NCAA Football 06

NCAA Football 06
Game: NCAA Football 06
Platform: PS2
Studio: EA Sports
Rating: 8.5/10

GAME STUDIO DESCRIPTION: Your quest for the Heisman Trophy begins with NCAA® Football 06. Create an Impact Player and lead him from high school summer camp all the way to bowl victories as a collegiate legend. As your blue chipper improves on the field, he becomes a big man on campus with a decked-out dorm room filled with stacks of fan mail and the past season’s hard-earned awards.

With all-new Breakaway Controls, in-game analysis, and studio commentary, this is college football like you’ve never seen or heard. Get your acceptance speech ready – the Heisman Trophy presentation awaits you in NCAA Football 06.

Key Features
* Take Home the Heisman Trophy: Begin your career as a prep star in search of scholarship offers and work your way up to become one of the nation’s top collegiate players. Continue your post-college career in Madden NFL 06 or coach a Division 1A program.
* Impact Players: Put the weight of the entire university on your shoulders. Game changing performers single handedly break games wide open with highlight reel moves and special animations.
* Dorm Room: At the center of it all, the dorm room is where you access your game schedule, playbook, newsletters, fan mail, and more. As you progress through your career, the living conditions improve and the fan mail increases.
* Breakaway Control: New analog controls allow you to pull off special moves like ankle-snapping jukes and QB sidesteps as you break tackles on the way to the end zone.
* Redesigned Graphics: From turf texture to sky color, every detail has been redesigned, including innovative stadium lighting and revolutionary player models.
* New Dynamic Analysis: Watch Brad Nessler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Lee Corso provide new in-studio commentary and analysis on each team’s impact players prior to kickoff.
* All-New Spring Drills: Hone your skills in four new spring drills: Pass Skeleton, Oklahoma Drill, Option Attack, and Rushing Attack.
* Improved Online Play*: Find an opponent based on your skill level, check out the latest EA News, and set your gameplay options for the games you host.
* Exclusive License: NCAA Football 06 has the exclusive rights to in-game use of college teams, stadiums, and schools.

PLAY: The reason to play NCAA Football 06 is for the dynasty to go for the Heisman Trophy. It is basically dynasty mode where you start out as a high school prep star and try to become the best player in the land. The great thing about this isn’t that you are the coach or the owner but a player who starts from nothing who works your way to becoming something.

Not only is it important to try and win the Heisman but you must also recruit for your school. There is so much information that you might go crazy with overload. You can look every week and see how you are doing. The better your team plays the better your chances of getting top quality recruits.

The gameplay has gotten better—particularly the passing. Too many times in the past it seemed the defense was better at catching than your own receivers. But I did play Utah with Miami and threw three interceptions. Where they all my fault? Apparently. Actually the better your quarterback and if you are lucky enough to have a playmaker as a receiver you’ll find it much easier to throw and catch.

Practice is important especially if your quarterback and wide receivers never seem to hook up. It doesn’t make you great but it does help. Another addition is the use of the right stick. The control is similar to Madden’s with the ability to lay a good lick on the offense with your defensive player. You can also perform some moves as a defensive line me with the same stick. When you are on offense its now your juke stick.

One addition that may seem less important is the impact player. Although they aren’t unstoppable they are certainly a fantastic addition to your offense and defense. Your impact player will have a white circle below them and if it pulsates they are in the zone. If your player gets in the zone look out. I’d often pick plays for my wide receiver when he was in the zone to go deep and just let him fight for it. Chances are he’ll bring it down. The impact player is also great when you are on defense.

One thing we noticed and appreciated was the game AI—especially when the computer was playing defense. If you find a play that seems impossible to stop then you better not go to it too many times because the defense will adapt. If you run ten times in a row and do well it won’t last. The AI makes for a much better and more balanced game.

GRAPHICS: The players have been fixed—some. The models aren’t great but gameplay more than makes up for it. There are some issues with clipping especially on kick offs. The animations from great defensive hits, etc are fun to watch but sometimes disruptive in the middle of gameplay. The pre-game hosts and graphics however are terrible.

SOUND: The soundtrack is very eclectic and more often than not very good. The announcers are good and the observations are fun because they are timely. The sounds of the game are golden as usual.

FRANKLY: With solid online gameplay you can’t go wrong with NCAA 06 Football. There are so many great new additions and a monster amount of gameplay that you might be at this until the real Heisman is handed out.

+ Richie Wright


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