NCAA Football 09

"So irritatingly bad you'll want to destroy your PSP"

NCAA Football is back on the PSP after a short hiatus in time for the upcoming 2008 college football season. Now, you would think that given they took two whole years to rework the heavily glitched '07 title this game would be greatly improved over its predecessor. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, and it's difficult to even present a case for this title being even on a level with previous installments.

To be honest, this game plays like a watered-down piece of garbage compared to NCAA Football 07 on the PSP. Gone are the match-ups between players, and this just makes the game feel like a total step backwards. The game even includes a new mode to make it more pathetically simplistic, 'freshman mode', where all you ever need to do is press X, whether you want to pass, catch, dodge a tackle, make a tackle or anything else you'd care to mention.

Having said all this, the game does look very pretty, and some stadiums such as the Coliseum look amazing decked out in red and gold. However, the vast majority of the stadiums are just generic models which look completely dire. And if that wasn't bad enough, these beautiful graphics come at an extremely steep price. Practically every off the field action in Dynasty Mode takes absolutely ages to be completed, the game even warns that it will take an extended period of time in some cases, and it ain't lying. It literally takes minutes to progress from one week to the next during a season. But with such extreme loading times, at least the game's going to run smoothly, right? Wrong. During a game in Dynasty Mode, you will get several short pauses ON EVERY PLAY. It doesn't help that the biggest pause comes when you throw to a receiver, a few seconds of 'did he catch it?' before the inevitable fourth down message scrolls across the screen.

The most annoying thing is that these pauses detract from what the best aspect of the game is: the atmosphere. Jack the volume up and combined with the momentum system you can really get caught up in a close game, at least until the pauses irritate you too much to continue, which is a real shame.

Something people always complain about with football games is the artificial intelligence of the players, on your team or the other. Quite frankly in NCAA Football 09, the AI stinks, it really does. You can crank pass protection up to the maximum and your guards will still just watch a blitzing linebacker go by, and even with max pass catching a perfectly thrown pass that hits a receiver in stride will bounce off of his hands at least 40% of the time. These combined with an infuriatingly frequent fumble rate (8/9 per game is about average) makes for a very trying gaming experience.

The main part of this game is Dynasty Mode, where you are a coach, who can take a program through highs and lows over an extended period of time. Unfortunately the off the field options are so laughably shallow so as to not even be worth including, and the annoyingly stubborn ranking system can see Michigan lose to App State and not even drop 10 places down. After playing this game for a few hours I was really getting frustrated, so take my advice, and leave this title well alone.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/05/08

Game Release: NCAA Football 09 (US, 07/15/08)