NCAA Football 06

Written by Adam Woolcott  on August 15, 2005

Review: Now all that's really missing is paying off players.

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Defense is largely unchanged, the only real major change is the addition of the hit stick from Madden 2005 Ц instead of having a 'hit button' like last year, you just use the right stick for brutal hits that can pop balls loose and cause injuries. The crowd pump-up option returns, though it still seems completely useless and just a tactic to add some realism to those games in tough places. It's actually more something for the computer to use against you, or against another human, since the vibrating controller and shaking screen can be annoying as hell. Defense is a lesson in brutality Ц in NCAA 06, the hits are hard, the hits are fast, and the hits are efficient. It's not something casual players will take much notice of, but defense feels more forceful this year, almost bordering on arcade-style. It's sure nice to see two or three players gangtackle and make it look like it hurt rather than the pinball style of past games, though it's still around. It's a lot easier to pick off passes this year, sometimes too easy when you get 4 or more in a game.

On the positive side, the computer AI has been fixed up pretty decently. Last year I saw far too many stupid plays called and dropped passes on the CPU side, making for a boring game where you could kill them unless you played Heisman, which is el cheapo-land. This year, the AI calls much smarter plays, and actually completes passes along the way and creates drives! But the defensive AI is a bit lax, so there's a lot of shootouts until you learn how to shut down opponents. As mentioned, passing and rushing is pretty simple now, though the running game does take speed into account, though at the same time I was able to put up 100 yards plus with a fullback on all-american difficulty without too much hassle. The sliders allow for more tuning to make things easier or more difficult, and in a very key move from EA, every time you adjust your sliders it spits out a code that if you plug in later, can get the exact sliders. This has allowed for players on the Internet to share their sliders, or you can keep it written down in case you lose your settings or want to set up a friend with them. I believe even slider codes on PS2 will work on the Xbox version as well.

As usual, NCAA Football 2006's visual enhancements are more incremental than an overhaul, though this year has been much better than previous years. This is the fifth NCAA game using this engine, and it's come a long way from NCAA Football 2002 on the PS2. The biggest update is the animations that go along with the hard-hitting tackles. They've been designed to match the impact on the field, and do just that. The rough hits actually look like they freaking hurt. Not as much has been done on the offensive side, but those have looked pretty good for years now. Much of the rest of the graphics is mere polish Ц fields look better and better, weather effects are better, the crowd and sidelines look better, etc. It's just little things you might not even notice and pay attention to. It's a bit creepy though, when the game shows you the announce team of Nessler, Herbstreit, and Corso; they've graduated from the creepy American-developed character design school for sure. At least Corso is covered up when he puts on the mascot head for the team he chooses to win.

Speaking of, the triumphant trio handles play by play again, and actually has some new stuff to say, a rarity since the 2003 edition. They tend to repeat pretty quickly and still say stupid stuff though (I'm up by 14 points and looking to run out the clock in the first half and they scream about me wasting time and not getting out of bounds), but mostly it's good commentary, even if a lot of it is still old. On the other hand, EA has dipped their once pure NCAA series into EA Trax land, and though they pull surprises by having music from Mother Love Bone and The Pixies, it's a really sad thing to see the licensed music, considering it's always been about the fight songs. Especially when 90% of it sucks. You can thankfully turn the Trax off and listen to the fight songs again though. On the field, there's still the sounds of bone crunching hits and an excited crowd, and the home team fans will boo like mad if they're getting killed and keep messing up.