Digital Sportspage Blog

Our NCAA Football 09 review is up.

The first patch (addressing the online roster problems) was released today. As for the second patch, an NCAA developer posting on the OS forums has stated that man coverage and zone coverage (flat and hook zones) have improved, along with changes that change the starting field position from kick/punt coverage. However, there are […]

I popped in a copy of NCAA 2004 in my PS3 last night (hooray backwards compatibility), as it is considered to be the best game in the NCAA series. There are some general issues with the game (the field seems too small, player control is too momentum-based and “skatey”, AI doesn’t account for QB […]

I decided to go back to playing the NCAA demo, primarily because in the demo, I didn’t remember noticing a lot of the gameplay issues that are problematic in the retail version on NCAA 09 (passing on steroids, broken special teams, horrible pursuit angles, etc.). So I played about five games of the demo, […]

Following a suggestion on the DSP forums, I decided to try mascot mode. And it was the best game of NCAA that I’ve played so far. Other than the acrobatic jukes and crazy mascots, here are the three major improvements in mascot mode.
First, man defenses are much more effective. Since every player […]

Bill Harris at Dubious Quality posted on speed in NCAA 09. It’s an excellent post, so go read it.
Now that you’re done, note this Operation Sports forum post, from a conference call with the lead gameplay designer before the game was released:

SPD CHANGES
In the 08 game, a player that is 98 speed is just […]

After about 6-8 games of NCAA 09, here is a basic outline of the major problems in NCAA 09 (in order), and some possible root causes:

Extremely poor pass defense, which boils down to four major components:

Defenders giving entirely too much space to receivers, regardless of coverage, and even on Heisman. This is especially true […]

One of the greatest things about having the ability to upload videos is that is allows us to show clear examples of major gameplay flaws that (hopefully) will be seen by developers and fixed. Users have been posting videos at Operation Sports in a thread on gameplay issues for the game designers. I […]

I played a few more games last night and tonight. First was a dynasty game at Heisman level.
Florida 49, Miami 46
The score makes the game sound exciting, but it really wasn’t. I went out to an early 2+ touchdown lead, and gave it up with three turnovers in the second half. Otherwise, […]

Temple 52, Army 36 (Heisman)
I started an offline dynasty using both Temple and Florida, default sliders, Heisman level. I think this is probably the first time I’ve ever scored 52 points with Temple, on Heisman no less. There were a lot of big plays…I had two runs over 60 yards, and two interceptions […]