Thanks to EA Sports’ Will Kinsler for hooking us up with a copy of the game.

EA Sports made no secrets about the emphasis of NCAA Football 2009. With “Big Play Saturday,” gamers were quickly told of how this game was going to play. It was going to be full of big plays and a wide-open attacking offense that we see so often in college football. But have they overdone it? Through a handful of games, these impressions are still relatively incomplete, but troubling at the same time.

Before I jump into some quick gameplay impressions, I’d like to talk about the game’s new feature, the “breakaway engine.” NCAA ‘09 has improved on the controls of its predecessor, making you feel like you’re actually in control of the ball carrier, not the other way around. This year, running the football is about more than mashing the turbo button until you get to the corner, or jerking the juke stick in traffic.

Actual running lanes get opened up inside, allowing backs to squirm their way to some nice gains. The cutback lanes are also open and if you’re good enough, you can really rip off some big gains. I’ve only played with one elite back (Tennessee’s Arian Foster) and was able to see the difference in his ability to a lesser back from another team. The running game aspect of this game is greatly improved. However, computer teams still don’t run the ball effectively. Some slider tweaks here and there should help fix this problem, but we won’t start seeing those sliders for another couple of days.

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A huge thanks to EA Sports’ Will Kinsler who was nice enough to invite me to their football community day this past week at the Tiburon Studios in Orlando, Florida. In this third part of a three part series, I will go over my experiences with Madden NFL 2009.

Initial Reaction
Wow. As soon as you turn on the console be ready for everything EA Sports throws at you. Not just because it’s the latest edition of Madden (as EA Sports has had some some great Madden’s in the past), but because this is the best Madden I have ever played. I will go over some news and notes and bring you some of the cool features that EA Sports is throwing into this year’s game. Read the rest of this entry »

A huge thanks to EA Sports’ Will Kinsler who was nice enough to invite me to their football community day this past week at the Tiburon Studios in Orlando, Florida. In the first part of a three part series, I will go over my experiences with NFL Head Coach 2009, NCAA Football 2009, and Madden NFL 2009.

Initial Reaction
I really didn’t know what to expect when I first sat down with the game. I knew I was going to be calling plays, but I had no idea that the game would include such off the field detail. I thought it was neat to prepare draft boards and bid on free agents, but I really loved the ability to create a play while you were in the midst of a game. I was playing against the Ravens as the Packers and Ray Lewis and company were blitzing the crap out of me in my full house formation. I went to five wide and created a new west coast offense scheme with short passes landing every which way. I pretty much out coached John Harbaugh after the first quarter. One of things that I had a bit of a problem with was the quarter lengths. You play the standard 15 minute quarter lengths just like in the pros so it can get a bit tiring after a half. When you just sit there and call play and not control players you tend to wish you were actually controlling them. So I can see where gamers would get a little tired of that aspect quick.

Senior Designer Josh Looman
To be entirely honest, I never played the previous NFL Head Coach that came out in 2006. I knew what the game was about, but like most other gamers I felt like I needed to control my players instead of simply calling the plays. So when it came to the presentation of NFL Head Coach I wanted to see what Senior Designer Josh Looman had in mind for the second edition of this game. Looman and his colleagues described right off the bat that they wanted to make the deepest football strategy game they could make. He also went on to say that this is game for all NFL fans who are experts at being armchair quarterbacks and who can’t help but scream at the decision making of teams on Sundays. Instead of groaning about certain play calls, NFL Head Coach lets you write the history book for your favorite franchise. To make this possible, Looman sat down with 30 of the 32 NFL head coaches in order to bring you the most in depth coaching experience ever.

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Can’t make it to Austria-Switzerland next month? Don’t worry, EA Sports has you covered with UEFA EURO 2008. In what may be their best soccer game to date, EURO 2008 includes all the ins and outs of what makes the sport enjoyable. UEFA EURO 2008 combines excellent game play, innovative game modes and most of the all, the tradition that every soccer fan loves.

*Game review based on XBOX 360 version.

Key Features:

Story of Qualifying. Sad that England missed out of Euro 2008? Don’t be. This game mode lets you retrace the qualifying round to compete as one of Europe’s 52 nations.

Interactive Celebrations. Back in FIFA 64, you had the option of choosing a sound effect after scoring a goal. Finally EA brings this feature back after almost a decade of absence. Score a goal and see what I mean.

Battle of the Nations. “Represent your country online against your rivals around the world to win global supremacy. Earn individual and team points. Think your nation is the best? Now you can prove it! A groundbreaking points system means that your every performance is rated, recorded and uploaded and your ratings all count towards players and nations.How crazy is that?

Captain Your Country! Wow! Create yourself, select a nation and take that team to European glory in Be A Pro mode!

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Before I begin I would like to throw out some things to the readers. I have been playing FIFA since I was a child. Remember the old school diagonal field back in FIFA ‘94? Yeah, that’s how long I have been playing. Second, soccer is my life; and if there is one thing that makes me enjoy my favorite sport more than anything else, it’s FIFA. The one game that I look forward to every year is this one. The FIFA 2008 staff didn’t disappoint me. The presentation: minimal to no flaws. The gameplay: significantly better and more challenging. The satisfaction: rewarding.

*Game review based upon XBOX 360 version.

Presentation: If there is one attribute that FIFA does not lack, it is the presentation. Year after year, EA Sports continues to deliver the most fashionable soccer game out there. Gameplay aside for the moment, FIFA always provides gamers with more authenticity than any other sports game on the market. To me, licensing is important. If I would like to play with Manchester United, I would also like to play with their actual jerseys and player names. Another soccer game out there does not feature that and quite frankly, I won’t even consider buying it for reasons like that. FIFA offers 621 licensed teams with 15,000 players. If you did your math from last year, that’s a 20% increase.

Upon turning on the game, you can still enjoy messing around with your favorite player on the menu screen(one of my favorite parts of the game). One presentation flaw? The graphic which shows the score, time and teams in the upper left corner of the screen is horrid. You can’t tell which teams are playing in the game because the logos for each team are about the size of a grain of salt.

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While I was in Los Angeles, I received an email from Brittany Sauser, a reporter from Technology Review magazine. She was working on an article that focused on NCAA Football’s new Weather Channel feature. I answered a few questions and today, the article was published online. Her article is below and it continues after the jump. Thanks Brittany, we appreciate it!

It’s a typical day in L.A.–75 degrees, clear sky, calm winds, no precipitation in sight–as the University of Southern California Trojans football team takes the field. It’s a great day to play football, in real life or with Electronic Arts’s (EA) newest online sports game, NCAA Football 2008. Scheduled to be released on July 17, the game has an entirely new feature: live weather data, played out on the field. Now when you sit down to play, you will get up-to-the-minute weather conditions for the location where you choose to play.

“If you are playing in a cold-weather stadium, you are going to realize it, whether it’s through the snow on the field or seeing the breath of players,” says Ryan Balke, the editor of Sportable.com, a sports news site. Balke previewed the title at EA Sports Tiburon Studios in Orlando, FL, last month. He says it was an incredible experience. “Football is a game that’s played in some brutal elements, and this new feature is a nice way to bring that realism into the game and take online gaming to a more realistic level.”

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