A Look At The NCAA Football 11 Demo

I played all 4 games so here's a short little review. Please note, I did not have NCAA 2010 so take that for what it's worth.

The 8 teams you can play as: Ohio St, Miami, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Florida State, Clemson and Mizzou

1) The Nike uniforms are horrible, especially Texas (because I'm a big Longhorns fan).

2) Presentation/Graphics: The ESPN presentation is a nice touch and I have a feeling the demo is only the tip of the iceberg. I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't hear any of Erin Andrews. Plus for the Red River Shootout (Oklahoma/Texas) there wasn't any special presentation (which would be a downer). Also for Florida/Florida St (Governor's Cup) there was no trophy presentation. Again, since its the demo, I think this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of presentation.

The graphics are crisp and clean. Something strange I found was if you pull back to "coach's cam" and look towards the end of the field, the field looks like its rising. It's strange. Anyway, the new introductions look great and I can't wait to see the more "custom" ones like Notre Dame hitting the sign or Michigan running through the smoke.

3) Playcalling. At first, I was really confused with the play calling screen. I thought it was a more streamlined PS2-style version, but when you hit up or down it goes to the next formation. Once I figured out the play calling screen, it made the whole process easier (duh). I really like the no-huddle system. Once you press Y the offensive playbook from the formation you're already in (shotgun trips, ace, etc.) and you can quickly select a new play. This is much better than the Madden system (of 2010 at least) where you can call no-huddle but then are limited to certain audibles.

Defensive play calling was a pain in the ass at first. I felt the time to select a play was to quick and there were numerous times that the game automatically selected the play for me because my time ran out. When you have a Dime package with 15-25 plays in it, it takes a little bit to cycle through those. It was irritating to me because I knew what I was looking for but I ran out of time looking for it.

Another example: I use 4-3 Free Fire as my standard rushing defense. I use it in NCAA and I use it in Madden on almost every first and second down (depending on offensive package of course). In the 4-3 Normal menu, there are 40 plays and Free Fire is #5. If you accidentally hit the d-pad or thumbstick to the left (because you don't know what you're doing [like I did the first few times out]) you start at 40 and work backwards. I wasn't given enough time to go from play #40 to play #5 or even to play #20. I hope that is changed

I also am looking forward to trying the "chaining" style of play calling. Apparently the plays you can chain together have a small green chain in the upper-right hand corner of the play call screen.

Overall I liked the demo and I'm really looking forward to getting the full game. Give this a download if you like football.