NCAA Football 09 Hands-On Preview: Part one: Pasta Padre

[Steve_OS]

Pasta Padre has posted part one of his hands-on impressions of NCAA Football 09.

Quote:

"At first it took a little while to get acclimated to the player weight, momentum, and foot planting. Movement looks and feels much more natural but at first felt a little heavy. After a few minutes playing though it really began to feel like it was just right. User control is big especially in the running game or in the run after the catch. Elusiveness and acceleration attributes are huge. You can really see the burst and taking bad angles as a defender is punished severely."

[callmetaternuts]

Sounds like it COULD be good, still some issues that have been known for a year or so. Optimistic, but who knows if they fix them

[muggins]

Quote:

There were a high % of interceptions returned for touchdowns. This seemed to be due to the speed/acceleration and taking bad angles that are impossible to recover from. Off the top of my head I’d say on average 1-2 every game. This got to be a little frustrating that they were occurring so often and there was little recourse to preventing them being taken the distance.

C'mon EA

[N51_rob]

Both of the reviews that I have seen from this event in New York have mentioned the interceptions. That is disappointing. I know that there is still some time in the development cycle but I really hope that this is looked at again and something is done. But on the other side haven't heard much if anything about fumbles. Still being cautiously optimistic.

[therizing02]

Thanks for the impressions Pasta.

From a visual standpoint everything sounds good. From a gameplay perspective I'd have to say I'm a little irritated to hear about the lack of incompletions, pick sixes, and the fact that the CPU does not throw deep. The optimist will say that QB Acc and INT Sliders will help, but let's just hope they work this year.

As far the CPU not throwing the ball deep, hopefully there's still time to fix it because this is unacceptable.

Did anyone else get the impression that this sounds more like an arcade game? Big plays, pick 6, high completion percentage, a lot of points in 5 minute quarters....

[Jistic]

Quote: Originally Posted by therizing02

From a visual standpoint everything sounds good. From a gameplay perspective I'd have to say I'm a little irritated to hear about the lack of incompletions, pick sixes, and the fact that the CPU does not throw deep. The optimist will say that QB Acc and INT Sliders will help, but let's just hope they work this year.

Which has been going on for years. They'll never change this frickin' engine. I'm tired of the the EA pick 6 fiasco and lack of CPU deep passing game.

[SteelerSpartan]

Quote: Originally Posted by therizing02

Thanks for the impressions Pasta. From a visual standpoint everything sounds good. From a gameplay perspective I'd have to say I'm a little irritated to hear about the lack of incompletions, pick sixes, and the fact that the CPU does not throw deep. The optimist will say that QB Acc and INT Sliders will help, but let's just hope they work this year. As far the CPU not throwing the ball deep, hopefully there's still time to fix it because this is unacceptable. Did anyone else get the impression that this sounds more like an arcade game?

Yep...These impressions just further my concerns that EA is too obsessed with "WOW" moments for the "casual 5 min" player. And its affecting their game design.

As others have mentioned though, lets hope they've improved the slider functionality....but Im not too optimistic at this point given their track record

[noplace]

As long as sliders can actually fix the ints I'm ok.

Somethings I'm happy to see:

"Offensive line slide protection is in and seemed to work pretty well. Options are to hit to the left or right for those sides or the left trigger and press up for “aggressive” or down for “pinch”.

"Gang tackling is better than last year, probably more on par with Madden 08’s. I didn’t notice nearly as much “bouncing off” players as the second or third defender in would assist in the tackle."

I'm starting to think EA just cant get the interaction correct with there dev team...