|
|
 |
 |
[Click To Enlarge]
Email A Friend - Gift Reminder |
NCAA Football 09
Availability:
In Stock
Price:
$19.99
$9.99*
|
| Part No: | B00160NLZO |
| Manufacturer: | Electronic Arts |
| MFG Part: | 15503 |
| Customer Rating: | 3.0 / 5.0 |
|
|
- Wide Open and Authentic College Style Gameplay
- College Atmosphere & Pageantry
- Home Field Advantage with new mini-game components
- All-new Mascot Mode
- Improved recruiting system in Dynasty mode
NCAA Football 09 PSP
| Good football game | 2010-03-16 | 4 / 5 |
| | NCAA Football 09 for the PSP is a fun game, but seeing as it is after the 2009-10 season you might want to wait and get NCAA Football 11 or Madden NFL 11. The freshman controls are fun, but get old. If you chose to do so, you can change the settings to make the camera rumble when the "crowd" gets excited. The graphics are fair, but nothing to get too excited about. The price has probably gone down so if you care about just playing football more than being up to date, this might be the way to go. |
| I've always been a big fan of the NCAA College Football video game franchise from EA. I still have, and still enjoy, 2005 on the PS2.
I am NOT a fan of this game, and will probably never purchase another EA product for the PSP after the way they screwed this up.
There's a laundry list of complaints I have about this game. I'll only give you a few.
1) Play clock. How hard is it on a modern computing device to accurately count off 25 seconds? I timed it. It's actually just under 19 seconds because the clock counts down too fast. This doesn't sound like a lot of difference, but with 75 offensive plays to scroll through it means that you're continually getting called for delay of game. (and the only way to turn that off is to turn off ALL penalties).
2) Adding onto #1, your players move like turtles. You must break the huddle with a minimum of seven seconds left or you'll get a delay penalty-- EVERY TIME. You can press the X button and the team will take two slightly swifter steps (this is "hurry up" mode), but you still have no time to run any form of motion.
3) Unlike the 2005 game on the PS2, some plays have required motion. I hope you didn't call one of those in the huddle because it only happens at one speed: slow as snot. Run one of these plays and you'd better break the huddle with ten or twelve seconds left.
Not only are these clock issues not realistic, they make the game a lot less than enjoyable. How much fun can you have when you're continually getting penalties called against you because the computer isn't giving you the rule-allotted time to call the plays?
4) You have two modes you can play in: stupid complex or idiot simple. There's no third option. "Freshman" mode means you have about twenty plays to pick from, can't use motion, and everything is controlled with the "X" button. "Advanced" mode gives you access to the full playbook, and some preposterous number of audibles, calls, and button combinations, as well as "package" substitutions like swapping receivers and running backs, jumbo goalline players, etc. Was there really no way to turn on one button action and still leave the playbook alone, EA?
5) The main reason I love 2005 is that you can create your own school. I enjoy creating teams I have personally coached at the high school or youth level and staffing them with the best players I've coached. Unfortunately, while we have that idiotic "Mascot mode" programmed in for us, we can't create our own teams. I'm sure everyone that bought this game was looking forward to playing an entire season as Uga, the flipping University of Georgia mascot, but it sounds insipid to me. "Look, ha ha! The husky from Washington just tackled the Lion from Penn State. Cats and dawgs! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!"
Who wasted programming time on this in the first place? Does anyone actually play the game like that? HAS anyone ever played the game like that? Scrap this and let us make our own schools!
6) Fumbles, fumbles, and more fumbles. I fumbled NINE PLAYS IN A ROW. It doesn't matter who carries the ball, where they go, or how they are hit. Of course there is no way to turn down the fumbles.
7) Phantom tacklers. Folks, I've coached football my entire adult life and I can tell you that a blue chip fullback is not going to be brought down by a linebacker BACKING INTO HIM. 2005 on the PS2 had this programmed well: if you hit a defender from behind you would bounce off of him-- just like life.
In THIS game, however, EA has regressed to the gameplay of the 90's. Merely touching a defender causes a tackle. This makes it awfully hard to run the option, which depends on the fullback being tough and strong enough to at least break an arm tackle at the line during the mesh. (You can adjust the game's ability to tackle. As a test I turned it to 0%. There was no noticeable difference in my ability to break arm tackles.)
8) The kicking system is asinine. First you use the "L" trigger and the joystick to align the kick, then you pull the joystick sharply back and try to time it to get maximum power before you flip it forward. Be careful so you don't screw up your accuracy! How about a new idea: we hit a button and use the joystick to aim!
9) Load times. How about 94 seconds to load from the game select screen?
10) Players who fail to do what the play assigns to them. It's not a matter of programmed "mental errors" because they do it every single time the play is called. Take the FB trap, for instance. You cannot control the FB until he has taken his third step. Unfortunately, instead of taking those steps up the middle, where the play is drawn and where the eight yard wide hole is, you take those preprogrammed steps in a sweep to the right, where you tangle up with the blockers and can't get back to the line before the pursuit closes.
Call the play ten times, this will happen ten times.
Smash pattern with the inside receiver running a corner, which is a deep "don't stop until you're in the end zone" route to the outside. Receiver breaks across the middle. Ball is still thrown to the called route, where it is picked or incomplete. (And why do your receivers run AWAY from a thrown ball? Aren't they supposed to run towards it?)
And why does your center mysteriously pull and sprint to the sideline instead of blocking on a straight drop back call?
And why the hell can't your defenders catch?
11) Crummy manual. EA sports was kind enough to inform us in the manual that the NCAA Football game is the #1 Selling Football Franchise, but they couldn't be bothered to do more than explain the entire byzantine workings of "Dynasty mode" on less than a page and a half. I suppose we're just supposed to trial and error it or guess.
12) Lack of class. I am so sick of video games that show chest thumping athletes trash talking and sack dancing. I stopped watching the NFL entirely this season largely as a result of this dirtbag mentality. Paying money for a game that features it grinds my gears. Doesn't the NCAA have a penalty called "Unsportsmanlike Conduct" and don't they call it when a player spins a football, or flamencoes into the end zone or otherwise taunts an opponent?
Class used to be a part of the sport. Now the millionaires who play it whine that it's not "fun" unless they are allowed to degrade their opponents, and the college and the high school and the youth athletes have begun to do the same. For this reason ALONE I don't recommend this game. I'm supposed to go out there every fall and explain to twelve-year-olds why they aren't supposed to act like this-- then they go home and fire up the PSP and see it large as life.
Of course, the game also features a "lack of class" option in Dynasty mode, where players can get into trouble and need discipline during the season. It may be somewhat realistic, but is it really necessary in a video game?
I'll be trading this back to GameStop for something else this weekend.
~D. |
| If you are interested in Dynasty Mode, your out of luck | 2009-05-11 | 1 / 5 |
| I have been playing the NCAA Football franchise for about a decade. I play the game a little different then some, perhaps. I don't enjoy playing with "QB #12" and "WR #86". I like to play with my own players. I like to play the dynasty mode. I like to go through a few seasons of recruiting my own players before I start playing games. I enjoy the gameplay, but I more enjoy taking a lowly program and turning them in to a contender.
So here is the thing about the 09 version. PS3 version has sucked all of the fun out of team building by making recruiting take a good solid 3 hours per season. Way too indepth for me. The PS2 version is what I am used to, but it is the exact same game it was last year and the year before that and the year before that. They checked out of the PS2 a few years ago. I can't pay full-price for an old game with a roster update. I would, however, play that (PS2) game on my PSP so I can take it on the go. It seems to me that they should be able to make a PSP version that could do most of what the PS2 game does. I tried to do some research before buying this game for my PSP. I couldn't find much info about the Dynasty Mode. I read some reviews of the gameplay, but that wasn't my main concern. I decided to buy the game and check out the dynasty mode myself. Let me tell you, it is terrible. I took over Rice, out of Conference USA. The first season goes about how it would on the PS2 with the exception of extremely long loading times and a few annoying glitches. Advancing each week takes probably 3 minutes. I decided that could be something I can live with, although it was frustrating. Then at the end of the year came glitch #1. My 3-9 team won every award, including the Heisman. The stats are totally out of wack when simulated. They said I was passing for 700 yards a game and running for another 300. Silly numbers. No wonder every player on my team set a record and won an award. Ok, so I can overlook that for now...lets see what the off season is like. You still have the crippling loading times, but that is to be expected by now. My only real issue here is that you get way more recruiting points in week 2-5, then you do in week 1. If you put 1 point on a guy in week 1, they would automatically "Send the house" for you the following week. It makes recruiting easier, but it isn't very fair. My terrible team pulled down the 35th best class in year 1. That is ok, with the load times, I didn't mind being a couple years ahead of where I should be. So, I head in to year 2 and try to set my schedule. In a small glitch, you can change your conference schedule. These games should be locked. You could play all home games, or not actually play anyone in your conference. I was curious one year so I took out one of my conference foes and put in a different team. They scheduled me for 2 games in the same week. That is just silly, but you can avoid that by not messing with your conference schedule. One other annoying this is that your players get in trouble. That in and of itself isn't a problem but it is so inconsistent. I would go seasons without running in to more then 1 incident. The next season I would have 2-3 every week. I just kinda dealt with it because my penalties weren't that harsh, but it was a little annoying. So I take control of the Conference after a few years and I get an invite to the Big 12. This is a neat feature that I was looking forward to. I spend a few years getting beat up on by Oklahoma and Texas before I finally got on equal footing with them. In year 10, I win the Big 12 for the first time and win my first major BCS bowl. I am really looking forward to the next few years of competing for a national championship. When I get to the end of the season they tell me that my Dynasty is done. It is only a 10 year mode. I took the game out of my psp, placed it in the garbage, and started writing this review. I can't believe I paid for this flawed and frustrating experience. It made me wonder if anyone did any testing on this game. If you played through 1 season you would catch most of these flaws. Thanks for the effort EA.
I only played 1 game and it was pretty fun, but I can't handle all of the flaws that ruined my favorite mode of play. EA Sports has lost me as a NCAA customer. I will continue to play Madden for now, but I expect they will ruin this game for me soon as well. |
| This Game Rocks! | 2009-03-10 | 5 / 5 |
| | I really like this PSP game, I actually prefer it over Madden. Great graphics, endless hours of enjoyment. |
| NCAA Football 09 | 2009-02-09 | 4 / 5 |
| | I don't play it but my son says the 2008 version is better. Still likes the graphics though. |
* Current Price/Avail/Qty displayed on website may be delayed by up to 24 hours. Items added to cart and into the checkout process will reflect current price and status of product. |
|
 |
|
)
