- Title: NCAA Football 2009
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Publisher: EA
- Developer: EA Tiburon
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Football
- Pros: Looks, sounds, and plays great; plenty of stuff to do; sharing custom rosters; online dynasty
- Cons: Semi-serious glitches and issues; not as big of a jump over 08 as 08 was over 07
The core feature set is present and accounted for in NCAA Football 09. Quick play, dynasty, minigames, campus legend, and the mascot game are all here in fine form. It also has to be noted that the menus and overlays work a heck of a lot smoother this time around rather than chugging along like they did in 08, which makes a pretty huge difference in the overall flow of the game.
The real story here is the new stuff. You can now play an online dynasty with up to 12 players. One person acts as the commissioner and sends out invites to players to be in the league and can adjust everyone’s schedule so they actually have to play each other if people don’t choose teams within the same conference. The commissioner also advances the season week to week, which is good because it forces people to play by a specific time, but also bad because it means you can’t play future games early. Another major feature addition is the ability to edit the rosters and upload them to share with other users. Finally, we have an easy and legit way to get real college football rosters.
Gameplay
The core game plays great, but that doesn’t mean NCAA 09 is perfect. Far from it, actually, as there are quite a few semi-major glitches and issues that mar an otherwise great experience. The computer occasionally sims online dynasty games even though the human players already played them. Custom rosters can glitch and mess up depth charts and team ratings and some teams actually go missing entirely. Sliders to adjust the difficulty don’t fork for the CPU and the player sliders adjust for both the player and CPU. Super-Sim (honestly, our favorite feature of recent EA football games) is flawed in that the A.I. runs about 60% more plays than it should. All of these issues will hopefully be patched, but it took months for a patch to eventually come out for NCAA 08, so we’re not completely optimistic. These flaws sour what is otherwise a great game, and it is unfortunate that they made it past EA’s testers.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics and sound are pretty much what we have come to expect from EA. The player models look good. The animation is buttery smooth. The stadiums are perfect. Weather effects and lighting are solid. No complaints here. The sound is every bit as good with some nice crowd sounds and solid announcing. New this year is that you can have the game play music from your hard drive during specific situations (i.e. play a specific song when you score a touchdown, for example), which is nifty. I know NFL 2k5 did it years ago, but it is still neat.
Bottom Line
