Five Reasons to Hold off on Buying NCAA Football 13

[RaychelSnr]

Are you still on the fence about buying NCAA Football 13? Well Jayson Young chimes in today with five pretty good and fleshed out reasons why you might think about holding off on your purchase at this point.

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[loonsluv]

Nice write up another great group of reasons on why I'm not purchasing an EA title..

[boomhauertjs]

Wow! After this no one can ever accuse OS of being shills for EA Sports. Well done. If I do upgrade from NCAA 11 this year, it will probably be to a used copy of 12, not 13.

[b2th3m1th]

hmmm you must being playing a different NCAA 13 than me.

[mWolfe]

Re: Five Reasons to Hold off on Buying NCAA Football 13

This is a good read and most all of this is why I decided to not buy this game this year or Madden 13 this year(Zig zag running was fun on Tecmo Super Bowl but shouldn't be present in todays game). For those of you who bought it and like it I am glad for you, but for me after being disappointed from 09 - 12 I have given up until this game becomes a sim game not and arcade game. I have gone back to 06(Xbox), 08(Xbox) and will try 11(Ps2), and see which will get me through till 14 drops next year. Great write up

[crques]

Very well put! Makes me wish they would scrap the entire engine and start over even more now.

[The_Rick_14]

Re: Five Reasons to Hold off on Buying NCAA Football 13

You picked a terrible video to show the defects of Total Control Passing. I've played QB at the college level and have thrown seam routes to the numbers and had receivers get their heads around and get it without skipping a beat. I've also flattened out corners and shifted curls a few yards inside or out.

Especially in this case, the receiver is looking back at the QB so much like an outfielder in baseball who sees the ball off the bat and has a good idea of where it's heading, the receiver can locate the ball right out of the QBs hand and make a play on it.

There are some issues with the system where receivers may act too quickly for my taste. But the majority of those are a side effect of your 5th point about unrealistic player movement not with being able to throw passes that adjust routes.

[dukebeatsuncagain]

I the writers opinion, which NCAA Football game would be the best? I really liked NCAA 11, but I am currently running with NCAA 10.

[gopher_guy]

Re: Five Reasons to Hold off on Buying NCAA Football 13

Run/Pass Commit

Defenses can also participate in a guessing game called run/pass commit, where correctly choosing one of four offensive scenarios (pass, run right, run left, run middle) results in the play getting blown up like a scene out of Tecmo Super Bowl. Essentially, Run/Pass Commit functions just like Jump The Snap, only without the risk of ever taking a penalty.

With a 1:4 chance of guessing the right offensive setup and snuffing out the play, the odds in this gameplay mechanic are stacked largely in the defense's favor. At least in Tecmo Super Bowl the defense had only 1:8 odds of picking the right preplay setup.

As some downs will force the offense into obvious passing situations, the "pass commit" option becomes foolproof at times since there's no directional guessing involved like there is in run plays.

It's a mystery why this feature even exists. If the user wants to defend against a running play, why not just send blitzers into the gaps where the run is expected?

Or if the user believes a pass is coming, what's wrong with simply choosing a traditional coverage scheme or an overload blitz to the quarterback's weak side?

Why is it necessary to artificially enhance the defense's ability with a silly guessing mini game that can stifle any offensive play?

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This one puzzles me. I feel like this is feature is pretty fair. You're telling your players to sell out to stop a specific play. 3rd and 29? Hey, they are probably going to pass, tell your defense to drop back because you know a pass is coming.

And if you guess wrong you get destroyed. Especially if you guess run and it's a pass.

[bigsmallwood]

Amazing write up! I thoroughly agree with your assessment and we may not see a fix (if ever) until next gen.

[pirateraider]

yeah i'm not seeing a lot of these problems.. do you have the tuner downloaded?

[WipeOut464]

Re: Five Reasons to Hold off on Buying NCAA Football 13

Wow! After this no one can ever accuse OS of being shills for EA Sports. Well done. If I do upgrade from NCAA 11 this year, it will probably be to a used copy of 12, not 13.

Do NOT do that. Without a doubt, 11 is better and less glitchy than 12.

Hell, I'll trade you my copy of 12 for your 11.

[skipwondah33]

I agree with pretty much everything in this.

Especially the Run/Pass commit - I cannot stand this feature and have never cared for it.

The same for the Gameplanning feature. Definitely cannot stand it.

[btemp]

GREAT ARTICLE!

Best article I've seen on here in a long time that doesn't ignore so many problems with EA's football titles. If we're not concious of them, how will they ever be fixed.

Top notch work.

[scottyo60]

As I've done ratings adjustments and such the gameplay problems you present are no where near as bad. I got destroyed playing against Georgia Tech (I was temple) and they moved it well.

I also lowered agility on a lot of players. Seemed to slow a lot of the cuts and quick accell. Jumping snap is a problem, but as long as I change up the cadance ever so often it does not present such an issue. The play actions and pump fakes also work very well if not over used and set up well... On total passing control I do agree, but I've not had any wild crazy scoring games. Even with friends the highest on 7 min quarters is only 32-31.

This will take a lot of continued tweaking, but there is a really good game under it all. If you're on the fence I have a roster coming soon and Carson and crew have done a great job on the 360 rosters with corrections. Mix that with the slider workers and those two reasons alone are to buy NCAA.