Reviews / previews
NCAA Football 99 has the gameplay and big-time
college football trappings to keep fans happy til long
after the championship's settled.
Normally I don't care too much about sim stuff in
football-get me on the field-but NCAA's Dynasty mode
brings the quirkiness of a college football season and
its rankings to your PC. You pick any of the 112
Division I-A teams from 10 conferences and take it
through the season, playing the 1998 schedule. It's
fun to watch your team climb up the CBS Sportsline
ratings (this game's only national poll) and vie for
either the Fiesta, Sugar, Orange, or Rose Bowls.
(EA's licensing department was busy, as these bowls
are here exclusively-unfortunately complete with their
corporate sponsors.) There are also seven made-up
post-season contests, like the EA Bowl.
After you complete the season, there's a recruiting
model so you can replace graduating seniors-unless
you get fired, in which case you'll get another job offer
at a lesser school. You then start the 1999 season
with a new, dynamically created schedule. You can
repeat this process over 200 times.
While there's no play editor, there are plenty of plays
and formations, including the Wishbone, Power-I, and
others you only find in the college game. A nicely
implemented interface lets you easily pick deviations
of each formation (e.g., One Back, One Back Spread,
One Back Slot). Similarly, on the play-calling screen,
a left or right tap on the D-pad slightly alters
alignments and pass routes while Button 8 flips plays.
The polygonal players have a believable solidity about
them, and their animations look great (the play-action
and pump fakes would make Brett Favre proud),
though they do seem to sort of float above the field.
This is especially apparent when a running back gets caught behind a bunch
of his own blockers. His legs churn and churn, but he's goin' nowhere fast.
The biggest gameplay flaw is the default
low camera-angle that zooms in on the
quarterback once the ball's hiked. It's great
for running plays up the middle, but it
makes it impossible to see what the
outside linebackers and cornerbacks are
doing. The camera pulls back once you
call up the passing icons, but on quick
slants or fades, that can be too late.
Defensively, the zoomed-in camera-angles
make it tough to blitz from the corners or
figure out what angle to take to catch up to
a ball carrier who's streaking down the sidelines. There are eight other angles,
but only the Upper Deck one is usable, and then you feel too far from the
action.
Other flaws include the inability to remap your keys and multiplayer limited to
LAN and modem-to-modem action play.
But those are minor quibbles when looking
at all the nice touches in this game: the 40
classic matchups dating back to 1946,
practice mode, the ability to create your
own tourney, savable replays, the ability to
scroll backward and forward through your
defenders before a play-the list goes on.
What NCAA 99 does best is make you feel
like you're at a college game. Rather than
go with a TV-style presentation with two
announcers, you have Rose Bowl
announcer Chuck White proclaiming the result of the plays after they happen,
stadium style. The atmosphere is also aided by the 60 fight songs and
team-specific crowd chants. It's the next best thing to being on the sidelines
on a crisp Saturday afternoon.-- Daniel Morris / GamePro
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