NCAA '07 Complaints

Well, I remember reviewing the game and raving about it. I still love the game, but after playing it a bunch, I've noticed a few things that aggravate me slightly. I actually may downgrade my initial rating of 9.5/10 to 9/10.

I don't know if some of these flaws attempt to prove a point about college football's flaws, but even if that's the case, they can get quite annoying.

First off, I've never in my life seen such leaping of teams in polls after a win and sometimes these leaps occur after beating a mediocre club. I beat a top 15 team in Louisville one week pretty handily, yet I was leapfrogged by Oklahoma who beat Texas. Arizona State leapfrogged me one time after beating unranked Stanford and I had beaten Louisville (I might as well stop playing the Cardinals). I played the toughest schedule imaginable, finished 1st by a long shot in the computer polls, yet was 3rd when all was said and done after the championship games. I was 2nd going into championship week, but guess what? I was leapfrogged by the winner of the Big XII Title Game.

Secondly, the penalties aren't called very often, but when they are called, they seem to happen in a very timely fashion and home-field seems to take part in the call. After I stuffed a team on a third and long late in the game when I was up by only four, a player of mine was pumped up and the ref called unsportsmanlike conduct on me for it. I've seen gestures that were a lot more dramatic in other games that weren't called for the 15-yard penalty. Also, why, from what I've seen, are there only 15-yard face mask penalties and none of the 5-yarders?

You also might as well flip a coin with the challenges. There are times that the refs get the calls right and there are other times they're wrong. I played a game the other day and on a 2nd and 10, the opposing quarterback threw a ball high. The receiver leaped up and caught the ball, rather impressively, but his backside landed five-feet outside the out-of-bounds line. Initially, the refs correctly called it incomplete. After the review, they reversed the call! I couldn't believe it. Only two camera angles are shown as well, so on some plays, one can't see the football very well and can't make out if the ball came out before one was down. Also, there's a limited range of challenges one can make and sometimes the challenges are wrong. For example, there was a play where my player might've fumbled the football, the opposing team recovered, but then their team fumbled and they recovered again. So, I challenged the fumble. They went to the second fumble and not the first. Because of that, I waste a timeout and am not even able to challenge what I wanted to challenge. I see a trend with home-field advantage with the rulings of these plays, as well.

During the game, there will be these slight pauses, where the game will freeze up for a moment and repeat the same scene a second time. I originally thought it was just my game, but have heard others' complain regarding this issue as well.

Speaking of scenes, the close-up slow motion scenes are kind of cool, but there are times where they focus in on the wrong guy and that's confusing. There are times I've thrown a ball and the focus will go on a linebacker and I'll think, "Oh great, I just threw a pick" and the ball is actually completed away from the defender the game had focused on.

I also like the idea of momentum, because it does play a big factor in college football, but sometimes this game inaccurately portrays the true momentum of the game. After a team scores the first touchdown, their momentum goes up the full five points. If a team goes up 21 points and lay a flat egg the rest of the game, the opposing team won't have momentum on their side until they have more points. If they score 17 points in one quarter, the team with 21 still has slight momentum for some reason.

Finally, there were no upgrades or additions made to recruiting as there's been every year in the series. Dynasty mode is still fun, but it's disappointing that nothing new was added this year.

Good news for EA is the fact that this game will be on the new PS3 next year, so even that fact will add a new look and feel to the game even if nothing about it has necessarily changed much. Overall, I still love the game, but think I have to downgrade it to a 9/10.