NCAA Football 09 PSP Review: A Legacy Continues?
NCAA Football 09 strives to capture the heart and soul of college football. While Madden might have all the big time names and the star studded teams, NCAA offers the simpler side of life where your school’s pride and colours is what you eat, sleep and dream about. This review delves into the PSP version of NCAA Football 09, examining its gameplay, features, graphics, and overall value.
Gameplay and Features
For those who know the ins and outs of NCAA and football titles alike, the rest of the modes require you to use all the buttons you can handle on offense and defense and lots of formation possibilities. Playing a normal game in any of the other several modes will have you making good use of all your buttons while quarterbacking, running with the ball, kicking, defending the line and in pursuit, calling audibles and doing all the things it takes to win. If you’re already familiar with the very in-depth button setup, you will have no trouble getting back into the swing of things after the two-year hiatus of playing NCAA Football on the PSP.
One of the newest additions to the game is Freshman Mode, a simplified quick game for those less familiar with NCAA Football gameplay. It automatically recommends play setups for you by flashing their choice, similar to the Ask Madden feature in their NFL series. Also in Freshman Mode, injuries, fatigue, and penalties are completely shut off and field goals require nothing more than hitting X to get a perfect shot every time. Playing as the QB, instead of marking individual players with different buttons for passing, X will pass to any player and when you hit it, you will automatically pass to the most open man to ensure you get it in his hands. On the defensive end, fumbles and interceptions are frequent and will have you quickly returning back to offense. It definitely is a less stressful alternative to the standard modes included in the game.
There are lots of modes to try out as well, though nothing out of the ordinary. Dynasty Mode allows you to do all the things you would expect, as you build your franchise from the ground-up. There’s also the returning Campus Legend, Points Pursuit, Rivalry Game, a Practice Mode as well as online capabilities and a few other things to toy around with.
Control and Mechanics
One thing I did notice is how difficult it can be to get a pass off from your QB. The mechanic for passing seems to be incredibly slow, and you’ll find that you will sometimes have to wait a couple of seconds for your QB to release the ball after you hit a pass button. When under serious pressure from the defense, you may have to pass it off before you are ready to avoid getting sacked knowing how leisurely the QB throws. I’m not sure if this is a framerate issue with the amount of on-field activity or just the QB’s animation, but it took several times of getting blitzed after rapidly hitting the same button to get rid of the ball before I realized something was up.
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Graphics and Sound
Some of the tackle animations are pretty humorous, as defenders run over the man with the ball and there seems to be a lot of variety, especially with the amount of tackles you can perform with dives, ball strips, and hits. However, many animations seem to be a tad too familiar and even reused from past NCAA Football titles, from touchdown celebrations to cheerleader dances. In wide shots of the stadium, crowds seem to not move at all, as you see thousands of blurred people completely motionless in the stands. The game does often focus on several fans in the crowd in-between plays, however. They are the same character models no matter which stadium you play in, but are wearing different clothes and face paint to support their home team. In Hawaii, they can be seen wearing Hawaiian T-shirts for instance, as they perform chest-bumps and hold up various signs for a bit of added humor to the game.
Players and stadiums look good on the PSP screen, and when viewed from a distance, it actually looks more like a television broadcast than a video game. More attention could have been given to crowd movement.
Though looking at panoramic views of the audience is a tad lifeless, the audio of the screaming crowd adds to the level of excitement and emotion of college football games, and home field advantage plays a big role in NCAA Football 09. Commentary by Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, and Brad Nessler is actually very well done and full of variety while playing, and the loud, brassy collegiate music adds to the college football atmosphere.
A Die-Hard Fan's Perspective
NCAA Football 09 certainly lived up to my expectations and is a significant leap from last year's version. The game has amazing game play, better graphics, a fantastic dynasty mode, great commentary, tons of options, online dynasties, fantastic atmosphere. The list goes on and on but there was one thing that did it for me and it was seeing my favorite team's stadium modeled with such perfection and detail it made me want to cheer, laugh, and cry at the same time!
There are so many great things about NCAA Football 09. For one the graphics seem to look so much more realistic than years past, the players and stadiums don't have this glossy perfection about them they seem natural, real, dynamic, alive. The animation's have all been redone and look and feel fantastic. This really stands out when you are the ball carrier and when you move your player all the movements on the screen are so smooth and natural, it is incredibly realistic. The overall feel of NCAA Football 09, when your controlling a player, is just amazing. Everything is very smooth. Although on replay the running motions are a little robotic. But NCAA Football makes up for this by including many new animations that make the game look great. I.e. stiff arms, jukes, spins, ball strips, blocking, etc. The sound is incredible as well and might be the best part of the game. The commentary, like always, is fantastic and realistic, the stadium sounds are incredible, great atmosphere, and of course the on field sfx are top notch. But one of the coolest parts about NCAA Football's sound is the custom stadium sounds where you can load custom sounds to be played at certain events like touchdowns.
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One word springs to my mind when I play NCAA Football 09 and that is detail. You will be amazed at how much detail the developers have put into this game. It is truly amazing from realistic stadiums to using the actual logos of the school's newspapers on the campus news in Dynasty Mode.
Online Dynasty Mode
After years of online fumbles by developer EA Tiburon, our annual war cry for an online dynasty mode has been answered. Not only is NCAA Football 09's most impressive innovation brilliantly seamless, but it's full-featured as well (from recruiting and scheduling to talking sure-fire pros into staying on an extra season). If your ps3 is hooked up to the internet I highly recommend using online dynasty.
A Solid Effort with Room for Improvement
What EA has shown in NCAA Football 09 is steady progress and a sincere desire to put out a better product than it did a year earlier. NCAA Football 09 definitely passes that test with flying colors. Even if NCAA Football 09 doesn’t exactly reinvent college football video games as we know them, it’s the best version yet to grace us this generation.
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tags: #ncaa #football #09 #psp #review
