NCAA Football 2008

[BuckyTuba]

I went out and got it on release day last night, and I absolutely love the new recruiting system. The game is overall much more polished for the xbox 360 (i just bought my 360 sunday) and I have no gripes yet except for Jared Zebransky on the cover.

 

I'll be ready to take anyone on with the Badgers on xbox live once I get it hooked up to the internet.

[parkside21]

I got it yesterday as well, but for the PS2. I haven't played any games yet, just took some time yesterday to set up my dynasty (editing roster names and creating some UW and WIAC schools to replace teams from the Sun Belt). I'm looking forward to getting in a good 6 hours of game time today though, woo hoo!

[PKBadger]

I highly recommend purchasing the rosters for the NCAA game from this site:

 

 

www.psxsports.com/

 

 

I did this back in '03 or '04 and it was a breeze. I just mailed my memory card to the guy along with 10 bucks or so, and received it back within a week. Full rosters for all the teams.

[Mike Felder]

parkside, what do you think of it so far? I've heard the game is amazing on the XBox 360 but very disappointing for the PS2. As a fellow PS2 owner, I was hoping that's not the case.

[jschris]

I got in one game last night for PS2--I like it so far but I had trouble with a couple of newer features. I'm not entering any tournaments any time soon, though, so I'll just keep practicing when I can. Honestly, with the requisite "one game-small sample" mentioned, I don't know that it's much better than last year's version on PS2, but maybe that has something to do with the user (me) rather than the game.

 

Keg--does that person with the rosters also do other games, like NCAA Baseball '07? I'm so naive to gaming things like this, so I've played all of these NCAA games with just numbers. It would be cool for the announcers to mention names.

[RightFieldCoder]

[ot]what would be really cool is that I could just download rosters directly online to my harddrive instead of buying tv shows and movies. I would actually go out and buy MS points if they offered this.[/ot]

 

What are some of the "must-have" features this year besides roster updates?

[B2k1121]

I can't stand that they completely ruined the Badgers uniform. I don't know how that happened.

[bthurley19]

We got it for XBOX 360 and the game is so close to be excellent but due to the lack of actual FCS (1-AA) teams and unbelieveable exclusions of Co-Op play it falls just a little short. Seems to be a lot of depth though to the dynasty and campus legend modes and these keep the game entertaining. Anyone notice there are no referees in the game also.

[BillScottCanRake]

I can't stand that they completely ruined the Badgers uniform. I don't know how that happened.

 

Can you elaborate on this? I've got a PS2, so it probably isn't a huge deal if I decide to buy the game, but I'm curious what you mean by that.

[B2k1121]

I think the PS2 version has the uniforms correct. But I have the 360 version and the home uniforms are red jerseys, red pants. I don't think they have ever wore them, and you don't have any options to change the pants.

[BillScottCanRake]

I think the PS2 version has the uniforms correct. But I have the 360 version and the home uniforms are red jerseys, red pants. I don't think they have ever wore them, and you don't have any options to change the pants.

 

Thanks for the answer.

 

I think that is how it was in 2005 on PS2 (I haven't played that for a while), except you could change the pants.

 

The only time I have ever seen red jerseys and red pants was during the spring game.

[T B0NE 10]

if anyone has XBOX 360 live id like to play you

 

my gamertag is T B0NE 10

the o in tbone is a zero

[trwi7]

Do they only offer red pants for home uniforms? Because in the 2007 version you can get the red and white pants.

[parkside21]

I saw a photo of the red pants thing in some game review. I would imagine they goofed and the default home jersey is one of the alternate jerseys...I would imagine one of the alternate jerseys is the correct one and you could just play with that? I dunno, you used to be able to in Madden anyways...

 

The game is okay so far, as with most sports games though, if you already have 2007, I don't think 2008 is a huge upgrade, especially with a college game when you're recruiting guys with made up names anyways, the turnover is so quick that the roster upgrade isn't really even worth it. The game is alright, I read in a review that the game details, at least the PS2 version, don't look as "sharp" as they did in the 2007 version. I don't know exactly why, but I kind of agree, it's not that it's fuzzy, but things just don't seem as clear as they did last year. I also hate the new "matchup" stick view thing. Last year it was easy to read, this year's is dumb and harder to read. I'd also really like the option to play a half of a game, and then sim the second half, like you can in the ESPN College b-ball games. I don't see an option for that added this year, and I thought there was going to be one. I'd also like to be able to save a game in the middle of it, but I couldn't find that anywhere this year either.

 

The new (at least I think it's new this year) Campus Legend mode sounds pretty cool, and similar to what is available on other sports games, where you just control one player both on the field, and off the field, but if you're like me and a Dynasty guru, that mode remains mostly unchanged, which is both good and bad. I still wish they would become more in depth with historical stats. I'd love to be playing a season in 2020 and be able to look back and compare a guy's rushing stats to some player I had back in 2012, or to be able to compare top 10 career numbers at a school instead of just records. It seems to me that this wouldn't be that hard to add to a game, and would just take up some extra space on a memory card, but who cares.

 

Long story short for the PS2 version, like most sports games, if you have last years, don't bother with this years, unless you really think you're going to dig the Campus Legend option. But, if you're a Dynasty guy like me, 50 bucks isn't really worth it for just a roster upgrade and the new "summer training" mode (similar to the attribute upgrade tasks in Madden).

[BuckyTuba]

just seeing if this happens to anyone, i was playing tonight and i was about to finish a game, and my xbox360 froze up and it said the disc was unreadable and booted me to the original xbox360 screen.

 

just keep an eye out for it.

[B2k1121]

Just putting this out there because I don't think anyone mentioned it yet, but the 360 version runs at 60 FPS rather than 30. The upgrade is pretty noticeable as the game runs very smooth, there are no slow downs or chugging.

 

As far as the positives on the game, I love the new recruiting system, but others who don't like spending much time with recruiting and building a team probably won't. I like the new tackling animations. I haven't tried Campus Legend yet, i've been spending most of my time manually editing the rosters.

 

As I said earlier in the thread I hate that they messed up the uniforms for WI by giving them red pants only. I also don't like the lack of the players appearance editing, you can no longer change the hair, which isn't fun for the guys that have dreads sticking out of their helmet. Anyone else notice that like 75% of recruits wear a dark visor?

 

Overall I think the 360 version is a fairly big upgrade over last years 360 version.

[parkside21]

I second the player appearance problem. I had to bump PJ Hill up to 360 pounds and the body size and muscle sliders all the way up to see any difference in his weight. His original 240 pounds looked pencil thin. Unfortunately, I can't make his...umm...."backside" any bigger.

 

I also don't understand why games continue to use smaller and smaller fonts. I mean, I guess they assume everyone plays on a 58" HD screen. I have a 32" non-HD JVC from about 6 years ago, and I can barely read most of the text in the recruiting menus from 8 feet away.