NCAA Football 11

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:08 pm

Teal and I just got about a half game in during my lunch period.

Guys like me are going to have to re-learn how to play the game. Anybody who's played me in NCAA or Madden knows I'm aggressive on defense, jumping for picks, forcing turnovers, etc.

Against Teal, I couldn't get a STOP, let alone a turnover.

The days of taking a safety, rolling him up to the line of scrimmage, then backing him off and daring somebody to throw at me are gone. I missed a coverage and ended up barely shoving him out of bounds on a gorgeous fade against a cover 2.

Then I'd try to blitz and go man, and he'd throw a beautiful lob across the field to a wideout who was streaking away from me.

I even tried my patented "switch, strafe, jump for the pick" maneuver that pretty much guarantees me a pick any time somebody throws deep on me, and his wideout out-battled me and stole it from my hands. Beautiful catch inside my 20 on a perfectly rendered 1-on-1 battle.

Without a turbo, maintaining gap integrity seems to be a big deal, too. I overran 2 or 3 gaps that he was hitting and allowed bigger running plays. He was very patient waiting on his blockers, and my overaggressive ass just played right into his hands.

All in all, stuff that should have worked was working, and "game" playing instead of "football" playing wasn't working for me. It was impressive to say the least. It's also a very small sample size, but it sure was a freaking blast.

And as far as clock acceleration--it's still there, you just have to go into gameplan and set the Tempo to conservative. You can toggle it on and off mid-game this way.

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:30 pm

Is there any kind of locker room file sharing option like in the past? How can we get the names easily with this one?

EDIT: Nm, I found it in there. Looks like you can only share to and from your friends list. Once people start passing the rosters around it'll be easy to find one.

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:34 pm

Yeah, just go to Roster Sharing. As soon as somebody has one you can just download it. I tried your tag and everybody else who I thought might have it, but nobody has one yet. FAIRDALE KINGS gamertag will have one when it's finished, but not supposed to be for a few days.

Teal · Post by **Teal** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:51 pm

I echo Terry...wow. What a difference a year makes. No, it's not completely overhauled, but the things that have been changed, have been changed for the much, much better. Last year, I bought the game and returned it the same day. Just got tired of the same ol' same ol'. The locomotion system this thing has is really great-you 'feel' like your breaking tackles, looking for holes, following blockers. It's fantastic.

Add to that the incredible atmosphere, and this sucker is a sure fire winner.

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:57 pm

OK, one cool little addition: you can record highlights and save them while you are in the game, at least in offline play. That's a nice tweak!

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:59 pm

Zeppo wrote:OK, one cool little addition: you can record highlights and save them while you are in the game, at least in offline play. That's a nice tweak!

You could always do that

Rodster · Post by **Rodster** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 4:59 pm

Teal wrote:I echo Terry...wow. What a difference a year makes. No, it's not completely overhauled, but the things that have been changed, have been changed for the much, much better. Last year, I bought the game and returned it the same day. Just got tired of the same ol' same ol'. The locomotion system this thing has is really great-you 'feel' like your breaking tackles, looking for holes, following blockers. It's fantastic.

Add to that the incredible atmosphere, and this sucker is a sure fire winner.

Great now I kick myself for cancelling my order with Dell.

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 5:13 pm

TCrouch wrote:
Zeppo wrote:OK, one cool little addition: you can record highlights and save them while you are in the game, at least in offline play. That's a nice tweak!
You could always do that

Oops! I always thought you had to wait until the end of the game.

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 5:53 pm

Teal wrote:I echo Terry...wow. What a difference a year makes. No, it's not completely overhauled, but the things that have been changed, have been changed for the much, much better. Last year, I bought the game and returned it the same day. Just got tired of the same ol' same ol'. The locomotion system this thing has is really great-you 'feel' like your breaking tackles, looking for holes, following blockers. It's fantastic.

Add to that the incredible atmosphere, and this sucker is a sure fire winner.

Exactly. Watching my receivers drop easy passes or being able to spin out of a tackle for a large punt return was nice. QB misfires are nice. But the absolute kicker of the whole thing was seeing my TE have to adjust for a catch and have to come to a stop. IMMEDIATELY after catching the ball, he pivots and races upfield. No more running backwards for 3 yards on a hitch pattern. I may have to experiment with more of the playbook and timing routes now.

sportdan30 · Post by **sportdan30** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 7:16 pm

Game is definitely improved and looks fantastic!

A couple things of note. I haven't seen one penalty on default sliders.

Is there a way for the coach to call the plays? I'd rather not have to cycle through the playbook, especially on defense.

I've seen a couple glitches so far. My QB took the hike and proceeded to run the other way all the while in a hand off stance. It was strange. Also, when I went to pull up my routes before the snap, all the routes were very squiggly and moving very fast. That happened on four consecutive plays, and then finally corrected itself.

Teal · Post by **Teal** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 7:35 pm

Fantastic resource for any of you who want to put custom stadium sounds into your game:

http://www.4shared.com/account/dir/fprI ... nds.html?&

Rodster · Post by **Rodster** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 7:41 pm

sportdan30 wrote:Also, when I went to pull up my routes before the snap, all the routes were very squiggly and moving very fast. That happened on four consecutive plays, and then finally corrected itself.

That's not a glitch. If your the away team and if your QB is rattled he won't have composer so the routes will appear squiggly. If you start to string passes together then those squiggly lines disappear.

Zeppo · Post by **Zeppo** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 7:45 pm

sportdan30 wrote: Also, when I went to pull up my routes before the snap, all the routes were very squiggly and moving very fast. That happened on four consecutive plays, and then finally corrected itself.

That's part of the home field advantage feature. When you are on the road in a tough place to play and your team gets rattled, that stuff will show up.

I also had the 'stuck in the handoff animation' glitch and it was on a play action pass. Eventually I was able to somehow force a wounded-duck throw that thankfully ended up incomplete, but that's a nasty glitch that could really screw a whole game. I mean, who needs a safety against you and then to have to free kick the ball away when you're already at your own 40yd line? Ouch.

This play happened early in the only game I've played so far and it kind of blew me away:

<embed src="http://cdn.www.easports.com/static/188. ... player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="640" height="360" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="height=360&width=640&file=http://cdn.content.easports.com/media20 ... ="></embed>

Check out how awesome my FB is on this play! And the broken tackle, while it shouldn't happen all the time, was very satisfying.

I'm not sure I'm sold on the 'assists,' such as 'auto-turbo' or 'auto-strafe.' It sort of smacks of the assist you see in Forza or something. I like playing defense, and I take pride in my tackling technique with the strafe and so on, and I have always felt a lot of satisfaction when I use turbo sparingly in the run game and it works out well. That said, there's no question that the 'too-early turbo' is the biggest struggle in the run game for 99% of us, myself included, and in this game, there were several runs that just felt different and more like the Madden/NCAA of the old, old days in terms of changing direction with snappy control.

I think this game will have a ton of fun in it, in the old NCAA fashion, where a lot of it is about finding where on the field you have a big advantage in player ability and taking advantage of it. And every run play I ran that involved pulling OL was great, which bodes well for the option game and the run game in general. I'm looking forward to some online play when I can get together with someone online.

MizzouRah · Post by **MizzouRah** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 7:57 pm

I liked last years game and so far, I'm not feeling v11.

Only one game on default AA, but I think I'd rather control my own speed bursts.. which I'll change that setting.. and I'm seeing goofy glitches here and there.

Need more time for sure.. but I didn't even a sack against Eastern Michigan.

Teal · Post by **Teal** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:21 pm

MizzouRah wrote:I liked last years game and so far, I'm not feeling v11.

Only one game on default AA, but I think I'd rather control my own speed bursts.. which I'll change that setting.. and I'm seeing goofy glitches here and there.

Need more time for sure.. but I didn't even a sack against Eastern Michigan.

I thought I'd hate the removal of the speed burst button...but I love it. It has forced me to look for holes and follow blockers, even if my guys speed rating is way up there. If they are pursuing properly, they are going to cut my guy off much of the time, and in that case, a little head fake can net me another 1-2 yards, sometimes. Sometimes, though...more...

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:31 pm

My only comment is this game is going to be a love fest for the guys who like football and a hate fest for the tourney crowd.

Calling locomotion a gimmick is about the most ridiculous statement I have every heard. The game plays like 2K5, and somehow that is a bad thing now?

It's going to even the playing field and the guys who "gamed" the game aren't going to be successful and have to learn how to actually coach a team.

Needless to say I am very impressed.

Going to have to do some serious tinkering with the penalty sliders, got none on default bumped everything up to 70+ and had about 21 penalties at halftime.

I also have no idea how Vader rushed for 500 yards, he is a God of gaming

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:31 pm

Teal, get your ass online!!

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:32 pm

Danimal wrote:It's going to even the playing field and the guys who "gamed" the game aren't going to be successful and have to learn how to actually coach a team.

Guilty.

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:59 pm

Danimal wrote:My only comment is this game is going to be a love fest for the guys who like football and a hate fest for the tourney crowd.

Calling locomotion a gimmick is about the most ridiculous statement I have every heard. The game plays like 2K5, and somehow that is a bad thing now?

It's going to even the playing field and the guys who "gamed" the game aren't going to be successful and have to learn how to actually coach a team.

Needless to say I am very impressed.

Going to have to do some serious tinkering with the penalty sliders, got none on default bumped everything up to 70+ and had about 21 penalties at halftime.

I also have no idea how Vader rushed for 500 yards, he is a God of gaming

Did I say it played like NFL 2k5. I said locomotion is basically the same thing NFL 2k5 offered in the tackle department.

Locomotion is a gameplay gimmick that let's you press buttons to get out of a tackle. I don't see how that's football as much as that's a button mashing experience. For example, if I'm one-on-one and the LBs tried to tackled me and while I'm wrapped up, I press A, it seems to shift to another animation where I can get out of it. It's a perfect EA solution to to providing a feature that doesn't fix gameplay but creates a marketing features.

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:25 pm

Unless I'm missing something, you don't upload your own roster file when creating an online dynasty. Tried it without auto-naming rosters, and it showed up as "QB #13", etc. I had a named roster loaded when I did it, so there may be an issue with the names in an OD.

TCrouch · Post by **TCrouch** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:32 pm

Nevermind. Looks like a freaking autosave saved over my named roster with the same name and left them nameless.

Danimal · Post by **Danimal** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:38 pm

JRod wrote: Locomotion is a gameplay gimmick that let's you press buttons to get out of a tackle.

Wait, that's what you think locomotion is? That explains a lot.

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:39 pm

TCrouch wrote:Nevermind. Looks like a freaking autosave saved over my named roster with the same name and left them nameless.

The autosave is very intrusive this year. It saves at points you wouldn't normally think.

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:41 pm

Danimal wrote:
JRod wrote: Locomotion is a gameplay gimmick that let's you press buttons to get out of a tackle.
Wait, that's what you think locomotion is? That explains a lot.

Grow up, the attitude isn't needed.

It strings tackles together but there's no way, with BB sitting out there, that this is even evolutionary. It's something that was needed years ago probably when these games hit the next-gen consoles. As for this game it's underwhelming compared to what BB did in regards to tackles.

MizzouRah · Post by **MizzouRah** » Tue Jul 13, 2010 9:54 pm

Teal wrote: I thought I'd hate the removal of the speed burst button...but I love it. It has forced me to look for holes and follow blockers, even if my guys speed rating is way up there. If they are pursuing properly, they are going to cut my guy off much of the time, and in that case, a little head fake can net me another 1-2 yards, sometimes. Sometimes, though...more...

Even on defense, I pass tackles up because I overrun them.