By Andy Matheson on July 17th, 2003

Presentation

The college feel and the college atmosphere is by far the most unique aspect of college sports. So, for a college sports game to be great, it must make good use of this atmosphere. For years Tiburon has done an excellent job of capturing this aspect of the series, and this years version doesn’t stray off their mark.

The game features loads of footage of actual players and college students on campus, as well as prompts you for your favorite team, and custom presents the game to you according to the team you choose. It’s something that’s been in EA’s games for a couple years now, is very simple, yet no one else has caught on.

The menus are typical EA Sports menus. Bright, easy to navigate, quick loading. NCAA 2003 basically perfected the presentation and Tiburon wisely decided to stick with what works.

Graphics

As with Madden, NCAA strives for a great framerate and top notch animation over purty graphics. That said, the animations in NCAA are absolutely awe-inspiring. Watching a WR turn his head around and follow the ball, only to have a leaping DB pick it out of the air or crush him when he lands and make him drop it, is a truly awesome experience.

One of the most glaring flaws in previous versions was weak DB animations, as getting your player into position to make a play was too often not good enough due to poor animations. Now the animations are much more aggressive and much more momentum based, making it easier to make the plays but still requiring skill to master.

The graphics themselves are far from ugly, they just aren’t very impressive. The textures are pretty bland and the character models lack a lot of detail. Sometimes the stadiums lok a little hazy, and there’s slight slowdown sometimes after a kickoff is complete. Overall though, the graphics are more than adequate, and you won’t even notice most of the flaws.

Sound

Never been a series to let down fans when it came to sound, not much needs to be said here. If you’ve played any of EA’s past college football games, you know it’s top notch when it comes to the college atmosphere, sound effects and even commentary.

New things this year include expanded crowd noises, including a variety of chants and boos. Need a turnover on defense to give your offense the ball back late in the game and you’ll hear the crowd yelling "get that ball.... get that ball". Very cool. Break a tackle with your RB and you’ll hear some noise from thew crowd. Continue to break to the outside and pick up yards though, and you’ll begin to hear the entire stadium rumble as the crowd goes in a frenzy as you dart towards the endzone.

Very good sound effects and probably the best commentary in any sports video game period round out an excellent job by Tiburon.

Gameplay

Ah, gameplay. The bread and butter of any video game. Just as with the sound, I could speak for pages about NCAA’s completely open-ended, incredibly deep gameplay, but everyone and their dog knows about it already. So I’ll just get right into the new features and the improvements.

Online Play: Yes, we finally have an online college football title. That is if you have a PS2 of course, because online play in NCAA is exclusive to the PS2 version. I have played 5 games online and I can honestly say it easily beats Madden 2003 in terms of connection quality and features. There are new features this year for online play, such as "EA Messenger", which lets you see who’s online as well as talk to them. There’s "EA Sports Talk" for those who have a USB headset and don’t like keyboards. Talking in real-time with opponents is really cool. Lastly, "Fair Play" is a feature set to tone down a lot of cheating and quitting. Overall, the online play is exactly like Madden. Incredible and fun. It’s kept me playing Madden to this very day and I’m sure it will keep a lot of gamers playing NCAA 2004 for just as long.

EA Sports Bio: This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in a sports game. It’s a bio section that keeps track of how long you’re playing any of the new EA Sports titles. It also keeps track of records and accomplishments, as well as unlocks rewards for meeting certain requirements. Say you clock 24 hours in NCAA, you might ulock a certain new NCAA team. Or say you win the Super Bowl in Madden 2004, you might unlock a secret team for Madden, or you might unlock something for NCAA or Nascar Thunder. If you’re an EA Sports fan, this little thing is going to be very handy.

Sports Illustrated: This is a new feature for the dynasty mode in NCAA, and I don’t know why someone hasn’t thought of it before. Any time you exit from the schedule onto the main dynasty menu, you’ll see the latest cover of SI. Go into SI, and you’ll be able to catch up on all the important NCAA information, such as rankings, bowl predictions, Heisman trophy candidates, etc. There’s no greater feeling than pulling off a huge upset and then seeing it make the cover of Sports Illustrated. It’s really an awesome feature that adds a lot to the feel of the game.

The game boasts loads of improvements. For starters, the defensive AI has been toned up quote a few notches, both for run and pass. The defensive backs are now very aggressive, and they’ll pursue the ball much more effectively this year. You’ll also find it’s much harder to run this year. No longer can you simply pitch it outside for 20 easy yards. Now you must follow your blocks and try to make people miss.

Offensively, the WRs play is much more realistic this time around. Throw them the ball and watch as they actually follow the ball with their heads. The route running is much cleaner this time around, and they’ll run their routes much further than last year. Punt coverage has been dropped a bit, thankfully. Now you actually have time to get a few yards before you’re plastered onto the ground.

Dynasty mode has always been the maind raw for this series, and this year, it only gets better. The Sports Illustrated feature is awesome, and now you have more control over recruiting than ever. You can even try to persuade players leaving early for the NFL draft to stay another year. Recruiting is a little easier, but is still a time consuming process.

Overall, NCAA remains the deepest football title around gameplay wise, and all the new features just make it even deeper and add more life to the title. There are a couple minor flaws. Some of the rosters are wierd and wrong, but you can change them easily. Sometimes it’s still too easy to have a DB in position and have him go into an entirely wrong animation and cost you a big play. Fumbles are too often with some teams. Nothing too serious, I guess I’m just nitpicking.

Conclusion

NCAA Football 2004 is not only the best college football title around this year, but to the best of my knowledge it’s also the only one around this year. It’s amazing that EA delivered such an awesome title with absolutely no competition around. The game is out on all consoles but if you have a PS2, this version is the only way to go. The GCN version suffers from blurry graphics and a lot of slowdown problems, as well as bad control. The XBox version is basically just a prettier PS2 version, but no online play. Any way you wanna play it, just play it, but don’t miss out on what just might be the best football game ever made.