Last year I gave up on EA’s NCAA Football series. I just did not see enough improvement to make it worth my while; the series had grown stale. Besides, these days I just do not have time to tackle two football titles. I have thrown my time towards Madden, but there was a time when I eagerly anticipated the next annual NCAA Football installment.
So far this year I am still on the sidelines. While I have pre-ordered Madden 11 (a $20 videogame promotional credit from Amazon certainly helped persuade me), I have decided to wait on some of the reviews to come in before making a decision on NCAA Football 11.
I am going to be out of country this week, so that actually buys me some time to read some of the initial thoughts, especially from some of the more informed blog sites. Speaking of reviews (and review scores), this article on the influence of review scores is worth a read.
So far the early scores on metacritic are favorable. I wonder how long that will last and if NCAA Football 11 will hold up. If anything, if NCAA Football 11 provides a “fresh” experience, I expect it will garner higher review scores than Madden 11.
Of course a little competition for EA would be helpful, but thanks to exclusive licensing deals with the NCAA and NFL, that is not going to happen.
Tried NCAA a couple of times, including the much-praised NCAA 2004.
I liked the different camera angle but otherwise, it had the worst aspects of the EA football engine, like suction blocking. No defense, people would lob up deep balls or just roll out and hit crossing patterns all day.
Thing is, you get NCAA in July then Madden in August and you don’t have time to delve into both unless all you do is play those 2 games in the fall.
These days, I’m thinking even $60 for Madden is too much to hand to EA and they’re likely to innovate with Madden (bigger development team) than NCAA.
As I said in the article, once upon a time I had the time and energy to dedicate to multiple football games, but not so much these days. Theses days I am much better about knowing my limits – no way I can get my money’s worth out of two football games, however I could probably enjoy two. Recent experience tells me that I would split two games 80/20, so there is no point trying.
Still … I am reading enough positive things about NCAA Football 11 that I am becoming curious. At least interested enough to write about it a little.