NCAA 2006 – Speed Matters

Another day, another NCAA 2006 update. While the game is not vastly different than previous versions (I am not even going to count NCAA 2005 as part of the official NCAA series canon), speed actually matters for the first time. Big plays happen when a player with breakaway speed gets a step on someone that cannot match stride-for-stride. In past versions of the game, I always felt like there was some degree of cheating going on because individual player speed attributes did not seem to count for much.

This year NCAA 2006 really feels like college football from all aspects of the game. Not only does the running game work, the CPU will actually allow running teams to run the ball. The passing game has been fixed; drops are not as common as NCAA 2005. Tweaking the speed attributes (or rather making speed matter) results in kick off and punt returns for TDs. Of course the atmosphere is awesome, which is the hallmark of the NCAA series. Needless to say, NCAA 2006 has rejuvenated my love for gaming (I am not going to digress, that is for another day).

Unless you absolutely hate the inherent Madden/NCAA/EA Sports style of football, I think I can safely recommend NCAA 2006 as one of the best games in the series. I am still playing on the default settings (I have increased penalties a notch across the board), so my opinion may change if I graduate to the All-American or Heisman settings, but so far so pleased.

As I said in a previous post, it has also been a huge help that I have not scoured messages looking for info/posts on the games. I am already a jaded bastard, so *not* reading about what is broken, money plays, and what sucks has tremendously improved my enjoyment factor. I will try to remember that before I go halfcocked on any gaming factors that I find debilitating; maybe with some sort of spoiler warning.

Maybe this whole casual gamer thing is not half bad! Are any readers in favor of a dynasty report (or two) so I can get out of the mainstream and into sports-gaming-freak mode?

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2 thoughts on “NCAA 2006 – Speed Matters”

  1. Thw whole "casual gamer" thing is pretty good if you ask me. I haven’t picked up NCAA Football 06 yet but plan to soon. Once I do have it, I’m NOT going to run "tests" on it and over-analyze every stat generated by the game – I’m just going to play it and enjoy it. I really believe that people spend more time analyzing the faults of every sports game released and because of that, lose a lot of the enjoyment of playing the game. After all, these are just video games.

  2. Jason – Hope all is well with you and yours! I am done with "test" and what-not, so what you are saying is spot on. I still want my football action to be more realistic than not, but having fun is much more important these days.

    As you can tell from my posts, I am having fun right now.

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