NCAA Football 2003

"The first college football game for the Cube doesn't disappoint..."

One of the long-running problems for past Nintendo systems, were the lack of NCAA games of any kind for the system, while the Nintendo 64 had large varieties of games for the professional side of the sport, there was pretty much a goose-egg for any college games. While the Playstation, on the other hand, had many professional and college games in it's arsenal, winning the sport area, easily, but, now that EA has come to acknowledge Nintendo's deep need for a college game, they obliged, and it was good that the did.

Gameplay

The Gameplay is most certainly terrific. The menus are very easy to navigate, you won't get lost in them, unlike some other games, where you are forced to go through large amounts of un-needed options...The amount of teams you get to pick from are astounding, you can pick from around 145 teams to forge your way through the college grid-iron season, each team on the menu comes with a unique scoring system on how good the team is at different areas of football, one team can get a C+ in Special Teams, and another could grab an A in the Offense category. This works well for picking a team that suits your style. Unlike me, who just scrolls through the teams, finding your favorite college, whether they suck or not. EA also spent a lot of time examining a lot of players that went to that college, and made accurate attributes. Such as the Michigan Wolverines' QB John Navarre, (who I have to admit isn't the greatest out there) is quite accurate but isn't exactly the Hail Mary type, in the game, he's accurate, and his arm isn't overpowering. It's little things like this that make EA the king of sport games, and arguably the best of all games.

The running aspect of the game is simple to learn, you control your player with the control stick, and they respong well, the buttons are obvious to what they do at times, like the A button, which is the main button, is used for Turbo, and the R Button is used for Juking, while the Z button laterals, which is good, because the Z button isn't exactly easy to reach, but you don't exactly lateral every play, either.

Passing is simple as well, unlike some games where you press a button to bring up the receivers, you simply drop back, and let it fly, the only downside to that is if you're used to other games, that make you press a button to bring the recievers. It's easy to run when the passing cursors are up, as it should be, and there is a large seleciton of plays you can run.

The playbooks are also a large plus, as they are numerous, unique, and cool. Each team has quite a few different plays, if I recall, and each one suits the team to it's style. Overall, the gameplay is great in every aspect.

Graphics

The graphics were OK, but I've seen better, it took the view from Madden 2002, where the scene of the football field (in standard camera mode) is pretty far back from the quarter back, there's nothing out of the ordinary. The players look realistic, up close or not, and each move made by the runner is cool. The crowd is your traditional 2D crowd that does the wave for all eternity, don't get your hopes up on that side. The weather was cool, and realistic, and the stadiums looked very similar to their respective stadiums.

Sound

Finally, some announcers that don't bug the crap out of you. They are cool, and they are names that are pretty popular on the College Football ladder. They react to which team is playing which, no screw-ups, and they talk about each teams' style, and they even say which team they think'll win, quite a unique aspect.

All the sounds of the game are real-sounding, all the knocks, smacks, crunches, hikes, passes, whistles, and the crowd noise, which doesn't get deafeningly loud, and night-time quiet. The sound is pretty good in this game, especially for a sport with a lot of noise involved.

Gameplay: 10/10
Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 9/10

Total Score: Not an average...9

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/02/02, Updated 02/08/03