Who else bought this besides me? I think it is the greatest football game ever. EVER. If you are one of those people who waits to buy a new sports title because "all they do is change the rosters" you are going to totally miss the boat on this one. Oh, let me list the goodness...
*Improved Road to Glory mode - ok...less Erin Andrews is a FAIL, but now instead of only playing your high school playoffs you can play your entire senior season. And if you are SUPER-geeky (like myself) you can customize all of the opponents on the regular season schedule...so if you wanted to recreate the 1987 Oakmont Spartans varsity football schedule you could totally do that. (Hypothetically speaking...) AND you can play both ways in this year's version, although I admit my first attempt at QB/S made for an AWFUL defensive player so I just went back to QB. The way you pick your college is much better too, instead of picking from the whole list you get offered scholarships to certain schools and you get more XP for spending on improvements if you go to a scholarship school instead of walking on. Also an improvement is the way your player improves...you can't just walk in and control the offense. At first you can't even audible or flip the direction on a running play...you have to earn those abilities. And it appears harder to beat out an incumbent starter if that guy is really good. I picked Washington for my school and they have a new QB so I was able to win the starting job in week 2, but if you pick, say, Stanford, it is much harder to beat out super-stud Andrew Luck.
The only downside (and it is a quibble at best) is that you can only pick your high school from the choices given this year. So while I could recreate an Oakmont High School season (including customizing all the opponents names and nicknames) I couldn't *actually* create an Oakmont High School for ME to play on.
*Customizable conferences and BCS bowl tie-ins - you could customize conferences in NCAA 11 but not *really*...the Big Ten *had* to have 11 teams, for example. Not so in NCAA 12. You can build the conference up to 16 teams or down to four teams. (You can't eliminate a conference, unfortunately.) I chose to move all the teams more or less to 1991 versions, which mean no championship games and the Southwest Conference still exists (I put the SWC in the Sun Belt). I also gave the SWC the auto-bid to the Fiesta Bowl. Florida State and Penn State as independents? Yes, please. If you are the kind of person that says "I wish they would do 'this'..." this feature is awesome.
The other cool thing about it is if you wanted to you can customize the conferences after each season on Dynasty Mode, so say you wanted to created some sort of promotion/relegation thing in your dynasty, you could totally do that. You can also customize the BCS bowl tie-ins every season.
The only thing that I would like to have seen them do (besides the option of having a playoff instead of bowl games) is allowing more flexibility to the other non-BCS bowls. Having a SWC created in the Sun Belt's place is cool, but having the other teams be stuck in the Sun Belt's bowl tie-ins kind of sucks.
*Coaching Carousel - OK...this fucking rocks.
You can start your dynasty as either a Head Coach, offensive coordinator, or defensive coordinator. If you pick a coordinator, you play only that side of the ball. (Although you still handle recruiting...I chose to sim that until I get to be a head coach.)
I started as Kent State's offensive coordinator. I finished my 2011 season at 5-7 and hit all four of my contract goals for 2011 (and still had the other four "in progress" as they were "life of the contract"-goals) and bumped my Job Security from 44% to 63%. Then, before you go into the next season, the Coaching Carousel happens. Basically it is what it sounds like, with a series of coaching jobs being opened and filled, like this...
Washington State HC Paul Wulff has been fired due to not reaching his contract goals. Utah State DC Bill Jones has been hired as Washington State HC.
Then after tat the Utah State DC job will get filled and that continues until all of the jobs are occupied for the next season. I ended up getting Texas Tech's offensive coordinator job for 2012.
Holy fuck shit motherfucker shit. Read comics. Fuck shit shit fuck shit I sold out when I did my job. Fuck fuck fuck shit fuck. Sorry had to do it....
*snip*
Revenge of the Sith = one thumb up from me. Fuck shit. I want to tittie fuck your ass. -- The Guinness. to Cerebus
You can create your team on Road to Glory, but you need to go to the EA Sports website, edit it through Team Builder, and then download it onto your Playstation. There's even options for uploading custom artwork, and if the game has your team's nickname in the audio log, it will announce your team's name.
On the Other Hand, Road to Glory is kind a waste this year. Quarters are locked on 5 minutes (EA says that that's to keep the online leaderboards fair, which is asnine), so it's very arcadey and you can't really get any realistic stats. Especially if you play defense or receiver. Receivers are lucky to get a couple touches a game.
I switched over to QB to see if that was any more fun, but I ended up handing off over half my snaps which...wasn't very fun. And then I got pulled at the end of the third quarter because I was ahead by too much. I want to set records and roleplay a college Superstar, not end up with a 5/7 105 2TD line every game becaus I don't have time to put up better stats.
Don't get me wrong, Dynasty and the coaching carosel thing are fantastic, and I really like playing the actual game, but I bought this year's version really looking forward to playing the "improved" Road to Glory mode and came away really disappointed.
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Is the playcalling and AI any better in Road to Glory, particularly on the offensive side?
I'm not sure I'm a good judge of that. It's a little dodgy near the goalline (both ways...I've gotten nicked for a couple of safeties by cruddy bootleg calls and it calls too many play action passes in the deep red zone on offense) but it's not horrible or anything.
One thing I wanted to go over was this...
I want to set records and roleplay a college Superstar, not end up with a 5/7 105 2TD line every game becaus I don't have time to put up better stats.
I know you were just being hypothetical with your stat line, but I wanted to say I started a new QB and have played seven high school games. The fewest pass attempts I have had in any game is 14 and those were in blowouts where I ran on several late plays that were called passes. In one game I had to come back fro 14-0 and 28-14 down and ended up with 31 passes thrown. So I don't think (as a *QB*) there is anything wrong with Road to Glory other than they have the high school uniform thing messed up for the CPU teams.
Holy fuck shit motherfucker shit. Read comics. Fuck shit shit fuck shit I sold out when I did my job. Fuck fuck fuck shit fuck. Sorry had to do it....
*snip*
Revenge of the Sith = one thumb up from me. Fuck shit. I want to tittie fuck your ass. -- The Guinness. to Cerebus
Thread ahead: Wii releases: week of July 25, 2011 Next thread: PS3 Releases: week of July 25, 2011 Previous thread: Xbox 360 releases: week of July 18, 2011
I saw some clips at IGN.com it looks pretty freakin cool except for two things that bothered me: 1. The game's model of Undertaker doesnt look EXACTLY like his real-life counterpart while the other models are right on-target. 2.