"Still a Solid Game"

You are a high school football player. When college scouts hold a series of drills at your school, you take part in the drill for your position. After receiving scholarship offers from various schools, you decide where you want to go. From there, you proceed to play for that school's team and hopefully, help lead that team to a championship, and even better, when the coveted Heisman trophy. That is the basic idea behind the new “Race for the Heisman” mode in NCAA Football 06. It is pretty well done. Your freshman year, you are made a starter in whatever position you chose. As you progress though your college career you go from a not-so-impressive dorm room to a more respectable residence. Once you finish your junior year, you can choose to either declare your eligibility for the NFL Draft or to remain at your school and finish your senior year. Should you choose to declare eligibility, your character is saved and you will be able to import him into Superstar Mode in Madden NFL 06. If you choose to stay for your senior year, you finish out that season and then you are presented yet again with two choices. You can either declare Draft eligibility or become an NCAA football coach. The former does the same as it would in your junior year and the latter essentially takes you from “Race for the Heisman” mode to “Dynasty” mode, where you have full control over the team. The beauty of “Race for the Heisman” is that you get to see the familiar game of college football from the perspective of a player. You'll notice that as you play the actual games, you will often tend to try and pad your own stats. Plus, I am very pleased that the “Race for the Heisman” character will be able to be your “Superstar” character in Madden. With that, you really do get to watch over this character's entire career.

Other than “Race for the Heisman,” there are some noticeable changes in NCAA Football 06. One of those changes is the addition is the “Impact Player” feature. An Impact Player is a player that you can put the weight of the entire university on when the game is on the line. They will tend to have more big plays and will win most one-on-one battles with opposing players. For example, an Impact Player on offense is more likely to make an accurate throw, break a tackle, or get open on a critical fourth down. An Impact Player on defense is more likely to make a big stop, cause a fumble, or make an interception when the opposing team is threatening to score.

For those who love the “Dynasty” mode, like me, there is a pretty cool addition to the mode that I really appreciate. It is “In-Season Recruiting.” It is as its name implies, you get to work on recruiting players to your team during the season. You use a limited number of recruiting points to show players how interested you are in them. You can also invite the prospective recruits to your campus during one of your games. During those visits, you pitch the prospective recruits an aspect of your school, which can be anything from the prestige of your football program to the location of your school. You decide what to pitch to the students using tidbits of information that your scouts give you.

Another notable change is the control scheme. Although it took me a little while to acquaint myself with the new controls, I have grown to love them. A couple of the control changes are that jukes are now controlled by the right analog stick on the PlayStation 2 as well as sprinting and player switching now being controlled by the same buttons on both offense and defense (X = Sprint and O = Switch Players on the PS2 version).

Aside from all of those changes, NCAA Football 06 is pretty much NCAA Football as we have come to know it. The graphics are barely improved, if at all, but that's not surprising. The game of football itself is well-done and is as fun as ever. The songs that EA chose for “EA Trax” still mostly suck (so I envy those with an Xbox for the customizable soundtracks). but fortunately, the sounds of football itself are still good. I still despise the fact that players are named by position and number rather than their true names, but I do understand that there are probably valid reasons for that, and fortunately, if you want the names badly enough, there are ways to get them.

When you get down to it, NCAA Football 06 is a very solid game. The actual game of football is still done very well and the new additions simply add to the fun. The much-advertised “Race for the Heisman” mode is worth playing, especially if you plan to get Madden NFL 06, but it leaves a bit to be desired. Any fans of past NCAA Football games should definitely get this game, and anyone who plans to pick up Madden NFL 06 this August should also pick it up (if for nothing else than “Race for the Heisman” and to get used to the modified control scheme which is likely to be similar to this year's Madden).

SCORE: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/05