When news about the online dynasty in NCAA 09 was announced recently and EA's plans for this new feature were confirmed in detail, two thoughts came to mind - first, that I hoped that the developers hadn't set aside too many resources in pursuit of what is clearly an ambitious goal at the expense of gameplay; but also second, that this sounded like the holy grail of football gaming. How could it get any better than this ? An offline dynasty which could be played online, sounds perfect. Precisely what we'd been crying out for in Madden all these years and, perversely, not really asked for in NCAA (but would gladly have were it offered). My visit to Tiburon has done nothing to change my opinion, in fact I'm far more excited about NCAA 09 now I have had some hands on time playing the game than I was before I visited Orlando.

That's not to say that this is the perfect football game and as you'll see in my observations from community day, there are some small issues that if EA could have fixed before shipping the game (and will hopefully be able to patch after shipping) would make what appears on the surface to be a great game of football even better. But, they aren't absolutely critical fixes and that's why NCAA 09 is shaping up to be such a great title... it's a game that will ship playing a fast, exciting and broadly realistic game of football. Any fine tuning and extra polish on top of that is all the better.

Besides the online dynasty, there really aren't a massive amount of new features in NCAA 09 aside from a few new mini-games, a cool music-import feaure which I'll talk about later and ... oh, a small thing called "online dynasty". What NCAA 09 does however is scream polish and tuning... EA has taken what they already had and just made it work and made it work well. They've cleaned up NCAA 08... and added some of the big things we wanted like better atmosphere, better player models, better graphics and better presentation. I'll go out on a limb and claim already that this is the best version of NCAA on any console, old-gen OR current-gen. What struck me most was how every game felt new and different, which is something that NCAA 08 didn't manage to achieve. But again, I'll stress, this isn't the perfect game of football.

Polish - even to the point of being significantly better than it was when a bunch of community guys played it recently at an event in New York - is down to tuning and adjusting things to make them work better. This is due in no small part to communicating with the community via message forums and getting feedback from fan websites as well as offering community leaders the chance to play the at a much earlier stage in the development cycle - something that EA has done in a massive way all three fronts this year, to their immense credit. Ian Cummings, in his role as gameplay producer, has been very active around the web and connecting with the community in this way will also be great PR for the developers at EA.

One of the first things I noticed when loading up the game was how similar the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are this year. That will be welcome news to PS3 owners who suffered last year with an inferior game. From graphics to framerates, both versions matched up well. Something else that struck me was that the big power-house teams will have a distinct advantage over the smaller schools and for a cupcake team to defeat a top 25 team, you're going to have to play a heck of a great game. This is, of course, as it should be. From my own experience, Ohio State and Mizzou were two very difficult teams to beat... particuarly because of the speed they had on offense.

Gameplay is the factor upon which a game will be ultimately judged. No amount of bells and whistles in the presentation, dynasty or online area will compensate for deficiencies in gameplay and that's where NCAA 09 should be held to account. From my experience playing the game, things have definitely moved towards the feel of the old-gen versions of NCAA Football which is a good thing. In previous versions of NCAA on the Xbox 360, the feeling of player control didn't match that experienced on the older consoles. Now... the way the players move, the planting and cutting moves when running the ball was the kind of stuff we saw on the Xbox and PS2 in later versions. This is a significant change for the better.

From the small number of games I played, it's fair to say that the collective experience of those present at the event was that the game exhibited something of an offensive imbalance in a few different ways. First of all, the weak pass rush which is a concern that most people playing the game made comment of to a greater or lesser extent. Not enough pressure getting to the quarterback even from a highly ranked defensive line is something of a concern. As a result, QBs were sometimes completing a significant percentage of their pass attempts. Slider adjustments appeared to have minimal impact in terms of adjusting the rush defense, but we experienced more positive results when adjusting the QB accuracy (although we were only able to spend a short amount of time experimenting) and I'm glad to report that when we offered this feedback to the producers, they were aware of the issue and it's something that can hopefully be tweaked after release. It's not a game-killer or anything ridiculous and overly dramatic like that - but it's nothing that some minor adjustments shouldn't be able to take care of.

Secondly, on punt and kickoff returns there is some really cool team blocking which makes it somewhat easier to make some sweet returns. The blocking opened up the kinds of holes that made it reasonably easy to pick up significant yardage most of the time. With the improvement in player control and the ability to branch animations, at times it was possible to make it real tough to bring a player down and dodge tackles, as evidenced in the video of my punt return where i managed to juke my way past a few different guys (at least one of these jukes was nothing more than a move of the left stick as opposed to a regular juke animation initiated by the right stick). Making a punt or kickoff return is one of the most satisfying things in football and there shouldn't be too many of them. That said, in the video of my punt return I didn't break out of any tackles and given that I make reference to it here I should add that these are not excessive - sure, you can break out of tackles but it isn't overdone and you might see it once or twice here and there.

In contrast and quite deliberately on the part of the designers, there are more effective tools on defense to better combat the offensive threat. The run defense is, in particular, well schemed to combat the threat of an agile and fast running back and while he will be able to break out of a tackle from time to time, the defense won't play stupid or give up cheap yardage. As far as I am aware from conversations, every offensive play (and there are plenty of new ones this year, "hundreds" of them according to Anthony White - the playbook designer) has at the very least, one defensive play deisgned to counter it and countless other adjustments can be made pre-snap. However the premise of "wide open gameplay" (or at least, my interpretation) is that the game will have a more offensive style to it and that is evident in NCAA 09.

The online dynasty is one of the most exciting developments in sports gaming to date. EA has clearly invested a great deal of time and energy in making sure they add a comprehensive online version of the offline dynasty and have considered many different issues in implementing this feature. In past versions of Madden we had the ability to spawn franchise games to play online and it was possible to share an offline franchise file with other gamers online via the EA Locker. In conversations with producers, it became clear that the online dynasty is in fact a hybrid of all the technologies that went into making these features possible in the past. But it's not the core elements were EA really excells, it's the detail were things really shine.

Ever wondered what might happen if you don't like the way the league is being run, the commish is doing a bad job of players are not turning up to play their games ? Again, EA has the solution because the game will not only allow you to download the dynasty file and carry on playing offline, with a friend as well if you choose. It will even let you re-upload the file and carry on with a different commish and even different members if you so choose. Attention to detail ?

In conversations with the producer of the online dynasty mode (we have an exclusive video interview with him to follow), it is perfectly clear that EA has made an outstanding job piecing this puzzle together and we can only hope that the experience isn't adversely affected by the lag that has sometimes plagued NCAA online over Xbox Live in recent years. We were told that testing was ongoing between the San Francisco studios and Orlando studios with the intention of perfecting the net-code to make the online gameplay as smooth as possible. One additional point to note - we were told that (with both Madden online leagues and NCAA online dynasties) EA would be monitoring the usage of this feature and if it proves popular (as we all hope) make even more additions for next year and beyond.

I haven't touched on the other big change for 09, although I mentioned it at the start and that is the work that has been done with presentation. I'm one of those guys who has been calling out for a pre-game, half-time and post-game show forever. None of those have made it into 09, although we still have the ability to be able to save our replays and screenshots and upload them to EASportsWorld.com which is no bad thing. I particularly loved being able to chronicle the progress of my dynasty in 08 with pictures and video and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. I should have described it as a "new" EASportsWorld.com, however, because I know from conversations with Justin that there are significant changes planned for the site over the course of the next few months. One thing I was particuarly pleased to hear is the ability to embed "YouTube-style" videos into websites and forums which is great news.

Post-touchdown celebrations with the mascot - where, after scoring a TD the mascot will call you over to celebrate with him - and team celebrations were very nicely implemented. Another aspect of the game that might go unnoticed from a presentation standpoint is that the home team will have more players on the sideline than the road team. True to life, given that most visiting teams don't bring the same entourage and extent of personnel on the road that they would for a home game.

I didn't have any time to try the playlist feature but from what I can tell EA has done a great job by allowing the user to customise the in-stadium sounds for up to 22 different situations in a game. That means you can specify which music you would like to hear when a home-team touchdown is scored, or when an interception is made. For teams that don't have the correct audio already licensed into the game (Auburn being one notable example), this is great news.

These are my impressions and some of the feedback from my experience playing NCAA 09. I hope that it is clear that my overall impressions of NCAA 09 are extremely positive. The game is far superior to 08 in my opinion and while NCAA 08 was a solid title it lacked the atmosphere and college feel to maintain my interest. 09 will be an entirely different deal, of that I am confident.

Gameplay : 0 | Graphics : 0 | Longevity : 0 | Presentation : 0 | Sound : 0 | Overall : 0.0 Posted by AndyP

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