Review by: William Abner

On the field, NCAA Football 11 is the best game in the history of this long running franchise. It’s not just “the best since NCAA 2004”, which is commonly accepted as the standard bearer for when this series was actually good – NCAA 11 is the best. Period.

In truth, this version was set up for a good year because NCAA 10 made some important strides in the gameplay department. It’s just that a lot of the periphery stuff was a mess. Like clockwork, when an EA Sports game starts to turn a corner, it’s the follow up year that delivers the goods. This is no different.

That’s not to infer that it’s perfect. There are fairly obvious shortcomings: the AI still takes bad pursuit angles, there are gameplay bugs that need ironed out, kick and punt returns are still an issue, crossing routes are still a bit too easy, substitutions and overall team depth still are not as important as they need to be, and at times the AI defenders tend to “shut down” as if running out of batteries – standing like a statue for a few fateful seconds. When this happens (and it’s not an every down occurrence) it can radically change the outcome of a play. All of that stuff needs to be addressed and some if it has needed to be addressed for a few years now.

So why, then, is NCAA Football 11 such an on the field success? Because it lacks patterns. This is the most unpredictable the series has ever been and when a sports game is unpredictable – it has legs. When it gets predictable and stale it’s immediately turned into shelfware.

There are so many little things that on the surface sound trivial but they help turn the game into something special. Quarterbacks miss open receivers; receivers drop catchable passes then on the next play make a leaping catch in traffic; linemen miss blocks one play and make them the next; a spin move might free up a defensive end one play and the left tackle will stonewall him the next; a halfback might get the corner on a toss sweep and then on the next play the defensive end and linebacker may stuff him. You may beat the AI one game and then lose the next 35-10. The simple fact that the AI opponent will throw the ball deep more than once every three games is a monumental improvement in and of itself. This is not just a repackaged version of NCAA 10.