Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Highly addictive"

The ONLY thing wrong with this year's NCAA Football is the 'Y' button glitch (Xbox 360). For some reason the 'Y' button will be totally unresponsive 33% of the time.

For example, you'll have the computer beat on a play-action streak route with the ball sailing RIGHT toward your receiver... Only to press 'y' and for it not to work correctly, directly resulting in the football hitting your receiver square on the helmet or chest.

It's even worse than "Alligator Arms" because at least THEN the dude's arms would COME OUT... But when the 'y' button doesn't work, your player's arms won't even make an attempt at the ball. Which is probably the most frustrating thing EVER because the game as a whole is very good.

The revamped recruiting takes longer and will seem very tedious initially (with a new scouting feature added and less effective quick-calls). However, once you get used to it (by week 3 o r 4 in dynasty mode) it quickly becomes second nature and actually quite enjoyable and rewarding.

The Heisman mode addition is cool and fun for a bit, but serious fans of the game predominantly only care about online play and dynasty mode... So there isn't much need to waste your time re-living the career of Matt Leinart.

There have been some nice graphical tweaks, in that the motion looks much smoother and there is even a noticeable "blur effect" that has been added to the cut scenes. Also, there are studio breaks where it'll cut to other games... Which CAN be cool sometimes, but also very annoying, especially when you're in the middle of a 2-minute drill in the 4th quarter and you're out of timeouts and all of a sudden, "And we'll turn it over for a quick studio break." What the heck?!?

Another problem that I have is the 1st person mode button, in dynasty mode or exhibition games. When you press the left analog on defense, it will take you away from the normal view, flip the camera 360 degrees, and give you a 1st-person perspective (that is also used in other game modes).

Now this might sound cool in theory, until you're extremely disoriented and you give up a 50-yard pass, all because you accidentally put too much pressure on your left analog button ('L3') and lost all reference as to where your player is and what's going on in the game. That may not make sense, but it will once it happens to you.

Gameplay-wise everything is great and the same as usual for the most part. Pump-faking has been renovated, but the renovation was pointless. Now you can direct your pump-fakes toward specific receivers to help look-off and confuse the opposing defense.

Now that too sounds good IN THEORY.... However, if you're playing on Heisman difficulty or online against solid competition, you'll soon realize that you don't have the time to pump-fake at all, let alone direct it and try to throw off the secondary by looking-off receivers. So that entire renovation was worthless and really adds nor takes away from the game in any way whatsoever.

So that's my review. Aside from the 'y' button problem, I'd say it's the best NCAA Football release ever... So as long as you can overcome that flaw, then you'll be very satisfied with the game. I've just opted to run the ball more often and become a rushing powerhouse, as opposed to running the spread like I did with last year's rendition (NCAA Football 12).

Rock Chalk!