NCAA Football 12: A Deep Dive into the College Gridiron Experience

NCAA Football 12 attempts to capture the passion, tradition, and excitement of college football and bring it to your gaming console. The game strives to boil down one of America's most revered pastimes into something you can play in your living room. The game includes teams, stadiums, and fight songs to immerse the player in the college football experience.

Gameplay: Realistic On-Field Action

The most important aspect of a sports sim is the gameplay, and NCAA Football 12 shines in that regard. The core action has been iterated upon for a number of years, and that refinement leads to the most realistic portrayal of the college game yet. This is especially apparent in nonglamorous aspects, such as blocking and artificial intelligence. When you look closer, you see tiny details that mirror what you find on television every autumn Saturday. The offensive line smartly hunts down blitzing defenders and halts their progress before they can make a tackle, which gives you confidence whether you're dropping back to pass or trying to bust a big one on the ground. Even running backs aren't scared to get their jerseys dirty to give you a split second more to get off a pass. On the defensive side of the ball, it's clear the secondary has been putting in work in the film room. Quick reactions ensure cornerbacks don't give up easy passes, which makes it all the more exciting when you burn them for a deep play.

The game has improvements over the previous editions. Revamping of the tackling system, locomotion, and dismissal of “suction” blocking and tackling are a definite plus. CPU AI has also received major upgrades from the “common sense” department.

Visuals: Showing Their Age

Unfortunately, although that refinement leads to an impressive representation of the real thing, the stagnant visuals are showing their age. This is especially noticeable in regard to the animations. For instance, when a safety crashes into the knee of a hurdling wide receiver, the offensive player meekly falls to the ground with barely a whimper. Two versions of Backbreaker (most recently Backbreaker: Vengeance) have been released in the last year, and the advanced animation in those games is far beyond that in NCAA Football 12. A lot of the joy of football is derived from the brutal clash of two powerful athletes, and that force is largely absent in this game. Furthermore, there are visual glitches that offer even more distractions from the exciting action. For instance, remodeled grass has a hazy, shimmering look that's woefully out of place. None of these problems destroy the fun of running a perfect option play, but they do take you out of what should be an immersive experience.

There are graphical issues with the PS3 version. The jagged edges that appear when the game is played at anything over 720p is a clear example of mishandled upscaling.

Dynasty Mode: Building a Legacy

Dynasty mode returns as the chance to turn a woebegone school into a national power or take the reins of a BCS big boy, and see how you hold up when the pressure is weighing you down. A coaching carousel is the biggest addition from last year's game, giving you more flexibility in how your career plays out. When you're first signed by a program, you can decide to be a coordinator instead of the head man. If you take charge of just the offense, you don't have to worry a lick about the defensive side of the ball during the course of the game, which is a relief if you enjoy one side more than the other. There's also constant pressure to perform. Metrics gauge how well you're doing, and if you don't accumulate the expected wins or statistics total, you could find yourself out of a job. But if you do take your program to new heights, you could land a cushy role in any school you want. This is a good idea in theory, but in practice, it falls flat. Because you can choose to coach any school from the onset, there's little incentive to build up your credentials to get your dream job. Coaching carousel gives determined players something to strive for, but doesn't add much to the overall experience.

New to Dynasty mode is the "create your coach" feature. Unlike past versions where your record and school's prestige were always being watched, the coach mode puts a new spin on things. The coach mode puts a new spin on things. wouldn’t affect my contract since it's based on stats, which gives players more options in Dynasty mode and makes them feel more involved.

Recruiting: A Tedious Ordeal

Bigger problems blossom when you recruit players. As in previous games in the series, you contact high school players from around the country to convince them to join your program. This is a time-consuming process that's bogged down in layers of menus, and even after you figure out what you're supposed to do, it doesn't make much sense. The most troubling aspect is that the logic is all out of whack. You may talk to a player who says that coaching pedigree is a very important thing to him, but when you try to sell him on how awesome you are, he might respond, "More talk about you? Boring!" This flaw crops up all the time, and it destroys the idea that you're trying to convince a thoughtful being to join your team. Even if you can look past the busted logic, there's little enjoyment to be found in this process. It's a tedious ordeal that requires you to spend between 10 and 20 minutes every virtual week to land the best recruits. And the entire process boils down to selecting each player individually, clicking a few buttons to make your school seem great, and hoping he commits. You can promise him certain things, such as playing time or conference championships, but it doesn't even matter if you're lying. Once they sign with you, they're pretty much stuck (unless they decide to transfer, which is rare), so there's a strong disconnect from reality. The recruiting tool is dull busywork that buries you in menus instead of letting you have fun on the field, so you're better off just automating the process and getting back to the good stuff.

There is the option to recruit players based on if you earned the head coaching gig or not.

Road to Glory: A Rocky Path to Stardom

The other major mode in NCAA 12 is Road to Glory. In this mode, you create a high school player and try to land a major role in a collegiate program. The first sign that something's wrong crops up in the creation process. The menus lag horribly. Every time you change a visual option, the game stalls for a second or two, which makes cycling through your choices grueling. Thankfully, once you get on the field, things run a lot more smoothly. You can choose to play both sides of the ball now. If you're a quarterback who likes to get dirty, you can also roam the field as a linebacker. Depending on your performance, schools offer you scholarships, and since two-way players in college are rare, each position is recruited separately. Unfortunately, this process isn't as realistic as it first appears. In one season, our quarterback was lousy and subsequently didn't receive any scholarship offers. Still, we were able to walk on as a freshman at the University of Texas and start the first game of the season. This isn't possible in all programs. Sometimes you land a role as a backup and have to work for a starting job. But it's still ridiculous that one of the most prestigious universities in the nation would allow an unwanted player to start immediately. There are other quirks that clash with reality as well. In Road to Glory, you take part in practices to build your overall skill level. These are 11-on-11 scrimmages in which you're graded on how many yards you gain per play. But what's most striking is that the quarterback can be lit up. In real college practices, QBs wear different-colored jerseys so they aren't touched, but that level of realism doesn't carry over to the video game.

Read also: Mastering NCAA Football 25

Players sometimes overall and lost interest to continue in Road to Glory. Road to Glory has potential but it needs a lot of work.

Presentation: Capturing the College Atmosphere

NCAA 12 starts off every game as you would see it on television. The presentation is more integrated into the game than last year’s version. The attention to detail helps make the game feel like the real thing.

Legacy Issues and Missing Features

There are also features from previous games that have been removed from the package. In earlier editions of NCAA Football, you could create your own school right in the game. The process is easy, and naming all the players after your friends or favorite players is a lot of fun, but it's strange having such a core component relocated to an outside source. There are still some neat options to let you tinker with NCAA 12, though. You can now build a custom playbook, removing those lame plays that just took up space. And you can customize conferences and decide who gets automatic bids to bowl games. These features are certainly nice, but they're bandages on the many problems in the rest of the experience.

Conclusion: A Solid Game with Flaws

If you focus on the on-field action, NCAA Football 12 is a great experience. Whether you play against the computer or challenge friends, it's incredibly fun to pull off a successful Hail Mary or sack the quarterback on a critical third down. Sadly, the other modes and features are riddled with problems, and the dusty visuals lag behind the other current football games on the market. Although NCAA 12 is far from a complete experience, it's worth putting up with the off-field problems to get to the exciting action.

NCAA Football 12 is a disappointing entry in this venerable franchise, but it's still a fine game if you're itching for some amateur action. The game has a lot of small touches that were made to this game, have made this game!

Lingering Issues and Community Concerns

Speaking solely out of the box, this game is a buggy, repetitive, ridiculous mess. Issues that have dogged the series for years like a lack of physics, psychic AI defense and random acts of awfulness on the part of the CPU still rear their ugly head. Certain “features” that EA swears are new are really just lipstick on a pig. Others have hit the retail version in buggy or outright busted form. The game engine is broken.

Astonishingly, the game does enough right that many casual players may actually enjoy it. And the NCAA Football fan community is fiercely loyal. If EA provides some serious customer support, tunes this, fixes it, and polishes it? Well, then we might have some serious fun.

tags: #ncaa #football #12 #xbox #360 #review