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By brikrok3 (27th Aug 2008)

In America, college sports work in large part because players are competing for more than just a moment of glory and the eventually threadbare mythological memories told ad nauseam to eyeball-rolling teenagers. With its shoddy promises of pro-sports glory—maybe even you are the next Michael Jordan!—American college sports is an ostensible stepping stone to the bigs. So players play hard, often taking unnecessary risks and making blunderbuss errors that pros would never commit. The result is an electrifying sport; ask anyone who’s watched the NCAA’s Sweet Sixteen.

But what of college sports-themed videogames? How can designers reproduce the same intensity? It’s not as if players who do well in EA’s NCAA Football 09 might graduate to Madden NFL 10; it’s not as if they’re fighting for a starting position in another game. So what, then, do college sport-themed games matter? And what if, as in the disappointing case of NCAA Football 09 for Wii, the game hardly even feels like a Big 10 match?

NCAA Football 09 All-Play is much of the usual—football, football, football. But even this is something of a surprise. On-field action is mediocre, and much of what we’ve come to expect from both Wii games and EA Sports—mini-games, character creation, campus legend, and more recently online play—is missing. This is a shame. What’s left is merely a juvenile football game.

Gameplay is on the whole passable, but hardly exciting. Players move with some fluidity: even under the Wii’s digital incapabilities, the designers at EA have long since moved past the scissor-legged lumps of yesteryear, running jaggedly across the field. Delightfully if unrealistically—anyone who’s had to suffer soberly a football blowout knows just how slow a football game can be--games move briskly along. Breaks between downs are reduced to a mere few seconds, saving gamers from the Madden-esque chalk-board blubbering—the tight end missing his cut, say, as pass coverage during the blitz collapsed before you fell asleep.

At the same time, though, on-field action is hardly great. Too much hand-holding essentially renders playing the game optional: after selecting a play, gamers can more or less put the controller down, leaving the console to the work and the thinking. Certainly this is all to cater to the console’s younger crowd—maybe even those with at best a fleeting interest in football—but hardly does the game qualify for EA sports status. It’s simply too easy, too dull, and too little like their stunningly realistic releases in recent years. On the whole, EA fans are going to be disappointed.

The easiness of the game is only in part mediated by its two control schemes. Both employ the Wiimote and Nunchuk, but neither does so very effectively. Shockingly, comically uncoordinated toddlers could master the simpler All-Play mode, while the Advanced mode hardly improves on the situation. Overall, you’re looking at a lot of exceptionally redundant controller waggling. Players will quickly grow bored.

Visually the game is very tidy, maybe even too tidy. The fields are immaculate, the chalk lines dazzlingly crisp. Much of the same can be said for the players, who often look as spick and span leaving the field as entering it. What’s missing here, of course, isn’t better graphics—those appear in spades in EA’s release of the game for other consoles—but better graphic capabilities. For the PS3 or 360 the game is stunning, often employing a cleaner, more realistic aesthetic than the Wii is capable of supporting. Such has long been EA’s M.O.: reproduce not simply the game but the game people would actually like to see.

But this is all sound and fury. In reality, what one misses most here is the detailing, particularly in relation to the game’s many stadiums. Here is where the personality of college sports lies—not in the players, but in the fans, the stripped-down jerseys, the feel of a community rallying around an idea rather than a painfully rich band of running, kicking, and throwing endorsements. In the game’s release for PS3 or 360, you feel the team’s ethos—you know what it’s like to be a Cornhusker in Nebraska, to root for the Gators in Florida.

Some personality redemption is to be found, though. One of the game’s finest if goofiest features is the mascot league. In lieu of players, then, you’ll be given a team composed entirely of a single mascot—a gaggle of “Sparties” (the plural of Sparty, I suppose?) of the Michigan State Spartans or a band of Brutuses (or should Brutus be declined Brutae?) of Ohio State. These matches are, ultimately, pretty goofy. At the same time, though, the mascot matches draw attention away from the game’s overwhelming fault—it’s dissimilarity to both real football and the game’s release on other consoles—and focus it squarely upon the game’s strength: tidy, fast-paced, and easy-breezy football play.

The game’s audioscape likewise aims to reproduce a non-existent NCAA world. Play-by-play and colour commentary run throughout the game, the sportscasters offering if not exactly incisive then not totally inane commentary. Gameplay action is likewise decent—bone-crunching hits, grunts, and yelps. Again, though, it is the sounds of the stadium—good, but not great--that are the true draw. EA has nonetheless made some decent strides towards realism, so that the crowds’ swelling cheers and jeers are electrifying if a little flat.

Ultimately NCAA Football 09 All-Play is a mediocre though by no means bad game, its overall finer version appearing on other consoles. What we miss out on here is clear—essentially the realization of EA forthrightly ambitious (former) motto: “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game”—and that’s a shame. But not a total loss. Those fond of EA sports franchises aren’t, likely, the Wii’s prime market. Indeed, much crossover is bound to happen here: the game works tremendously well as both a barebones introduction to motion-sensitivity football and as the latest installment in a consistently well-received gaming franchise. But hardly is that enough to make it really worth the purchase; football-loving, Wii-owning gamers are best advised to wait till next year. Or check out Madden NFL 09 All-Play, a far smarter, far better game, which proves football needn’t be a button-hammering affair after all.