To be fair and honest, I haven't played a college football game since the first Bill Walsh College Football game that EA released sometime around 1993. Like many other EA sports games at the time, you could only see the numbers of the athletes not their real names. However, you knew who the big names were and a little research and imagination filled in the other details. Having the classic college teams really boosted the experience; not only could I play with the current (at the time) college rosters, but I could also take control of a college aged Doug Flutie or Bo Jackson and run their teams to victory. Later I became blinded to the idea that, because the pro game had athletes that were much bigger, faster, and stronger, that made pro football a better video game experience. It's not until I plugged in NCAA Football 2005 that I realized there was a whole new world of football that I've been missing.
The Feel of the Game
In a football sense, comparing the pro game to college is like comparing apples to oranges. Saying that one is better than another is like debating whether PCs are better than Macs, or whether Red Hat Linux is better than Suse. Both games evoke such passion among their fans that it's tough to gauge either in an objective way.
That being said, NCAA Football 2005 really captures the emotion of big time college football. The most notable feature in which EA accomplishes this is through the home field advantage feature. When you're traveling to another big time school where 100,000 people are packed into the stadium, really begins to make a difference. First you'll notice that you're controller will begin to vibrate as the crowd meter begins to fill. Soon the whole screen will shake like there's an earthquake in progress. These levels of noise make it impossible to call audibles or hot routes.
If that doesn't rattle you, it will definitely affect your players. Certain players on both teams (home and away) react to this sort of stage in one of three ways. They either thrive on it, they play the same way they always have, or they crack from the pressure. When the emotion of the crowd is running high, players’ attributes can rise or lower as the ground begins to shake. When this happens, some players emerge from the pack and start to make plays either to fire up the crowd more or to strike a dagger right into their hearts.
Players can have their own mental breakdowns, independent of the emotions of the crowd. If your quarterback becomes ineffective, throwing incomplete passes or even worse interceptions, their own attributes can fall. Similarly if your back rips off a huge gain, their abilities might increase as they gain confidence in themselves.
Other Gameplay Aspects
NCAA Football 2005 paints a very accurate picture of the running the football in college. The way the holes begin to emerge in the line to the way the better linebackers can track you down is all balanced very well. Running the ball not only satisfies my 6-month hunger for football, but I also feel smarter as a fan of the game. I’ve found by simply watching that one or two mismatches, once exploited, can change the outcome of an entire football game. One broken tackle might lead to a big gain or breakaway touchdown run.
The passing game has a solid foundation but suffers from a few unwanted gameplay tweaks. The passing game still has the typical interface many football veterans are used to. However it is much harder to get a pass by those pesky defensive backs. While I am not opposed to a greater challenge, I am perturbed by how EA accomplished this. After examining many replays of passes, the defensive backs really jump the pass location before the ball is even thrown. This creates a very unfair situation for the quarterback and receiving corps. Zone defenses now become much more powerful when you add in the defensive backs' clairvoyance to the mix. To top this off the catching abilities are much lower than they were in years past. While this is good in that you won't see the long bombs being completed with frustrating accuracy, it can be frustrating to see your blue chip wide receiver drop a soft pass while 3 or 4 steps away from the nearest defender. Big time players (certainly ones headed for the NFL) do not drop those passes under any circumstances. Despite all that, you do come away with some semblance of realism from the passing game. However, if the defensive reaction time were lessened, your receivers' stone hands wouldn't surface as such a big issue.
Playing defense is becoming more and more exciting as modern football games progress. The addition of the big hit button adds a certain amount of calculated risk with the tackling mechanism. This is a fantastic way to add excitement to the game. However there are a few aspects that prevent the defense from being an experience worthy of the greatest games in history. Part of playing satisfying defense is taking control of your star player and helping him to do what he does best. Making big plays and really making his presence known is the key to this experience. This isn't easy for a couple reasons. First, as I noted in the previous paragraph, when you control your defender in pass coverage, you don't have the foresight to jump routes. Therefore you are at a disadvantage from the start and with the exception of some tricks and techniques that the offensive AI has trouble accounting for. You are made to feel like an under performing weak link of your defensive unit. While stopping the run, it's very tough to get off blocks. Perhaps this has more to do with my own abilities or the fact that I'm mismatched against a superior blocker, I find it hard to duplicate the abilities of my teammates as far as coming off the block to stop the run or pressure the quarterback. Part of the problem lies in the fact that you are sucked into blocks. Don't get me wrong though, the game is incredibly fun to play on defense especially when you break up that key 3rd down pass, or have your defensive end come off the corner and sack the QB for a significant loss.
Special teams play is a mixed bag of good and bad. On the positive side, I really like the return game. When given enough room with a talented guy, you really threaten to break one each time you touch the ball. However, one problem is that you never seem to put any pressure on either the kicker or punter. Very rarely do I see a lineman miss a block and when that happens I'm never able to capitalize on it. This makes controlling a team like Virginia Tech, a special teams squad that averages a blocked kick per game, much less effective. Another issue I have is the kicking meter. When kicking the ball it's very tough to get a good leg on the ball but once you get the hang of it, it's easy to get the accuracy right. This isn't very accurate because many talented kickers have enough leg to kick a 40-yard field goal, but when they miss, they typically kick it wide. In NCAA Football 2005 I see many field goals longer than 30 yards missed simply because it didn't have the mustard to reach the crossbar. Again, perhaps this is my own lack of ability but at the same time I used to nail those 50-yard field goals in the previous installments of Madden where the only challenge lay in where to aim the kick.
Dynasty and Other Modes
The Dynasty mode in NCAA Football 2005 does a great job of adding depth to this game despite not implementing the contracts and trading of the pro game. The goal of Dynasty mode is to keep your coaching job by building up and/or maintaining the prestige of your school's football program. You can start with a powerful program like Miami or Florida State or take a lesser-known Division 1 or even a Division I-AA team on its road to respect. You do this by recruiting star athletes and doing your best to keep them out of trouble. When your player gets in trouble by either neglecting their academics or breaking team, school, or local laws, you are faced with if or how to punish them. Punishments come in the form of suspensions, and consequences face your courses of action at every turn. For instance without a star player, you team could be shorthanded for that big upcoming rivalry game. Or you could be too strict and force your player to transfer to another school. However if you're punishments are too light or nonexistent, the NCAA could discipline your program by taking away scholarships or TV appearances thus affecting your recruiting abilities and/or overall school prestige. In addition, you only have a certain amount of discipline points to dole out punishments to your players. This adds some dynamics to what is essentially a straightforward recruiting process. Still the key to the Dynasty mode lies in your ability to win. Just like in real life, winning makes everything better. Just ask Bobby Bowden.
Dynasty mode showcases the rigors of a college football season. It features the college bowl games in addition to realistic schedules, rivalries, polls, and the BCS nonsense. You think last year was screwed up? Well, if you play enough seasons you'll see much worse. The presentation of each week is very good as it follows a Sports Illustrated theme. One week I guided Michigan to a very exciting win over rival Notre Dame and one of my digitized players was featured on the cover. While you don't have the statistics engine you do in the pro game, that isn't what college football is about. I think that NCAA Football 2005 captures this very well. You can view how your players stack up to the all of the other players in the nation. In fact, players will break school and NCAA individual records, and win their respective individual rewards, but that's all that's focused on in Dynasty mode.
In addition to Dynasty mode, NCAA Football 2005 offers many other mini-games to keep a football fan busy. You can relive classic college moments like Kordell's Hail Mary against Michigan, right up to the thrilling game between Miami and Ohio State in the national championship game a year and a half ago. While all these moments are in previous versions of the NCAA Football, when you add in the new gameplay dynamics of the game, it can refresh the experience for some.
NCAA Football 2005 features online play as well. You can hop in and face off against a random opponent, or you can head to the lobby and challenge someone. You can play games that force individuals to play within the common courtesies of football like limiting 4th down conversions, onsides kicks, and excessive audibles at the line of scrimmage. In addition you can compete in tournaments containing between 4 and 8 people. EA also offers user rankings and full statistic tracking for people who finish their games. You can even have game results emailed to you at the conclusion of a match up. Despite all these features, EA still hasn't solved the problems that exist from playing random anonymous people online. People still try to do anything possible to create a reputable character, even if it means disconnecting when they're losing or playing against themselves on a duplicate account over and over to build up wins. EA should abolish the account rankings because they are essentially useless and only serve to feed the trolls of this online format. Finding a small community to play with is the best course of action whether they are from your school, dorm, or website message board. That is what makes online play successful, as they are more accountable. I wish EA had a way of assembling these small communities from random people allowing a way to self-discipline and isolate the cheaters and cheesers.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics of NCAA Football 2005 are pretty good if you're willing to accept EA's standard player modeling. While player models will still be scrutinized by their "cartoony" look, it is all corrected by the player animations, and the graphical atmosphere created. Most of the Division I stadiums are recreated with a tremendous amount of accuracy. However the Division I-AA teams all play in a generic looking stadium with their logos printed all over the place. The replica stadiums are very well rendered and the attention to detail like background landscapes is amazing.
Player animations are what stand out in NCAA Football 2005. Depending on what your player is doing, the animations fit the situation well. If you're trying to slip by a linebacker on a long run and have a good angle, you won't see the defender issue a crushing hit. Instead, if your player does get tackled it looks as if he just missed getting by him only to get one leg tripped up when the defender made a shoestring tackle. Even more amazing is the ball animations and physics. No longer does the ball act like it weighs 50 pounds. During fumbles the ball can get kicked around and end up 5 or even 10 yards away from where it initially hit the turf. Also tipped passes can either glance off the hands of your receiver or defender or go flying off in another direction if it hits a helmet. Overall I am very impressed with the animations and it really adds a very significant addition of gameplay realism to the NCAA Football series.
I did notice some graphical clipping issues. For instance, during some touchdown celebrations, the cheerleaders running into the end zone with their team flags have literally run through some of the players. I also have seen some limbs perform their own minor graphical clipping. Overall, the clipping issues are rather rare and hardly affect the overall visual experience.
The sounds also show a high level of refinement. The core part of the music is the bands. School bands play their song's theme when the team makes a big play and their fight song when they score. This sounds very repetitive; however it's also very accurate if you've ever focused on the bands during a big time college football game. Watch a game between Michigan and Ohio State and listen how diverse (or lack thereof) the songs are during the game. One element of realism that the game is lacking music-wise is that the bands do play more songs during the game. For instance during timeouts, bands play many different songs depending on the moment. Late in the game if the home team is up, this is typically the time to play the "Hey Song". These moments can draw from a collection of "generic" band songs that would execute either randomly or according to the status of the game.
The sound effects are good, but clearly it's not the most focused aspect area of NCAA Football 2005. Grunts, groans, and pads smacking together all sound very generic and repetitive. The quarterback sounds even more generic when calling out the snap. Brad Nessler, Kirk Herbstreet, and Lee Corso do the commentary. While these guys are entertaining, it's hard to hear them over the crowd in many scenarios. Lee Corso is probably the weirdest of the bunch as he tends to belt out some nonsense at least once per quarter. He has the randomness of Madden without the senility. While as a group they are better than average, it does fall into the all to familiar category of "gets too old too quick".
Controls
NCAA Football 2005 really takes full advantage of the PS2 controller. The layout of the controls is the same generic EA format. There's a set of defensive controls mapping most common utility commands to the face buttons, while other more common action buttons are mapped to the triggers. Most of the actions are pressure sensitive including passes, jukes, and even the defensive big hit button. EA toned down the use of the right analog stick this year as opposed to other of its recent sports games. I think this was a wise idea in that the control scheme really worked well with the use of one not two analog sticks.
However, they did implement the right analog stick well in the pre-snap reads. This is called the match up stick. It allows you to view the composure of players on both sides of the ball as sectioned by their corresponding positions. For instance if you move the stick one way you can see the composure levels of the wide receivers and defensive backs. Another direction matches up the offensive and defensive lines, etc.
Another successful use of the analog stick is the precision passing. While not new to the series, it does allow you to control somewhat where your passes are headed as you're releasing the ball. While EA made the right decisions in many cases for the default controls (you can change them) I don't like the idea of there being two different buttons mapped to sprinting between ball carriers and non-ball carriers. However this has been the case for almost 5 years, so their decision to stick with it is not something to get all up in arms about. Overall EA did a great job with its controls scheme. It added some minor enhancements while keeping the integrity of the overall scheme intact.
Replay Value
The replay value of this game is very good. Each game brings forth a new experience where you don't know where the game is headed until the finish. Couple this with an engaging Dynasty mode, and a solid online mode, and you have a recipe for a game that will spend a lot of time in your console. The biggest impediment to the replay value is the gameplay shortcomings. While they can be very stifling for gamers who look for an authentic football experience, it often fails to affect the outcome of the game. You will still see the occasional mid-major upset a powerhouse, but more often than not you'll see those teams blown out by 50. Other more evenly matched teams can play games decided on the final play or play a more lopsided game all depending on how you take advantage of the individual match ups and simply how the ball bounces.
Overall I would consider this game to be one of the stronger sports titles to date. It does have its shortcomings and much to improve upon for next year; I still remain impressed with the overall quality of the game. Given the lack of college football titles for the year, there really is no competition for this game. If you're looking to get an authentic college football experience on your PS2, just pick this up. It's so good, it makes me want to go out and tailgate in the stadium parking lot of a Big Ten school.
