NCAA Football 2005 – QB Sacks (and Cheating AI)

A lot of gamers have claimed that NCAA 2005 took a step (or three) backwards this year. Most of the problems center around passing problems; both the ability for human players to complete passes, the CPU AI’s lack of ability to come up with a half-way decent attempt to completion percentage, and super human DBs that cover way too much ground.

I think I have done a good job of overcoming difficulties in the passing game. I can put together 50% (or higher) completion percentage days with ease. The CPU does a much worse job, unless the school is an “elite” school with a renowned passing attack, but there are still too many dropped passes.

I can live with both problems, but it is downright irritating that the game still suffers from the “QB sack” problem. Just what is this problem? Human players can almost never get a pass off as the CPU is about to sack your QB. I could live with this problem if it also affected the CPU, but it does not. Time and time again my QB starts the throw motion, even getting so far as 75% (or more) through the animation, only to tuck the ball back and take a sack. The frustrating part of this is that the CPU manages to get balls off, even throwing the ball away, out of bounds, after the QB is wrapped up by my defensive player. I have watch replays where the CPU QB is completely wrapped up, but manages to throw the ball way with a strange underarm throwing animation. In short, it sucks.

I am not saying that I cannot sack CPU QBs, I can. My frustration is that the CPU is allowed to get away with blatant cheating. I cannot stand it when a game is created in such a way that the CPU is able to do things that I cannot. I can live with some of the other problems such as super fast CPU defenders that are able to cover an ungodly amount of ground in a single bound, and I can even live with some of the dropped passes. The “QB sack” problem grates on me because it has been in at least the last four versions.

I sincerely hope that EA considers addressing this problem, as well as other issues, in the inevitable follow-up next July.

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