Notes after viewing the four new NCAA Football 08 videos
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IGN has added four new videos for NCAA Football 08 and you can access them by clicking here. One is a play being challenged and the other three are big pass completions.
I took a few notes while watching:
-I hope that challenging a play can be done in an easier manner than was displayed (going into the pause menu). An effort has been made by companies producing sports titles over the past couple years to eliminate the need for pausing the game to access different options which has been a very positive thing. At least it would only be once or twice a game that you would have to do that, but it still would be annoying.
-The graphics don’t look much different from last year, however it does look a little crisper and the smooth gameplay thanks to 60fps is a signficant improvement.
-My intial reaction to the new play-calling screen is disappointment. I don’t like how you’re more limited in what you can see on the screen.
-I hesitate to analyze videos coming out because we don’t have all the details. We don’t know what difficulty level they were playing on, and we don’t know (although sometimes it is obvious) how good the actual people who are playing the game are. Yet I’ll go ahead and say two things I didn’t really care for. The sense of a pocket and containment in the game still seems to be lacking. Also in the 4th video the QB throws the pass off his back foot with no apparent consequence for doing so.
That all being said, NCAA Football 07 was to me the most enjoyable football game on the 360. I didn’t play it as much as Madden 07, simply because the NFL keeps my interest a lot longer. NCAA was the more open-feeling title and I enjoy that sense of freedom more than others which can feel more like just going through the motions. These videos may not have been anything extraordinary, but it still appears that the game will be a lot of fun to play. With longer looks at the game and more hands-on impressions we’ll be able to get a better idea of what to expect.