Your Football Fix

For some of you football fans out there, summer is nothing more than a time to distract yourself while waiting for the new school year to start—not because you're such dedicated students, but rather because with the start of school comes the new college football season. Guess what? The latest NCAA® Football  game for the Xbox 360™ is on its way. NCAA® Football 07 fills the void left by summer vacation and gives you plenty of gridiron action. If you're already waiting for summer to be over, it's just what the doctor ordered.

NCAA Football 07 for Xbox 360 is the latest in EA Tiburon's college football series, and as with every previous year, it keeps getting better. This year, for the first time, NCAA takes advantage of the next-gen technology of Xbox 360 to provide more realistic and visually pleasing graphics as well as enhanced gameplay.

Flawless next-gen football visuals.

And the Crowd Goes Wild
Xbox 360 technology allowed the designers of NCAA Football 07 to go all the way in creating a truly amazing graphical look and feel for the game. The realism in the stadiums goes far above and beyond what has been previously seen. EA Tiburon sent a man into the field to take pictures in 360 degrees of every stadium in the game. They used GPS technology to record the exact measurements. They have the bands and the students, the cheerleaders and the alumni all in the right areas, and they're all rendered with 125,000 polygons. That's 25 times better than last year's edition of the game.

EA Tiburon also used satellites to track weather and light patterns so they could realistically depict them in the game. They spent months collecting mo-cap data so that the players in the game would have a wide variety of moves, and all of them would look smooth and realistic. They gave the spectators the ability to react with appropriate emotion to the events on the field. And last, but definitely not least, they brought back those icons of football commentary—Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, and Brad Nessler—for another round of insightful comments and play-by-play. They've nearly doubled the number of recorded sound bytes this time, so even over the course of 30 in-game years (as in Dynasty mode), you won't get tired of hearing the same comments time and again.

Can you smell the sweat?

Bleed Your School Colors
Although the amazing graphics certainly help make the game more fun, that's not really what it's all about, is it? You and I both know that the game can look like Heaven's own 3-D artist-in-residence animated the thing, and it'll still suck if the gameplay's no good. So, what about the gameplay? Having done this years now, EA has got it down. They know what works and what doesn't, and more importantly, they know what their fans want. With their record, you know you can trust them.

NCAA Football 07 will not let you down. EA has taken the best of the game elements from previous incarnations, translated flawlessly them onto Xbox 360, and then used the next-gen technology to its greatest potential to improve standard features. For example, of course they've kept the ever-popular Dynasty mode in which you build your team from the ground up and play through an entire career, but they've made some improvements as well. You'll now get more information on possible new recruits, and sorting and organization is more efficient.

Gameplay takes a new turn with the addition of the Jump the Snap feature. This mechanic ties in strongly with the Momentum feature. When you successfully Jump the Snap, your momentum modifier determines just how successful you are. However, if you fail to Jump the Snap, a high momentum modifier may cause you to go off-sides because you're over-excited. Players will find that this new feature, exlusive to Xbox 360, changes the way they approach stepping up to the line. It's just one more way in which the game brings realism into your living room.

Throw the long bomb!

Snacks and Souvenirs
EA understands that people don't always have the time or energy to commit to a full game, so they created three mini-games to give you a football snack, instead of the full meal. These three games have interesting premises and rules. Don't let the names of the games mislead you: Bowling, Option Dash and Tug-of-War. In all three, you play some form of football. In the Tug-of-War mini-game, for example, you take the field against an opponent, either real or A.I., and you have one attempt to get the ball as far downfield as possible. At the end of the play, possession is swapped, and it's the other team to cover ground back upfield. Play continues until one team scores, winning the game.

One more great feature added to NCAA Football 07 is an in-game camera. Remember all those great plays you've made that you could never show off? Now you can take snapshots during gamplay that you can share with your friends and foes on Xbox Live®. Whether you're exercising your bragging rights or just re-living the memories, the snapshot feature just shows you another advantage of this year's edition of NCAA Football.

Whether you decide to play on Xbox Live, with up to 11 friends at home, or all by yourself, the new NCAA Football 07 has everything you need to get your summer football fix.

Article by Angel Leigh McCoy