Wednesday, July 14, 2010

NCAA: This is great! Hey you need to fix this...

Tonight is one of the big personal NCAA tests, when I sim some seasons to view the numbers. This series has always been a bit...sketchy with this part of the sim. If we see any QBs with 47TDs and 1 INT, that "Noooooooo!" you hear will be from Johnstown, Ohio.

However, one thing I know works (well, sort of) is the new Online Dynasty stuff.

Holy cow this is the coolest thing to happen to NCAA in *years*. I have grown tired of recruiting in NCAA because it feels more like busywork than anything resembling fun. But with the ability to log on to the EA website and do all of your recruiting online, it speeds things up exponentially. When we were told this at E3 we both raised eyebrows because we're in the same boat as far as recruiting on the 360/PS3 is concerned. (We hate it)

But I have tooled around with it today and man....it's SO much faster using the mouse/keyboard, I just hope where you work doesn't block the EA site. Talk about using your lunch break for peak effectiveness.

However, you have to use Online Dynasty to use this feature and today I discovered that it doesn't always work. After red shirting my players (on the console) the game wouldn't save. I tried ten times (just pressing the retry button over and over) before it finally worked.

It's as annoying as it sounds.

That said, I chose UCONN as my test team because I want to see the recruiting with a middling program. Of course, my first game: Michigan. I forgot all about that.

One thing about NCAA -- it still doesn't use subs as well as it should. For example, OSU will use Saine at RB exclusively (that's not gonna happen this year) and Tater Tot will take every snap for Michigan and Robinson or the freshman Gardner will not see the field unless Forcier gets hurt. They really need to mix that up next year.

They also STILL need someone to go in and really fix the player ratings. I love Brandon Saine but he is simply not a 90-something rated halfback. He's just not. He's good. But when I see 90+ I think great. Boom Herron isn't either, folks. There is no way to defend his numbers being that high EXCEPT for that he plays for OSU and they want to make OSU really good.

NCAA needs a Madden ratings stretch, stat.