Armchair quarterbacks will probably love NCAA Football 10. This year's college game includes 120 schools, flags that flutter in the wind, flashbulbs during key plays and more realistic field goal nets, in addition to improved player models, animations and commentary, thanks to sideline ESPN reporter Erin Andrews. Its biggest features, however, are Team Builder and Season Showdown, two modes that may forever change sports video games.
Team Builder is EA's new Create A School, except you do so online via PC. After logging on to Teambuilder.com and signing in with your EA Sports ID, you're free to build the ultimate college squad starting with the jerseys. There are 70 different styles of uniforms, including multiple logo placements (the jersey, the helmet) and patterns. After designing the uniforms, you can tweak player stats (as well as school academics, TV exposure and other things), choose from four field types (blue, grass, turf or multi), modify the text in the end zones, pick the stadium (fans will wear your team's colors) and even design the logo. As far as we know, EA has no plans to censor them, so you're free to grab a photo, upload and then place it on the field. If anything, that'll make online games even more interesting; save up to 12 schools for both you and your friends to download to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
As for Season Showdown, this is EA's way of getting players to respect the college game and play realistically. You'll choose one school and earn valuable credits for accomplishing multiple goals. Beating a rival, sticking to a pre-determined game plan, scoring an underdog win and correctly answering trivia questions about your chosen school will earn credits. Always going for two-point conversions and throwing long bombs all the time, however, will cause you to lose credits. At the end of the season, EA will tally the number of credits per team and release a set of rankings that'll eventually result in a 32 team offline tournament.
On top of that, NCAA Football 10 is a slice of what you can expect from Madden, so if you want a look at the new Procedural Awareness feature (where players track the ball with their eyes), this is the first place to experience it.
Thus far, Team Builder sounds amazing and Season Showdown has potential. If EA pulls these modes off, NCAA Football 10 will be a prime candidate for 2009 sports game of the year. Find out if the company scored the touchdown July 14th.
Reader Comments (2)
misstyped:::, I meant to say, If GAMERS wanted to play trivia questions. They would go buy a trivia game
Trivia questions??, better online gaming???, once again you're getting away from, what makes a game,... a game. Learn from GTA it's not about ONLINE GAMING, it's about making the game, a better game to play. Have you changed, on the PlayStation 3, where we can create our own playbook, like on the PS2??, have you did anything to correct how miserably the option, and triple option work?? Have you corrected the problem with the graphics?? The zoom in looks awesome. But if it's not on the zoom, the players look robotic when they run. Kind of like the way they looked on the 1st Nintendo system. Is there any late hit out of bounds?? Did they change the weather patterns, so it isn't almost always beautiful weather to play football in?? Have you added, where you can see what coaches were hired and fired, before you start your season?? Did you add names to coaches?? Have you added a new penalty, trying to call a timeout when you're out of timeouts, is a penalty?? If that's a NO to all the questions I asked, then you've done nothing to change the game, to what the people want to see. Besides, who's the moron, saying " Everybody I known, plays NCAA football online ". Did the makers of this game, put those their own words, as a comment?? Because all I hear, is how much better you made the game. Not how much better you made it an online game. Remember the words " If It's in the Game, It's in the Game ". You've done everything BUT, put what's in the game,.... actually in the game. I mean seriously, trivia questions???, if the game were wanted to play trivia questions. They would go buy a trivia game, when a gamer wants to play NCAA college football, then that's exactly what the gamer wants to play. Don't test our knowledge about college football, test our true ability to play NCAA college football on our home console.