A closer look at NCAA Football 08 Campus Legend

Gamespot has posted a hands-on look at NCAA Football 08’s Campus Legend mode. The videos of the game that have recently come out have been from Campus Legend so it is giving people a good opportunity to get a feel for it early.

Overall it seems to have a lot of potential, especially since it appears significant changes were made to the camera angles that single-handedly killed Madden’s Superstar mode.

Some things of note from the GS hands-on:

Because you’re a player and not a coach, you’ll have to run the plays that are sent in by the head coach. EA istoying with the possibility of letting you call audibles if you’re the QB, but no final decision has yet been made.

This actually is something that disappoints me to hear. In Madden 07 Superstar, the CPU play calling was horrendous. I realize that the point of the mode is to play from the perspective of the individual, and they don’t call the plays, but it can be frustrating at times to have the control taken away from you like that. If EA has improved CPU play calling than it’ll be alright, but it is hard to ignore the possibility of that being a problem.

Do you go to a small school where you’ll come in and challenge for the starting job right away, or do you swallow your pride and ride the pine at a major program?

It’ll be interesting to see where people decide to go. I have a feeling it’ll be a pretty even split, with some looking to get on the field immediately and take on the challenge of playing on a weaker team, while others will want to be a part of a powerhouse. It offers some extra replay value to know you can go back and go a different route.

When practice started we were shown how far behind the next player on the depth chart we were. Basically, you’ll need to earn about 21 practice points for every one overall rating point between you and the player above you. When your rating equals their’s, the job is yours.

This is sounding like a good idea. Most people need motivation to actually play a practice mode and it looks like this will offer it. It hasn’t been mentioned whether you’ll be able to manually change the depth chart which has been the case in Superstar and Road to the Heisman in the past.

In addition to practicing you’ll also need to figure out how to best spend your free time. You can choose to study, go to the movies, or play pick-up basketball, which may raise or lower certain attributes or even cause injury. Being all about our education we decided to stay in and hit the books.

Not really an appealing aspect to the hardcore crowd. I think most everyone would just like the girlfriends back right?

Not only will there be 115 stadiums, but UCS’ new stadium will be in the game, as will Vanderbilt’s new digs, and Alabama’s upgraded stadium as well.

Good news on the stadiums, there were conflicting reports on the number included so it’s great to hear the 115 mentioned again. No more complaining about that subject.