There’s a new animation in the game that allows a defender to smack the QB as he’s throwing, sending the ball straight up in the air. It looks really cool – and is used way too much each and every game. This results in defensive lineman netting a crazy number of interceptions. Playing as Ohio State, DT Doug Worthington (sorry, DT #84) played the 2009 season and picked off 5 passes – all due to the pop up animation, Again – cool idea, poorly executed.

The AI playcalling remains highly suspect, going for it on 4th and 15 from the opponent’s 40 instead of punting or trying a long FG. In fact the AI likes to go for it way too much in general and still wastes far too much time when trying to run a hurry up/two minute offense—problems that have been in this game for many, many years. So while the lack of deep passes is much, much better this year as is the AI’s ability to run the ball and stick with the running game, the playcalling still needs a lot more attention.

For me, the meat and potatoes of NCAA has always been its Dynasty mode, and again parts have been improved, while others remain unchanged. Perhaps the best news is that player stats now fall within the realm of reality. Jimmy Clausen will no longer have a simulated season where he throws 42 touchdowns and one interception with a 75% completion rate. This means playing for a Heisman is a possibility again.

The polling AI appears to be better even though that’s hard to really gauge. I doubt USC would drop from #2 to #19 after losing 24-21 at Washington in week 3, but for the most part this works a bit better. Of course teams with losing records still appear in Bowl Games, which remains an area that needs fixed.

The biggest drag on Dynasty mode, both online and off, remains recruiting and player progression. There are two central issues here: first off, teams improve at a rapid rate – and I mean nearly every team. After a few seasons of play you will be looking at a college football world where nearly every team in the top 25 is at least an A- overall grade – from Louisville and USF to USC and Ohio State – they’re basically even because every player gets better and the recruiting model is so stale that there are very few (if any) busts. Every 5-star player will emerge to be a damn good player and every 3-star player will also improve. Recruiting should be, at least to a certain degree, a crapshoot – less accurate than the NFL Draft. But here it’s as predictable as the sunrise.

This doesn’t mean Dynasty mode doesn’t work, it does, and if you’ve loved how the game handles this stuff in the past then you’ll likely enjoy this as well. But for me, it has turned stale. I don’t want a college football game where teams that should be average at best are rated as a B+. This rings especially true in the trenches. While line play is better, it’s still not evident enough when a dominating line takes on a weak one. Every school’s team – even the bad ones, has athletes – skill guys that can run. The big difference between the top tier teams and the also-rans is on the line, and NCAA still doesn’t promote this enough.

Road to Glory mode is basically the same as last year – you take a high school kid and fight your way through the life as a college star but you get radio updates from Herbstreit and updates from Erin Andrews. It’s extra fluff, but this mode is still pretty much the same stuff only with a player lock camera. And there’s’ other features resting in the periphery – Team Builder allows you to create a team from scratch, you can now create custom conferences, and the new Season Showdown mode basically means very little unless you like to play a lot of games online and only with “your” team. I suppose this is EA’s way of getting people to choose other schools aside from the same ones with fast quarterbacks. This feature is basically lost on me.

In the end what you have is gameplay that is as good as it has ever been – not perfect and still with some frustrations but clearly NCAA 10 is the most respectable version of this series to date. I think it’s the best version since NCAA 2004 – which for my money is the when the franchise reached its zenith. Some of the new features are hit and miss, and many of the new additions are not implemented well, and you certainly will not be wowed by the graphics and audio (really time to retire some of the play by play lines, guys) but for the first time in years I finally feel like this series is headed in the right direction.

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