NCAA 13

I had a hellacious day yesterday.  I had to wake up early to drive to a client for an all day meeting.  On the way back home, I hit a thunderstorm that delayed me by about an hour.  I was wiped out.  But, the good news is that NCAA 13 was waiting for me when I got home.  A quick 15 minute power nap later, and I was ready to start.  I was interested in the Heisman mode.  Going into it, I figured it was akin to the Road to Glory mode, and it is for the most part.  However, I found it to be somewhat useless and don't think I'll be going back to that part of the game.  I chose to play as Herschel Walker.  I figured that it would logically be trying to recreate his 1982 season, where he won the Heisman.  Much to my dismay, I found I was playing as Herschel Walker on the 2012 GA Bulldogs squad, in the 2012 version of Samford Stadium, against the 2012 scheduled opponents.  While I'm no UGA historian, I believe the schedule in 82 was much more interesting that opening up with Buffalo.  So, I quit the game.

It's an interesting idea, but I think it's just lazy.  What I'd like to see:

For any particular player that I'm trying to win the Heisman - use the schedule from the year that player won. 

Have stadium models that are representative of what the stadium looked like during that year.

A Heisman winning campaign relies a lot on the supporting cast.  I'd really like to see a team that is representative of the team in the Heisman winning year.  I don't care if all the players are named or not, but having Aaron Murray hand off to Herschel Walker takes me out of the trip to college football past.

I fully admit, I'm a huge college football fan.  If I had my way, I would spend every Saturday watching games from noon till 2am (God willing, Hawaii's playing at home).   Since moving the chick in a couple years ago, my football watching has abated significantly - so I can't talk intelligently about the SDSU's and Idaho's of the world, but I'm still fairly up on the game.  That being said, I can understand that the tweaks I would expect would probably only be a major draw for a smaller subset of NCAA buyers, and therefore, may not be cost effective to include.  Oh well.

As far as game play goes, I did fire up a 'play now' with Auburn against my Tide.  This part is always difficult for me to admit, but I'm not very good at video game football.  I know the tweaks I want to make to my defense, but I never have time to make the shifts, then I get rattled.  I find I get burned in zone defense quite a bit.  I'm also utterly terrible at open field tackling.  On offense, I primarily run the ball (3 yards and a cloud of dust!), and resort to passing very sparingly.   Either the game has gotten easier, or I've gotten better.  Unfortunately, I suspect it's the former.  I was nailing my throws, and running very effectively.  My defense was largely effective, with base packages yielding strong results and me only tweaking one area (safeties, db's, etc...).  The game ended in an uneventful 35-7 result, and I wasn't really challenged.  While it is nice to put the wood to Auburn like that, I don't think the result is indicative of my ability.  So now, I have to decide - do I ratchet up the difficulty for more challenge, or stay pat at Varsity and just enjoy Crimson Tide dominance?

Has anyone else found the game to be much easier?

I then moved on to Road to Glory mode.  I selected a running back, as usual, and began to play.  This was easier as well.  In previous iterations, I found that in my first game, I'd get a fair number of touches, and put up respectable numbers.  In this year's game, I was given the ball on all but 2-3 plays from scrimmage.  I had about 500 yards and 9 TD's.  In previous years, in the subsequent games, I would get considerably fewer touches.  In '13, I had about the same number - the majority of plays from scrimmage were handoffs to the rb.  I think I ended up with 400 yards and 6 TD's.  So, I'm pleased that my chosen player is getting some touches now, as that killed the mode for me in previous years - but...I'm unhappy that the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction now.  Getting some realistic chances to carry the ball would be good.  At this point, I think I'll breeze through the High School portion and should have no problem winning the starting RB job at a BCS school, and then win the Heisman in my freshman year.  So now, that mode went from being complete bullshit to complete cake walk.  

Overall, '13 seems good.  I'm sure there are tweaks I can make to get the challenge out of it.  I fear the RTG and Heisman modes are throwaway, but will continue on with RTG for a little bit to be sure.  Is it a $60 game?  Probably not.  These incremental, full price upgrades on sports games do tick me off.  It's primarily why I buy most sports games either on significant price drops, or every other year.  However, it's college football, and honestly, the only way I'm not buying the game is if they put an Auburn or Notre Dame player on the cover.