Sports Games: Video game war brewing (Pt. 2)

Last Tuesday I got my copy of EA Sports NCAA 2004 for the XBOX, now I'm going to let everyone know this upfront since the first 2K series game was released by Sega/Visual Concepts I retired myself from EA and the Madden series.

I hadn't even played EA's NCAA series. So I was very enthused to see what EA was going to bring to the table for XBOX players with it's first LIVE game.

At one time EA was called the "Evil Empire," and I was there to support their games from the Sega Genesis, to the Saturn, but as I said ended at the Dreamcast when the 2K series was born.

Now, I could have sat down, read the book and played a few rounds against the AI(artificial intelligence), but I wanted to see the EA server, I wanted to see all the great things these PS2 owners kept talking about, and with good reason because to me the tournament and league options was the one thing PS2 owners had one leg up on.

It's was about 10:45 a.m. (eastern), and most of the games traffic was on the eastern seaboard.

The EA messenger lit up and announced that someone wanted to take me on, and I was ready to get my first one in the win column.

My first game was against "BlueCrow," who chose to coach the Tennessee Vols, and I chose to run with the Boston College Eagles even though Michigan was my first choice, I changed my mind wanting to represent the hometown while online.

The game began and BlueCrow chatted with me through the headset, as he seemed to be very knowledgeable with the team and it's players.

The reason why I mention this is because in NCAA all of the players are identified by their jersey numbers (Damn those NCAA restrictions!) so when he kicks off, and starts talking to me about the kicker I realize that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

At the games end Blue Crow shut me out 37-0, it was a rout of epic proportions with me dishing out a whopping 50 yards of total offense to his 168 yards.

Turning over the ball four times didn't help me either, the only thing that saved me was that our game wasn't BCS (bowl championship) ranked so I was spared the embarrassment of having the score run up on me.

So with that I picked up my thumbs, and decided to play a few games offline to get the feel of the game.

By nightfall I was ready to test the waters once more.

I even got gusty, I went to the XBOX forums and posted a request for players for the purpose of this story, and they came with gamer tags like: jturn49, Strokediesel, Pharoe, I added these people to my "friends" list, and instructed to them that I would be out on the EA server around 9 p.m. (eastern).

This is the beginning of your "prime time" on XBOX Live because the west coast people are logging on, and their are more games to choose from.

Unfortunately, at that time EA was having some server problems and people couldn't connect to the site.

This brought several angry postings to the XBOX forums, and I was in agreement that EA should have had the major bugs cleared up. So I delayed my return for about two hours, and was able to connect.

At this time I could see some of the tags I mentioned above were online and playing various other games, so I decided to try for a different contender.

My second game was against PSonic who took the fighting Irish of Notre Dame, while I once again took the Boston College Eagles making our match up for the Ireland Trophy.

A rivalry game that is also called the Frank Leahy Memorial Bowl something I didn't see mentioned in this game.

The big difference in this game was that I had one game under my belt while PSonic claimed this was his first.

I smiled an evil grin, and proceeded to play.

This time I was able to move the ball using a tight passing game, which led to my first score an 81 yard drive consisting of only two plays.

The third quarter was all me as my D dominated, and his offense made some horrible penalties, but the score remained the same heading into the fourth.

During the fourth my opponent must had been reading the instructions, because he all of a sudden developed a running game that I couldn't stop.

He threatened me by scoring on a seven-play drive that the final play was off an QB option lateral to the RB who ate up the real estate for 72 yards making the score 17-14.

I was at a loss, and his option play seemed unstoppable.

My D was getting splayed, and I had to draft a defensive game plan quick, I went with a 5-5-2, stacked the line and began to shut down his option play.

Time was winding down, I was ready to drink from the chalice of victory and began to wiggle on my couch.

This was a would be an upset for the Irish at home, but the fans were still in this game and with 10 seconds left on the clock my cornerback missed his assignment allowing PSonic to throw an 89 yard TD pass for the victory.

Pandemonium broke out on the field, players were jumping around, some were visibly upset, others pointing their fingers up in the air.

As the coaches made their way to midfield the camera cut to the stands and showed 4 ND fans giving my team the "choke" signal.

I gave a congrats to my opponent, and felt no sorrow for myself as I had amassed 305 yards, total offense to his 331 yards.

My downfall was not being able to stop his run attack where he gained 147 yards on 23 carries.

NCAA 2005 isn't a great game, but it is somewhat entertaining with it's faults.

As one person put it... " I wanted a football game, not the Matris," describing the occasional slowdown during run plays up the middle.

There were some other things that bugged me, while playing was the "online" symbol that sits in the right hand corner for the entire game, and it seems that every pass that involves more than one defender gets tipped around like a half/game ending hail mary.

I saw more tips in one game than the steaks on my uncle's grill for July fourth weekend.

Another problem I had was not being able to stop the option, this will probably be the play that everyone will use when face with fourth and short situations.

As for the sound, ESPN has been bringing the best in sound effects where I feel this game is severely lacking.

As for new options I felt EA should have brought everything to the table for their first XBOX Live game.

The "create a sign" feature did nothing for me, and the "stadium pulse" was different, but it was only something that benefited the home team.

When you are the home team you can press a button that will get the crowd rocking.

If you do this successfully you can mess with a player's composure, rumble the away team's joy pad, and make the camera shake.

You don't have as much control over your players as you do in Madden or ESPN, but having certain things affect a player's composure was one of the things I did like in this game especially when you have find a WR mismatched up with a defender.

The WR will eat that defender alive unless your opponent makes the adjustment, but the same goes for a QB that loses his composure after taking several sacks.

The EA server is somewhat bland, but I did like the real time ticker that scrolls at the bottom of the screen when connected online.

Overall, if you are an EA fan this should hold you over until the Madden is unleashed, but with ESPN being shipped GOLD on July 20th and hitting the stores for the amazing price of $19.99 it's going to be hard to pull away those legion of ESPN fans like me.

Oh yeah... There is one thing that EA got under my skin about.

When I picked up my reserved copy of NCAA there was an in store display and a message on my receipt informing me that if I brought back the copy of NCAA before Aug 16th, I could purchase Madden 2005 for $19.99, which is EA's answer to matching the $19.99 price of ESPN's NFL 2K5.

Now for those of you who passed match class, if you bought NCAA you dropped $49.99 for the game.

A game that if you trade it in becomes a $50 three week rental in my mind, and even with the $19.99 purchase of Madden 2005 EA is still getting $70 from you for the purchase of Madden.

So here is what I plan to do...

I have the ESPN 2K5 reserved for $10, I'll take back the NCAA this Tuesday and get $30 at least towards trade in and use the extra credit to preorder Fable or Halo 2.

Thanks EA!!!