NCAA Football 10 - Road to Glory Update

I've been working on my Iowa State dynasty in NCAA Football 10, so I haven't returned to my own, personal college career as starting quarterback of the Iowa State Cyclones in "Road to Glory" mode since I last posted about it here. So I decided to do a bit more today. Especially because I'm getting a lot of hits on the blog from those doing a search on this.

Unfortunately, absence has not made the heart grow fonder. And the more I play it, the less I'm enjoying it.

Don't get me wrong. It's very cool to follow one guy throughout his college career. I love the idea of it. I just don't like the execution now that I've gone a few weeks into my first season.

Here are some of the problems with it:



1) Lame play-calling by the coach.

Since you are not the coach anymore, but the player, you don't get to call your own plays. And the coach who is calling your plays can be a doofus sometimes. It's not that the plays are bad, necessarily, but that it doesn't vary. In the high school tournament games, I basically had about 10 plays that the coach called. Now that I'm at Iowa State, there are a few more, but some of the plays still haven't been called 5 games into the season.

The only thing you can do is call an audible at the line, and that's only if you're the quarterback. If you're the receiver, you're out of luck. What's even worse, though, is that you can't send anybody in motion or do hot routes for your receivers! So you'd better hope there's a slant route in your audibles if you see a blitz coming. You can't just send one receiver across the middle.

At least the coach isn't stupid enough to call some of the plays that Lee Corso suggests when you are playing a regular game and you ask his opinion. Fake punt from your own 30 yard line on 4th and 18? Yeah, right.

2) Presentation is very limited.

Yes, you get a weekly update show with Erin Andrews (Yes, Erin Andrews!!! *rolls eyes*)(see note below) and Kirk commenting on your last game. But the commentary they give is incredibly generic and not very interesting. They use highlights and pictures from your last game during the "broadcast", but that's all the individuality there is in it. You don't even get the announcers to make the games themselves more exciting, instead just the PA announcer. While this is logical (if you're on the field, you're not hearing the TV announcers), it's not that interesting.

Your dorm room looks kind of cool, but it also is pretty generic after a while. You can view highlights and pictures, check your legend status, look at the calendar and see what's coming up, and a couple of other things. But that's pretty much it. Which leads to...

3) Not much variation on what to do.

During the week, you have a daily practice, and then an evening activity, both of which you can simulate. Practice isn't very useful after a while, so thank God for the sim function. For the evening activity, you can study your playbook (increases your awareness and other things), visit the gym, visit the trainer, or go to the library. You have to maintain at least a 2.0 GPA, and the more you avoid the library, the lower your GPA will sink. But visiting the library once a week, and occasionally twice, should suffice to keep your GPA at the required level. It's so boring that you almost do want to simulate it all, but I don't trust the AI to actually keep me qualified in school.

This happens every day until Game Day, where you then play a game. Sundays you have off (and on the 7th day, the Campus Legend rested). It's really not that exciting.

I don't know. Maybe I need to give it more than 5 weeks. But I just find that I'm not that interested when I actually have my dynasty going as well. They could definitely stand to spruce up the Road to Glory part of this game next year. Add a bit more variety to your week (I guess you don't have any kind of social life, since you're not given that option).

I may complete my first season, or maybe even my whole career, since the games don't actually take that long (I completed 4 weeks in about an hour and a half). I'd only do it just to see how it went and whether there are any improvements as you start making more noise.

But right now, I'd have to say I'm unimpressed.

*Note*: When I roll my eyes at Erin Andrews, that's not because I don't like her. She's a very good sideline reporter. And she is quite easy on the eyes. What I'm rolling my eyes at is the presentation within this game that she's God's gift to the football fan because she's so hot. The game actually emphasizes how cool it is that ERIN ANDREWS! is following your career. I find that also incredibly lame.

I guess we should be happy there's no option to try and peep in her window or something.


Update 1 (10/8/09):  As mentioned in the comments, one other major aggravation in "Road to Glory" is that you can't call a Hurry Up or Spike the Ball play when time is running out.  Thus, you're on the game-winning drive, no timeouts, and you're moving down the field.  You complete a pass in the middle of the field and you want to spike the ball to stop the clock.  AND YOU CAN'T!  This is bullshit, plain and simple, and completely destroys the game.  I actually had that happen in a game after I made this post, and it really pissed me off.


Consider yourself warned, and thanks to my anonymous commenter for mentioning it when I forgot to update this post.

Update 2 (11/21/09): Sold this game back to EB Games as part of a package of three games so that I could get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for free, so  I won't be finishing my career.  I'm not especially heartbroken by that, of course.  In my dynasty, I had reached 2019, won the National Championship once and had a blast.  But I knew I wouldn't be playing this anymore with so many new games coming out.

Update 3 (6/20/10): Just posted my first impressions of the NCAA Football 11 demo! Check them out.