*****

           I rented this game expecting something like the gamebreaker series (which we all know sucks.) This game was such a pleasent surprise. If I could take it online I would never leave my house. This year also offers you dynasty mode again but has easier recruting and better recruits for the better teams. The ability to create a team offers such a wide spectrum of playing. This year they also say the team names (if they are halfway normal) and when you recruit new players they have names and they say the names. If you create a player and give him a generic name , they can also say his name. The fully custom team uniforms even with pride stickers. The speed with most of the players is correct. So there will be no more fat guy out running a reciever.

           The two biggest flaws are 1. many times the game freezes for no real reason and 2. a lot of the players have un-godly breaking tackle skills. Play this out in your mind: defense blitzing and you finally get to the QB and your biggest lineman hits him he hunches over and the fat guy slides off as if he's greased. Repeat this one more time but then have the QB throw to a guy in three man coverage catch it break those tackles and run for a touchdown.

           Back to the good things. This has the best simulated games there is to offer. Many games just give you a random score, but not here, if the number one team goes up against the worst team 99% chance they will beat them quite badly. Also, the number of team fight songs has increased greatly over the past few years which is cool for a band person like me. This also has cheerleaders that don't look like crap. The crowd also reacts well to the calls, if it's a bad call they boo and if it's a good call they yell and cheer. When your team comes out of the tunnel and onto the field the crowd reacts in the right way with cheering and booing. Many times they run through a fog machine which is REALLY realistic. When the players sit on the side lines they have fans and mist machines going. The players also preform at drastic ends. If you max out a guys stats he's going to kill eveyone by doing things like kicking a 63 yard field goal. The option to redshirt players helps out a lot when you have to many good players. You know have a team rating based on 1 to 5 stars. the five star teams are best and well, we know how good the one star teams are. So try your hardest to keep your team at five stars.

           Overall, this is one of the best sports games with the most hours of play in it. I think anyone who has a playstation 2 should play it because the magic is somewhat less on the other two next-gen consoles, but it's still as good. So go out and play hard and remember: Radford Univ. is the greatest college with 10 national championships and an undefeated streak spanning 11 years.

 

 

 

Radford