/should have been with better gameplay tuning. Additionally, the game is still in the dark ages when it comes to CPU AI, both in terms of game planning/game management, and in terms of roster management and recruiting, which made offline gameplay/dynasty uninteresting -- particularly for people with above average gaming skills.

Still, it did some things well. Graphically they took some important steps forward with the field textures and player models. The stadium sounds feature is something that could potentially be expanded and improved on even further in the future to build on atmosphere/presentation. The EA locker made roster sharing easier, and will probably eliminate scum like Kaldenburg. And of course, online dynasty is a blockbuster feature that, when the rest of the game catches up, will be an even bigger hit. That's the sort of big-time feature that will not only drive NCAA forward in the future, but which will put pressure on other sports games to expand their online modes as well, similar to the way that EASW revolutionized things a year ago.

So, I think that if you rate NCAA 2009 by itself, you have to give it somewhere between a 7.0 and 8.0. It was a mediocre game that was generally not all that fun to actually play. But if you look at the game as a step in the process, towards NCAA 2010 and beyond, I think it may go down as a serious contribution, assuming of course that EA eventually gets around to fixing the core gameplay issues that are currently holding the series back.

[deebo2246]

I am still trying to figure out if the producer of this article played the same game as everyone else. However, everyone has a different opinion on what videogame football should play like. Maybe he just enjoys playing a game that offers no realistic aspect of the game we watch and have played over the years. EA as a whole need to go back to the drawing board with their football and basketball games and re-invent them from the ground up with new visionairies that can make a realistic engine for those 2 sports. They need to talk more with FIFA and NHL producers to help them make a more definitive game. They may need to take the approach of utilizing two studios to make the development process longer with them alternating release years. If football is EA's claim to glory then treat it like a superstar it once was and not a prima-dona rookie that it has become.

[bangpow]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

I think NCAA 09 is absolutely brutal. It is not a fun game to play at all as the AI is probably the worst I've ever seen. I just never feel like I'm playing a game of football.

In fact, while NCAA 08 wasn't all that perfect either, I think I might go picked up a used copy tonight as I remember actually having some fun with that game last year, especially after the last patch that came out for it.

[Tovarich]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

The absolutely pitiful angles taken by the AI, the random sabotaging of speed when the CPU gets outside, the lack of custom playbooks, the baffling playcalling by the CPU, the awful DL animations...gameplay is no better better than a C...at it's core level, gameplay is broken unfortunately I think. I agree the complaints about pass rush were excessive. Eliminating robo QB could fix that. It's not all about sacks. If you got pressure, robo QB appeared. CPU screens...result in sacks more often than not for me. The DL getting flipped head over heels though was funny the first 200 times I saw it, then I just shook my head. Graphically, very nice. Presentation was simply a lack of effort in my opinion. They did ok with what they tried to do, they just didn't do anything. Online dynasty is nice for the first try. Some very strange problems with it though...basic stuff though like schedules...why is the 09 season the 07 schedule? How the hell does that even happen? 1-AA teams need to stop being treated like HS teams. Because seriously, you have to try not to score 100 on the 1-AA teams on Heisman with 5 minuete quarters even. Rosters thankfully are editable because whoever did those had to be clueless about football. I know you can't know the true depth chart when the game is out, but yikes. A lot of this just strikes me as lack of effort. All very fixable, except gameplay at its core probably needs to be built back up from scratch.

[bigjake62505]

Re: NCAA Football 09 Postmortem

With all the other issues that have already been stated here one thing that really takes away from the beauty of the game is the horrible running animations. It looks so stupid when the running back breaks a long run then starts to bobble and hop when they are doing that horrible animation. I want whoever is responsible for this to watch some football games and pay attention to the running style. Who in the world of college football runs like this? And for the love of god fix this. The RB's are just an example, Watch the DL/OL guys run. That is the stupidest running style I have ever seen.