EA’s Blue Chip. Review

EA’s Blue Chip.

In these sad, slow summer months, when baseball is like a sip of saltwater to

dehydrated sports fans, the faint glimmer of football on the autumn horizon is

as invigorating as the coolest iced tea.

If

you love the NFL, your salvation lies in the pre-season games; in all their

ugly awkwardness they’re still better than watching baseball on TV. But for

the college football fan, EA Sports’ new NCAA Football 2003 is more than

a refreshing sip – it’s an Olympic sized swimming pool full of college football

goodness.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Last year’s NCAA

Football 2002 really put college football gaming on the map, and this year’s

iteration secures the series’ hold on the genre.

The modes are substantial, to say the least. EA’s yearly offering of an awesome

Dynasty mode is one of the coolest traditions since Christmas. As if control

of nearly every aspect of your team weren’t enough (red-shirting players, selecting

blue-chips, hiring, firing, scheduling, trading, drafting, and building), now

players can create their own school. Logos, fight songs, playbooks and,

of course, players are all at your disposal in what is the most comprehensively

immersive college football game mode I’ve ever seen. It’s pretty much worth

the price of admission alone.

Also included is a Mascot Mode in which you can play as one of fifty teams’

mascots. At first I was shocked that Oskie (the Cal bear) was excluded from

the game, but on second thought, I’m more surprised that the Cal football team

was included in the regular game, given the fact that they belong on

a football field about as much as a bunch of paraplegics belong in a step-class.

Tack on the ubiquitous Practice mode (which is handled very counter-intuitively),

Regular Season and a Trophy room with authentic trophies to round out the experience.

Given my horrible penchant for irony, I can hardly reconcile that NCAA

Football 2003 is also a lot of fun to play. I actually prefer NCAA ball

to NFL thanks to the Option plays, which are handled better this season than

ever before. The same goes for draw plays and play-actions, both of which run

more smoothly than ever.

However, it’s about as difficult to finish plays in NCAA Football 2003

as it is to start them thanks to some great defensive computer AI. This game

demands more from the player in terms of play-calling than previous offerings;

if the computer can guess your plays, it’ll beat the crap out of you – even

with Cal, which is about as embarrassing as a mortal wound from a water balloon.

Aside

from the improved difficulty, the game plays a lot like every other recent EA

football game thanks to its use of the Madden engine. So yes, tackling

is still impossible. Also, the fact that the X button boosts on offense and

changes players on defense needs to be changed, as you’ll find yourself switching

players far too unexpectedly and far too often. The running game could also

stand a better scheme, as the same juke, hurdle, turbo thing is probably older

than most GR readers.

Graphically, NCAA Football 2003 is mixed on the PS2, with a bad case

of the jaggies, some weak textures and the lamest looking crowd I’ve ever seen.

It’s actually a step backwards from last year’s effort. Fortunately, the animations

are all really good and the players themselves look great.

The sounds in NCAA Football 2003 could have been taken from NCAA

Football 2002, which is in many ways a good thing. Supposedly there are

over 8,000 lines of new dialogue, but if that’s the case, those 8,000 lines

were poorly spent, as I recognized nearly everything I heard Lee Corso say from

the last NCAA game. Maybe the guy in my copy of the game had a stroke or something.

Despite its niggling flaws, NCAA Football 2003 for the PS2 takes the

managerial aspects of college football to new, unexpected heights. There’s just

a ton of stuff to fiddle with. Still, it would be nice to see the effort and

imagination spent on the modes and details applied to the gameplay. Perhaps

we’ll see that kind of dedication in Sega’s upcoming NCAA 2K3, but even

if we don’t, there’s at least one college football game fit for your PS2.