It’s that time of year again! Football season is upon us, and this year’s college football game, NCAA Football 10 from EA Sports, brings some major improvements to the series, including the addition of trophies. While this may not seem like a big deal to a lot of gamers, it has never been implemented in an EA Sports football title before, and is a big selling factor. And the list of upgrades only starts there.
To elaborate on some of the upgrades from the ’09 version, NCAA Football 10 looks better, controls better, and is a lot more realistic. The defense not only reads the player more accurately, it also adapts to the choices a player makes within the game. If there are only a select few plays that the player runs, the A.I. will quickly catch on and shut them down on the field with the necessary adjustments. To succeed, the player must know their play book particularly well. The days of successful “one trick wonders” are more or less a thing of the past. And it’s because of this that the game shrugs off the arcade-like feel of prior installments in the series.
The Dynasty fanatics should be happy to know that they can finally run a full online dynasty with their friends on PlayStation Network. And if the player grows tired of the online aspects of the dynasty, they can even convert it to an offline version within the menu options. Based upon the actions of the player throughout their completed games, the system evaluates them not only their performance, but their sportsmanship. For example, if it’s 4th and long and the player decides to ‘go for it’ rather than punt the ball, this action will have a negative impact on their sportsmanship rating.
This seems to be an attempt by EA to balance everything out and make the game seem a lot more realistic overall. Judging from the way it plays out in Season Showdown and the online aspects, EA did a good job by putting this in. And though it can definitely be improved upon in future iterations, it’s nice to see them taking steps in the right direction. Doing so makes the game more fair for players by shutting down unrealistic exploitations. When it comes to the other Dynasty aspects of the game it is fantastic. All of the modes you’ve come to love are still available, but with tweaks made to fully optimize them.
